Stories

Let’s start with Miguel’s words: 

Who ever thought it would end like this, 

an old drunken Puerto Rican being led 

by the arm down the path of eternity 

by a Jew from New Brunswick?

This was written in my journal on the PATH ride home to Jersey on September 15, 2016, a few days after Miguel’s 75th birthday. I had walked Miguel home from another drunken night at a bar on First Avenue. Somehow it fell upon me, as it often did to get Miguel home in one piece. There were many of these nights, most often (thank God) without me. Miguel opened doors in the literary world for me and my friends in terms of invitations, readings and publications, I’ve shared the stage with him and for him numerous times, but I most value those times when I had him to myself, or in a small group. I’m not sure the last time I saw Miguel, I believe it was early 2020 before the pandemic when I went to the nursing home with Nancy Mercado. His sister Irma was there. Miguel was in good spirits, full of projects that he had to know were long shots at best, including getting him out of there. I think that was the last time.

The first time was 1976 or 77. Rob Press and I emerged from our Ford Hall dorm at Rutgers after an epic bong-a-thon and wandered onto the lawn at Old Queens Campus to see a Puerto Rican man standing at a microphone between who I later found out to be Mikey Piñero and Lucky Cienfuegos. There was a protest about cutbacks to our state university and that man at the mic was Miguel Algarin incanting: “Mongo can not penetrate/ Mongo can only tease/ but it can’t tickle/ the juice of the earth vagina…” His beaded necklace was jangling to the rhythm of his swaying. His eyes were closed and his voice was a plaintive call to the heavens. Our minds were blown.

Maybe a year later I found myself tagging along with Eliot Katz and Rob Press to the Livingston campus of Rutgers to sit in on their Modern American Poetry class with Professor Algarin. On that day Miguel did not show up. The students knew the routine, wait 15 minutes and then we were free to go. Another time he left a note on the door saying he was sorry to cancel class but he’d been called to New Mexico to mediate a prison riot. We later found out it was true. However, I did join the class for a couple of field trips to the Nuyorican Café where Miguel introduced us to literary luminaries such as Willian Burroughs and Amiri Baraka.

During our senior year our band played at the Nuyorican Poets Café. Robert and the Exploding Garbage Can Band consisted of Rob Press on guitar, and Eliot, Bruce, Carol and myself playing upside down metal garbage cans pillaged from New Brunswick streets. Picture 50 glowering Puerto Ricans standing 3 feet in front of the band with hands firmly planted over ears. The two audience members who delighted in our performance were Miguel, and Sugar whose birthday we were celebrating. As a matter of fact, we were wearing yellow inflatable hats in honor of her special day. For some reason Sugar took a liking to me in particular and thought it would be cute for me to be banging on my garbage can with her sitting on my lap. Mikey Piñero on the other hand did not think it so cute. When I got up to go to the bathroom, he told me he was gonna cut me if I went near his girl again. After he left Miguel came over, “don’t worry he’s all talk, but he’s harmless. And I told him you’re gay.” Gee, thanks Miguel.    To Read More, buy NIGHT BIRD FLYING from Roadside Press

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