Breve historia de un grito
 
Trescientos años después 
de la conquista se alzó el grito 
de dolores, grito de un pueblo
adolorido por independencia
del imperio. Veinte y unos años
después de ser independiente 
México perdió mas de la mitad 
de sus tierras al más joven 
impero del norte.
Y expulsando otra invasión
y sufridas otras tiranías
se hizo por revolución el grito
dolorido. De eso hace cien
y más años. ¿Qué puede decir 
una historia del hambre, la sed,
el dolor, la pena, el sufrir 
de la que se hace?
La injusticia echa raíces muy largas. 
Deshacerse de un yugo no es ser
libre, deshacerse de un yugo no es
lo mismo que lograr la justicia.
La lucha sigue. Pues ¡adelante!
mexican@s, chican@s, adelante mundo. 
La lucha sigue hasta la justicia.
¡Hasta la justicia sigue la lucha!

© Rafael Jesús González 2021
(Somos en escrito, septiembre 2021; derechos reservados del autor)

Rafael Jesús González, Prof. Emeritus of literature and creative writing, was born and raised biculturally/bilingually in El Paso, Texas/Cd. Juárez, Chihuahua, and taught at University of Oregon, Western State College of Colorado, Central Washington State University, University of Texas El Paso (Visiting Professor of Philosophy), and Laney College, Oakland, California where he founded the Dept. of Mexican & Latin-American Studies. Also visual artist, he has exhibited in the Oakland Museum of California, the Mexican Museum of San Francisco, and others in the U.S. and Mexico. Nominated thrice for a Pushcart prize, he was honored by the National Council of Teachers of English and Annenberg CPB for his writing in 2003. In 2013 he received a César E. Chávez Lifetime Award and was honored by the City of Berkeley with a Lifetime Achievement Award at the 13th Annual Berkeley Poetry Festival 2015. He was named the first Poet Laureate of Berkeley in 2017. Visit http://rjgonzalez.blogspot.com/. 

THE FALL OF KABUL
 
carpet-baggers locusts cannibals lice
the head turns to stone the moon is drawn
out of its well and decapitated in a dust flurry
minutes before the evacuation promises of
paper-flowers fruit without vermin bread !
for two decades a series of statues come and gone
artillery composed of offal and headwinds
ox-carts bearing sultans of medieval dialects
everything a matter of renunciation
movies cosmetics opium military footwear
the greatest Demon in the world has just
surrendered his vices in a big photograph swap
history is written on mattresses with bedbugs
remember the Soviet carrion ?
remember the big Buddha at Bamian ?
five thousand years since the Aryans bruited
the Vedas in the Hindu Kush and today
nothing but a reversal of system and value
blond poster-girls peeling off bloodied walls
hoodwinked soldier boys from Iowa City
haunted by the part they played
dismembering the carcass of progressive Reform
Jihad ! Mujahideen ! turn the volume up !
the Twin Towers were destroyed by fireflies
a nuisance of idioms and heresy
monstrous illiteracy of social media lies
verbiage and tattooed air multiples of Zero
Balkh the birthplace of Rumi surrenders !
President of USA suffers from PTSD
a painted screen a flutter of Chinese diplomats
wearing poisoned masks an x-ray of Night
what good are stealth bombers and drones ?
red ants versus black ants ! civilization !
mendacity of General Petraeus and the CIA
operatives who drill like moles through earth
nothing is solid and even less is holy
the Beloved ! houris wearing burkas on Main Street
Yea this day is Paradise and Gehenna
above and below and forever !
 
08-15-21

​​Ivan Argüelles is a Mexican-American innovative poet whose work moves from early Beat and surrealist-influenced forms to later epic-length poems. He received the Poetry Society of America’s William Carlos Williams Award in 1989 as well as the Before Columbus Foundation’s American Book Award in 2010.  In 2013, Argüelles received the Before Columbus Foundation’s Lifetime Achievement Award. For Argüelles the turning point came with his discovery of the poetry of Philip Lamantia. Argüelles writes, “Lamantia’s mad, Beat-tinged American idiom surrealism had a very strong impact on me. Both intellectual and uninhibited, this was the dose for me.” While Argüelles’s early writings were rooted in neo-Beat bohemianism, surrealism, and Chicano culture, in the nineties he developed longer, epic-length forms rooted in Pound’s Cantos and Joyce’s Finnegans Wake. He eventually returned, after the first decade of the new millennium, to shorter, often elegiac works exemplary of Romantic Modernism. Ars Poetica is a sequence of exquisitely-honed short poems that range widely, though many mourn the death of the poet’s celebrated brother, José.

