Home > Poetry Magazine > GTA: San Andreas (or, “Grove Street, bitch!”)

Poetry Magazine

POEM
RELATED CONTENT Discover this poem's context and related poetry.

GTA: San Andreas (or, “Grove Street, bitch!”)

By Jacob Saenz Jacob Saenz

I play on Grove Street,

live on Grove Avenue.

Find me in the streets dressed

in greens like groves.

On the avenue, I’m a blue

jeans type of guy.

In the streets, never leave

home w/out my 9mm.

On the avenue, always carry

my pen & wine key, in case

some fool blows his cork.

My UZI sings songs in

the streets—rat-a-tat-tat.

Birds chirp-chirp-chirp

in trees on the avenue.

Rolling down the street

w/my lady—what she wanna do?

“Let’s do a drive-by.”

Rushing down the avenue

w/my baby: “I’m hungry.

Let’s do drive-thru.”

I’ll punch punks purple & blue

in the streets, bleed ’em w/bullets.

On the avenue, I’ll leave punching

to punks dressed in blues, reds,

et cetera & mind my own.

Source: Poetry (November 2012).

Biography

Poet and editor Jacob Saenz was born in Chicago and raised in Cicero, Illinois. He earned a BA in creative writing from Columbia College in Chicago and won a Letras Latinas Residency Fellowship at the Anderson Center in Red Wing, Minnesota. Saenz has been an editor at Columbia Poetry Review and an associate editor at RHINO. He works as an acquisitions assistant at the Columbia College library and has read his poetry at a number . . .

Continue reading this biography