This essay takes Miguel Piñero’s A Lower East Side Poem as a rhetorical starting point for understanding Nuyorican identity. Close textual analysis reveals that the poem functions personally (as Piñero’s last will and testament) and politically (as a description of how the urban landscape of The Lower East side shaped Nuyorican identity). Piñero’s version of Nuyorican identity is then presented theoretically as a dynamic mix of vernacular cosmopolitan and indigenous concerns.