José E. Valdivia Heredia is an undergraduate student of Religion and Latin American studies at Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania. They are a Chicanx writer from Northern California born to two parents from Michoacán, México. José has published a short poem in the Harvard Latinx literary publication Palabritas. 

Today I take back my birth right
 
without fear or hesitation.
 
You, who believe you have as much right to deny me my heritage like conquistadores in foreign ships.
 
Yo soy Boricua! Aunque no lo sepas!
 
Yo soy Boricua! Aunque tu me niegas!
 
I know how it drives you insane, that my Spanish sounds like heresy.
 
Do you not recognize your own brother?
 
I am the product of our mother’s violation, the bastard son of history, the crumbs that the mainland left behind! I am the echo of our past!
 
And I see you. I see through you. You foam at the mouth, ready to spit rejection into my face.
 
As I speak, I see your lips curling like bows taking aim at my chest. Your tongues are pitchforks starving for blood. Your words are salt encrusted and stink of vinegar left to dry.
 
Your fingers slowly creep, crawl, and wrap themselves around stones. Accusing me of adultery, pharisees of my flag.
 
Me acusan de traición!
 
Me han dicho que abandone mi patria!
 
Por no estar sufriendo con ella! Luchando por ella!
 
Accuse me of poverty instead!
 
Accuse me of loving a family I could not provide for! As if being Puerto Rican eight thousand miles away from home was not suffering enough.
 
As if representing our pride and defending our honor to those who believe we have none left isn’t enough of a fight!
 
But I see that your eyes still speak silence and rejection.
 
Sin embargo, I know who I am and where I am from.
 
Yo soy el jíbaro triste, migrando a la cuidad de Nueva York.
 
I am the sleepless nights in the heartless jungles of concrete and traffic.
 
I am the desperation of the immigrant.
 
I am the weeping eyes of mothers praying for their sons.
 
I am all of their “Hail Mary’s” and “Padre Nuestro”.
 
I am the uncertainty of choice. To leave or to stay?
 
To leave.
 
And pack your whole life inside a bag of luggage…
 
 
I am the isolation of our single star.
 
Quiet seed of the Caribbean.
 
It wants to scream out from beneath the earth, to be acknowledged by the world.
 
We are taught that injustice is our daily bread. To be thankful that we are not like other Latin countries, “republicas hambrientas”
 
Justice is too much to thirst for, because “no estamos listos para la soberanía.”
 
As if freedom is something we must learn, as if it wasn’t already seared into the very skin of our souls when we are born! As if it wasn’t already carved into our bones and written in verse within our hearts!
 
Tell me, do you think we felt loved when the President threw paper towels at us when there was more blood running in the island than water?
 
Neither did I.
 
I am Judas, who betrayed himself and sold his flesh for thirty pieces of silver and a loaf of bread to give to his mother. 
 
You would have me crucified for being born into the same skin as you.
 
The sound of my rolling r’s is flat and deformed, my skin is a shade of American to you, but I will never be what you want me to be.
 
I will not confess to crimes I did not commit.
 
Because you cannot abandon a home,
 
 
that has never left your heart…
 
 
Y confieso con mi cantico triste,
 
Yo soy Boricua, aunque no lo sepas.
 
Yo soy Boricua, aunque tu me niegas.

