La Bodega Sold Dreams

Houston: Arte Público Press, 1985. Saddle-stapled in photographic wraps. 48 pp. Illustrated throughout with black-and-white photographs. Second edition. Text in Spanish and English.

The first book of poetry from the queer, formerly incarcerated artist and poet, co-founder of the Nuyorican Poets Café and collaborator with the Young Lords Party.

Piñero (1946-1988) was born in Puerto Rico and grew up in the Lower East Side of Manhattan. By 25, he had spent time in Sing Sing Prison and on Rikers Island, having been arrested for theft at age 11 and apparently hustling on the streets since he was 14.

During his time in Sing Sing, Piñero connected with an acting troupe of formerly incarcerated individuals who helped get his first poem published. His experiences of incarceration inspired much of his writing, most famously in his play Short Eyes, which explores the brutality and moral complexities of a New York detention center and would be brought to Broadway by Joseph Papp.

Piñero also helped propel the career of his partner, the painter Martin Wong, with whom he lived beginning in 1982. The two often collaborated and wrote together. Piñero passed away at the age of 41 from cirrhosis. His ashes were scattered in the Lower East Side, as requested in his "A Lower East Side Poem," published in this volume.

"Just once before I die / I want to climb up on a tenement sky / to dream my lungs out till / I cry / then scatter my ashes thru / the Lower East Side."