Yanaguana volume 1, issue 1 fall/winter 2025-2026 a literary journal from San Antonio, Texas
Reggie Scott Young
“to my desk, pains me to sit there
Pains my hungry fingers to bang on meticulous
Keys”
“unmindful of bombs,
targeted at Ukraine, carried
adrift by gales from that O
Western Wind”
Dancing with the Walking Man
(Consuela’s Blues)
He walks this city that refuses
to acknowledge him as a native
son after time away playing
scholar he’s now returned
unemployable beyond a menial
wage, a forever outsider disappeared
from the consciousness
of local history
He likes to stroll along Southside
Riverwalk paths, dodging
speed racers, unscooped piles of poop
from design-to-order dogs,
residents of new condo tenements,
but he never ventures far up as King
William, or the annex to the Pearl
where riverboat tours gloss over
people like him in narratives about
the city’s legacy
I thought those six AM walks
were times when in his mind
or voice recorder, he’d
compose scholarly articles
that sleepy-minded politicians
would declare Woke and CRT—
How they rail against reminders
of history’s jagged grain,
but I now know when he steps
out mornings it’s to box with
the bitterness that sleeps between
us at night, keep it from dancing
with him all day
Claims he resents all things Chicanx
says our complicity makes us guilty
as if all of us with Spanish names
are one and the same, even me,
who’s a hue darker than him,
nor does he consider what my abuelo
faced when integration lumped
all coloreds together in the margins
of a melting pot, refusing to
see his ambivalence toward me
is the same his people flaunted
when Anglophile Negroes refused
to accept Mexicanos negros
and lorded over us at that time
they owned houses
and thriving businesses
all in their own section of town
boasting proud names and traditions
Now we no longer think in Spanish
now we live as neighbors
in the same rundown houses
neither of us own businesses.
Now we all face displacement
and the two of us share
the same bed. He finds me funny,
a Gonzales who teaches English
finds my love of Lorette Lynn
a contradiction, says if not for my straight hair,
I could pass for a sister.
He jokes I have a Southside belly
and my butt is too round, too low
to the ground but when he lowers
his head from my lips
kisses my breasts and slides down,
circles my navel
he’s the one who’s confundido,
raises his head like an Afrocentric
Coronado points his nose at heaven,
switches to a code
he didn’t know he had.
Instead of sighing, mercy, mercy, mercy
He cries
Ah, dios mio!
An Incursion of Realism
She stands for hours
in this institute of art
searching for poems in
paintings, envisions titles
such as “Listening to
Evening Through the
Ears of van Gogh” & “Sipping
Espresso Flower Tea
with Georgia O’Keefe”
absent works by the likes of
Horace Pippin & Diego Rivera
not useful for her agenda
Eleventh-generation phablet in hand,
she scrutinizes canvases that
require little more than
transcription of imagery
in pursuit of praise from
her MFA & celebratory
acceptances from Poetry &
other leading magazines
before a book launch in
the offices of Wooden Nickel
Press, unmindful of bombs,
targeted at Ukraine, carried
adrift by gales from that O
Western Wind, now bursting in air
over North Broadway, headed
to that Museum of Fine Art where
the only surviving work
a Stallworthy edition of
Wilfred Owen’s poems,
sticks up from the backpack
a fleeing janitor leaves behind.
What Work Ain’t
—After Philip Levine and J. Bruce Fuller
Four A.M.,
I punch the clock
Bruise my hand on its sharp edges
Then praise it for making me rise
Knowing full well there’s no time to wait
If I don’t put in these early hours
I don’t make enough dough
To keep a few C-notes in the bank
So, I light up a lamp,
Still in t-shirt and draws, ease
Up to my desk, pains me to sit there
Pains my hungry fingers to bang on meticulous
Keys, coffee needed but no time to brew, much less
Sip, impedes the rhythm of clicking sounds
Right baby finger strokes the return
Like a bongo drum
Quality’s not a concern
Creativity brews in evening revisions
What I need now is to hammer out
Words enough for conscious thought
To morph into form
Maybe a new blind man’s cathedral, another
Backwoods misfit, or a drug-addicted orderly will
Emerge before eight when that damn
Clock sounds off again
Shower time, throw on clothes for the day
Walk out the door hearing the
Old man’s voice from the grave
That shit you do a waste of time
When you learn what work is,
You’ll know what it ain’t
Better get a real job, one that’ll make
You punch a clock
Use both hands and feet
Get a check in your name
Signed by a boss
Show the world you ain’t
No wuss, that you’re a man
Who knows how real men work
And out of respect, that’s what I do
Over at the Reader’s Roost where
I use equipment and tools
Mostly a dolly and retractable knife
A cheap Windows keyboard more machine-like
Than the fruity little Air I use at home
Keep earbuds up at full blast
Sleepwalk through each online order
The same while checking in returns
Stamping invoices in a rickety chair
Opening and packing publishing house
Boxes, placing freight on scales
New arrivals on shelves
Like the old man insists
It requires use of feet and hands
No mental lifting except to avoid
Being rude when
Manager and staff members
Invade my space
Feeding me stories of life
From their uptown world
So, I skate through the day
Bide my time until time to go home
Open that slender laptop and
Check for acceptances by
Magazines and journals that
A boutique bookstore
Would never carry
Grateful the ninety-two
Cents a word I get
For each article or story
Comes from a hobby
The old man would see
As nothing but play.
Reggie Scott Young is a San Antonio, Texas, writer and two-time recipient of an Individual Artist Grant from the city’s Department of Arts and Culture. He has published works of poetry, fiction, and nonfiction in leading literary magazines and journals. During his career as a scholar, his articles and works of literary criticism appeared in academic journals and essay collections. He also served as co-editor of two books on Ernest J. Gaines, including Mozart and Leadbelly: Stories and Essays. Before leaving his professorship at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, he published the poetry collection Yardbirds Squawking at the Moon, and his novella-length memoir, “Son of a Natural Man,” is included in the Fall/Winter 2025-2026 edition of Evergreen Review.