Pilgrim
​
See, some were born to summer homes
And palatial groves
Where pain was only to ever unfold
From the pages of Secret Gardens
Where the Red Fern Grows
But not I
See, I come from the stock
Of starry-eyed astronauts
Who greet the night sky
With big dreams and wide eyes
Always Running
Down the Devil’s Highway
Through Occupied America
On the way back to
The House on Mango Street
And all those other books
You didn’t want us to read
Raised on handball
Off the back wall
Of a panaderia
Born
East the river
Post Mendez vs Westminster
One generation removed
From the redlines
And diplomas signed
That those dreams
In that skin
Need not apply
See, I come from struggle
And if my story offends you
That is only ‘cause you made the mistake of seeking your
reflection
In my self-portrait
See, this
Well this may not be about you
Because while some were born
To the common core
Whose reflected faces
Graced the pages
Of doctrines to discover
And ages to be explored
Where old world hardships
Crashed against new shores
New England
New Hampshire
New Jersey
New York
For others pushed off
Turtle island
Aztlan
Do not call this brown skin immigrant
Child of the sun
Son of the conquest
Mexicano blood
Running through the veins
Of the eastside of Los Angeles
Do not tell him
In what native tongue
His song would best be sung
Do not tell me
Who I am
‘Cause I was raised just like you
Miseducated in some of those
Very same schools
Off lessons and legends
Of honest injuns and Christian pilgrims
And a nation of immigrants
All united in freedom
That is until they pulled aside
My white friend
Pointed directly at me
And said “Scott
I judge you by the company you keep
And you spend your time with this”
And that’s the same old story since 1846
The adventures of Uncle Sam
The stick-up man
Hey wetback
Show me your papers
Now give me your labor
The Melting Pot
Was never meant for the hands
That clean it
The American dream
Has always come at the expense
Of those who tucked it in
And you don’t know that
‘Cause you don’t teach it
Could write you a book
But you won’t read it
So you know what
This is about you
And 1492
And the treaty of Guadalupe
California missions
And Arizona schools
And these racists
That try to erase us
As we raise their kids
In cities that bear our names
But you’re going to learn
Something today
‘Cause from Ferdinand
To minuteman
From Arpaio
To Alamo
From Popol Vuh
To Yo Soy Joaquin
To the Indian that still lives in me
From Mexico 68
To the missing 43
They tried to bury us
They didn’t know we were seeds
From Cananea mine
To Delano strike
From the Plan De Ayala
Emiliano Zapata
Joaquin Murrieta
Las Adelitas
Brown Berets
And Zapatistas
From Richard Nixon
To the Third Napoleon
From Peckinpah
To Houston
From Lone Star Republic
To Christopher Columbus
All the way down
To Donald fucking Trump
We didn’t cross the borders
The borders crossed us
Who you calling immigrant
Pilgrim?

Carved Over
​
Draw a map
Line the sand
Carve the desert
Act on land
Amend it
Eminent domain
Indefinite detention
Private prisons
Public referendum
Gentrification
Naturalization
Americanization
Forced sterilization
Make America Great Again
Mexico will pay
The hunt for Murrieta
The hunt for Pancho Villa
John Pershing’s slaughter of the innocents
A severed head
Touring California museums
Becomes Zorro
Becomes the Wild Bunch
Becomes whitewash
This American Life
Experience
Its imagination
If you can dream it
You can see it
And if you can see it
You can build it
And if you build it
You can take it
And if they resist
Manifest a cruelty
So complete
That for generations
They will do it to themselves
Build a city
Draw its borders
Patrol its districts
Add silence to injury
Insult without memory
Protect these borders
From language and culture
Taco trucks
And Dora the Explorer
The country is changing
And you know it
It’s simple mathematics
And you know it
You have kept us weak
By keeping us confused
Your grandchildren
Will speak Spanglish
In the neighborhood
You grew up in
Greeting their friends
On the corner
Of your childhood
And cherished memories
Under the lamplight
And faded midst
This historic site
Of your first kiss
Where you learned
To sink
Before you learned to swim
Where you
And she
Carved your names to trees
And promised each other
Forever
But
Memories fade
Neighborhoods change
And your names will be carved over
And there is nothing
You can do about it
And you know this too
So when Donald Trump
Says drug dealers and rapists
And Kelly Osbourne jumps in
To correct him
No Donald
Those people are just here to clean our shit
When you
Sit so comfortably
Speak so freely
About a group of people
Who are somehow everywhere
Yet at the same time
No one
Hold your tongue
We are far closer than you know

​Review by Scott Duncan-Fernandez
​
​
We Chicanos still need words to express our occupied experience even after 173 years. Mowing Leaves of Grass by Matt Sedillo has those words, slings out the curses to whomever has it coming. That necessary verbal retaliation of humanity that brown bodies and minds need. Social justice and history books are great, but we live in and by poetry.
​
I’m a Xicano, these words are for me, speak for me. I am impressed how much work Chicano art accomplishes: our art is functional. Sedillo’s Mowing Leaves of Grass lives up to this. You may find yourself in the work, in this too personal political experience of being Xicano in America, or you may come to understand the experience better as fellow human beings.

