SkateFate by Juan Felipe Herrera Read Free Book Online Page A

things
    critically wrong complicated fragile & magnificently strong
    deodorant-stick fried burritos Bengal tiger carpet that’s
    where your pet went
    dental braces & Disney gongs & throngs of
    pregnancy tests & physics books & dental floss
    Goth shoes plain white laces
    quadratic formula prep-test races
    isosceles triangles &
    número dos basketball championship shoes
    what do you want Baghdad or divorce?
    no one asked you to choose
    diet obsessions behavioral mess any
    more crunchy questions anyone
    adoption option & foster papers all that mess you wished
    was gone
    PennySaver & craigslist gone wrong
    you don’t know what kind of boy you are or you aren’t
    skate it there girl or boy or both whatever
    vitamin water or the fume in the perfume market crash &
    all the rash
    on your ex-friend takin’ a lap & then a nap
    in between all the gangsta’ rap no fear
    on CNN on all the baby names
    on your stepmom’s Grey’s Anatomy at night
    on the boy with the gun in the gloom-room w/o a sun
    when
    you are dreaming graduation is near
    gooooo!
    goooooooo
    goooooooooo!
    when you are dreaming
    that is
    when you are awake when
    French violet flower petals
    greet you like van Gogh &
    all the streets
    lead to
    where you are . . .

Klarissa hugged me. started to sing a melody. outta nowhere. totally. everyone in class was applauding. like everything was comin’ outta me. for the first time in my life. the sky. the door that Jason Blocker cracked. and the fire that filled. me

& there is nowhere to
    go o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o
    you know you know
    down below & high a b o v e
    it’s all the same
    you are singing
    Â 
    LUCKY Z.
    (aka Luciano Zacarías Flores)
    Pacifico Heights School,
Rm. #277

Acknowledgements
    For Alyson Day, my editor,
who saw this before I imagined it
For Julie Kline, who heard it before I did
For Kendra Marcus, my agent,
who asked me to be patient
For Margarita,
my partner, who simply knows it
For Lauro Flores,
who believed in me from the start
For Nicole Chang, my niece,
and her husband, Luke, &
their most beautiful children, Jeremy, Hailey,
Anthoney, & Jonathan
For my granddaughter, Rayne
For Victor Martinez, brother, sensei,
For Tom Lutz, for his eye
For Mario Garza, for the fab design draft
For my familia Herrera in Mesquite, N.M.
For my children,
Almasol, Joaquín, Joshua, Marlene & Robert
For Lucky Z.

Copyright
    SkateFate
Copyright © 2011 by Juan Felipe Herrera
    All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
----
    Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
    Herrera, Juan Felipe.
    Â Â Â Â Skatefate / Juan Felipe Herrera. — 1st ed.
    Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â  p. cm.
    Â Â Â Â  Summary: Lucky Z, a Chicano foster child, loved living on the edge until a drag racing accident left him in a wheelchair, but as he struggles to find his place in a new high school, he begins writing poetry everywhere about anything, and in finding his voice he also discovers the beauty around him.
    Â Â Â Â  ISBN 978-0-06-143287-3
    Â Â Â Â  [1. Novels in verse. 2. Poets—Fiction. 3. People with disabilities—Fiction. 4. High schools—Fiction. 5. Schools—Fiction. 6. Foster home care—Fiction. 7. Moving, Household—Fiction. 8. Mexican Americans—Fiction.] I.