I’ve lived the poem, “A Chicano in Liverpool,” when the poet is asked do you belong here, though as a Chicano in Brighton, UK. My family and I have been, “Carved Over,” contended with fantasies about us and told we don’t belong in our homeland.
I’m sure many folks have commented on the title, Mowing Leaves of Grass, a reference to Mr. Body Electric. I liked studying him in high school and college, but never forgot what soured the milk: Whitman’s excitable thoughts that the Mexican-American War would be the fulfillment of Anglo superiority. In this education system we Chicanos are often forced to study and agree wholeheartedly with statements, literary works, and famous authors that advocate for our troglodyte inherency to servitude or how we are better off dead.

For all his exalting of the body electric, WW ain’t talking about my brown body or African bodies. White bodies need only apply for the full body kung fu glow in his world. Of course, they didn’t teach his thoughts on the matter in high school or college. The American school system likes to sanitize and exculpate northern Europeans, call slaves workers, say the land was empty and just waiting for development, that Mexicans were too lazy here in the underpopulated and underfunded frontier to get anything done. What more proof of this white supremacy than the current Texas Legislature’s further attempt to whitewash history and combat the truth of black and brown humanity and that the system built on us is oppressive and wrong.

I’m quite okay with Whitman getting mowed along with much of the American literary canon, the Anglocentric selection of works that academia advertises and empowers by its own authority.

Mowing Leaves of Grass is a cry against the American experience and for the Indigenous American, one often we Chicanos must steal back as our detractors use the earlier marks of Spanish conquest against us, or make exploitative tourist fantasies of us, as mentioned in “Carved Over.” This poem is a mental overthrow of the USA’s colonial idea of us as foreigners which is accomplished as well in the poem, “Pilgrim.” This poem “Pilgrim” was read at the first Aztlán Report, a state of the raza yearly event started this year in 2021. The Aztlán Report was a gathering of Chicano organizations to inform about the events and activities of the year pertinent the Mexican American experience. I attended as a member of MeXicanos 2070, a non-profit Chicano organization dedicated to protecting and enhancing our culture. A perfect setting for this counter colonial poem.

These poems come from a year ago, el tiempo de naranja, the time of Trump. Sedillo cusses Trump, cusses his followers. Points out that we Xicanos are the future.  Mowing Leaves of Grass, the book and the titular poem is mowing the canon, decolonizing the mind of education, American education. At times, it hits the same note, the note of resistance, but we are offered some poems like “La Reina,” where it’s a celebration of women who have persevered and transmitted culture, like my birth city of LA itself. 

We need more than witnessing to provide trauma porn for salivating masters, or equally legless rage to amuse them.  We don’t have anger issues, we got reasons to be angry. We need that emotion and reason, the chants and incantation in this collection that will heal and forge us. We need to be out of control and have un-colonial thoughts.

We deserve our anger; we need to express it. I needed these words when cops approached me as a teenager, guns on me, asked, are you a wetback? and slammed me against my car. I just knew “Fuck Tha Police” by NWA back then.  Now I have the poem, “Custers.” Mowing Leaves of Grass has many stanzas expressing the “ya bastas,” “nada mas,” “best back ups” that Chicanos need.

These poems are angry. I am angry. As I write this, Mario Gonzales is dead, murdered by cops, called on by neighbors for being tall and brown in a public park. He had long hair, the caller said; he looked “Hispanic” or “Indian.” The words describe Mario, me, and the poet. These poems can’t not be personal.

I want everyone to read this. It’s poetry for now, but not limited to it. Mow the canon, celebrate the Xicano electric or find the new words we are on the cusp of speaking thanks to fearless poetry like Sedillo’s.

“Go defend our country son make Uncle Sam proud.
Don’t worry about a High School Diploma,
You’ve got the Viet Cong to think about.
 
You’ll be physically fit, cock strong, in your dress blues
All these westside chicks are gonna want to fuck you
 
You’ll have medals pinned on your chest, a career as a cook or custodian
Benefits with a steady paycheck, a cheap little house with an iron fence
 
C’mon be a real man with a rifle in your hands
And tell them all, later on, about the young heroes of war
Jungle sounds, Khe San and how things were in’ Nam.

 Vietnamese rats
Chasing like rabid dogs
So large you couldn’t swallow
Shooting women
And children
Coming back
To be a Little League coach
For your kids-
A hero?
A patriot?
 
Wearing a red and gold cover
That reads:
             1967-1969 Reconnaissance USMC
Raising a Devil Dog flag in the front yard
Next to an American flag.
                                                          Everyone driving by knows where you stand.
                                                     Who you are
                                         A Veterano
                                        What you did
                           For this country
                  That is not yours
              A dream you’re not in.

is physically fit,
says OORAH when they see another marine,
has American pride,
honors the eagle, globe and anchor,
has a bulldog named Chesty,
tells war stories,
while polishing his medals,
banks with USAA,
psycho tough,
ready to kill,
never hesitates,
knows martial arts like Chuck Norris,
is an alcoholic with a side chick,
has PTSD,
a racist in denial,
attends air shows with the silent drill platoon.
 
A real marine says
this country has gone to shit,
doesn’t want to die,
because their grandson is gay,
on the flip,
he wants gays in the military to serve as bullet-catchers.
 
A real marine gets shafted by the corps,
years later,
thankless service,
wearing a red cover,
USMC t-shirt,
won’t stop until the job is done,
flashbacks,
hates Asians,
haircut high n’ tight,
originally from Parris Island,
is sometimes a tio taco,
not that amphibious,
a cock boy in dress uniform,
marching at grocery stores.
 
A real marine trains people of color to kill people of color.
A United States fucking Marine,
trained to kill anyone,
anything,
even himself.
 
I didn’t go to war.

​I

Where El Pueblo Points Their Thousand Fingers at La Niña Tere

​We did what every pueblo did
    when soldiers came asking
for our children. We hid inside
    barrels of beans and slept
on rooftops. We called the names
    of our gods and our country
hollered back. They found us
   at school, reciting the national
anthem. They found us selling
   conchas a cora on the streets.
They found us between bedsheets,
   nude as newlyweds, asking
for names. And if they gave us
   the choice between their enemy
and our head, we did what every
   pueblo did. We gave them puta
ó pobre. We saved ourselves.

II

Where Tía Tere Knocks Out the First Conquistador and All Else is Unimaginable 

​Spilling colónes on the street
is the closest we will get
to smearing dirt all over

Cristóbal Colón’s gilded face. 
So, when soldiers tear the purse
from her arm and bills rip ragged

as flags from its slapped mouth,
burying coin and conquistador
in shit and mud, we can call it

resistance, a victory for the little
hand that spun and struck midnight
raw against the jaws of soldiers. 

Tía Tere’s wrists were younger
then, stronger than they are now,
puffy and punctured. She caught

the first soldier in the nose and broke
red yolk down his rugged grimace.
Before he raped her, she forced him

to weep a boy’s tears. If he survived
the war, then he still walks today
with the nose the devil gave him.

Best believe she would have merked
him before the gun buckled her neck
and for hours she blinked back black.

III

Love Letter from Tía Tere to a Boy Soldier
​

​n the months dogs dig their dry noses through trash in search
of water, you were the boy who left out tins for the strays to lap,

a chicken bone for muzzles to startle and snap. Papi threatened
to beat us if we stole the fruit that fell from your father’s terreno

into our yard. I hid the mangos you gave me in my shirt and only
got caught once. Later, we shared the bruised seed, our white uniforms

half-translucent in the summer sweat, the pulp, bright and yellow,
stuck thirsty on our lips. I never repaid you for your kindness.        

He had your face,

The man with the fat nose
who dug through me like trash.

Here are my kindnesses in return:                 

      I fucked up his mug, gave him a new nose
      and busted lip before he overtook me.

I told myself you went North instead of enlisting.
You were the one I saw when I closed my eyes.

​IV

Where Tía Tere Faces the Judge 

​If bullet wounds had tongues
to testify, ¿would the judges

believe us then? If the vagina
could speak and write its darkest

name in blood, if she could count
the soldiers and their barrels,

¿would my pain be legitimate?

I gave up water and let my voice evaporate
       in the Chihuahuan desert.

I gave up a language—even the words amor y luz
        --and now my teeth cut
 my lips like rakes.
  
I gave up a good mother who worked like an ass,
a father who starved
      to feed his children.
 
I gave up my body and let its most tender parts
crack to pieces like a clam
full of dirt.
 
I gave up a whole country and you keep asking for more.  

Your honor, dile al presidente, the officials of ICE, the alt-right,
and this nation’s countless slaves: I am here to court each of you.

I brought you all the arm of a child, plucked from the earth
the way some pick a daisy. I apologize for its lack of fingers.

You already know how these games go. He lives, he lives
not. Are your men astute enough to tell me when it’s from:

¿our old war or yesterday’s tiraera? They all look the same.
If it’s not el ejercito, it’s la policia. If it’s not a landmine,

it’s a mara. ¿Which are you? If you want to play Pantokrator,
por favor, please judge me. 

In the Last Judgement, we will all be sent
to El Salvador to reap our eternal redress. 

In the Last Judgement, you will be forced
to face the insurrection of our dead.

V

Prayer to Cipactli Tlaltecuhtli
​

​Cipactli Tlaltecuhtli,

Tía says so many men went over her she lost count. 

They all blurred into one— 
            the soldiers y conquistadores
the judges y el pueblo
the police y las maras
the boys who once offered
her the ripe heart of a mango.  
             
You were the goddess men tore in two and claimed
they created the earth, as if la selva isn’t the nap
of your kitchen, as if Izalco y Ilamatepec blossom
from somewhere other than your bosom. 

We call you the world monster—la mujer, la guerrillera,
who survived a gang rape of gods and gave us your queendom,
bloody belly and slaughtered womb. ¿Are you not madre y martyr 
of our Americas, splintered at the isthmus, legs thrashing

against every chain and stitch? ¿Are we not all the children
of a woman torn at the border? You burst from the pin
of a guerrillera’s grenade as an angel. You flapped
your wings and the leaves of the trees fluttered

in flames and spoke--


Mija, soy la mera, mera, Santa Salvador.
Mira las heridas sobre mi cuerpo,
       las bocas que gritan en cada rótula, el rio
sangriento de mi pelo que llena mares
con su furia. Sos mi hija-guerra, nene, carne
de mi carne, la rosa de mis moretones. 
Entiendes ahora porque mis bocas siempre
 ansían por la sangre. He perdido tanto
de la mía. Pero no vas a morir aquí, ahorita,
       mija, yo te concederá la vida.
  
and the men were blinded
            by your light, made deaf
            by the roar of your rifles

and the men hid behind
            your trees which fell
            like hands clapping flies

and guerrilleros ambushed
      the camp as the colonel
      selfishly begged Tía for life

and the men lost their arms
            in the scuttle and finally prayed
            to mothers they never loved

and the men lost their legs
            in the scuttle and finally knelt
      humiliated before their Maker

and her thighs were still mud-slapped,
            bleeding to her knees as she led him
            through her homeland, the dark arch

and dip of your chest, where once
      she nursed from your honey and felt
      her bones harden with your marrow

and where then you gave her
      the strength to save a man
      who didn’t deserve your blood.           

VI

Prayer to Tía Tere
​

​ Tía,

When I call you Cipactli
            Tlaltecuhtli I mean this:
                                                 
You gave us a world, torn
limb by limb, rich with your sacrifice.
You gave birth to the poet and the thug,
to men who never knew your power.
If you let us live,
it is by the grit of your grace.
If we betray your love,
then we do not deserve your mercy. 

Editor’s Note:
This poem is about a woman’s abduction and torture in El Salvador in 1979.

​Willy Palomo, the son of immigrant parents from El Salvador who now lives in Cedar City, Utah, is a McNair Scholar, Macondista, and a Frost Place Latin@ Scholar. He has performed his poetry at the National Poetry Slam, CUPSI, and V Festival Internacional de Poesía Amada Libertad in El Salvador. Other works have appeared in Best New Poets 2018, Latino Rebels, Muzzle, and The Wandering Song: Central American Writing in the United States. His first collection of poetry is due out in 2020 by Black Lawrence Press. Follow him @palomopoemas 
and  www.palomopoemas.com.