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​​SOMOS EN ESCRITO
The Latino Literary Online Magazine

POETRY
​POESÍA

Poets of Círculo: JoAnn Anglin

1/3/2021

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Círculo ​​​​

​A community of diverse poets and writers supporting literary arts in California.  Somos en escrito provides a venue for these aspiring  poets to feature their poetry, interviews, reviews and promote poetic happenings.
PictureJoAnn Anglin
JoAnn Anglin

THE POET:
​IN HER OWN WORDS


CHILDHOOD AND ADOLESCENCE

​
​I think I was just under 3 years old, and already had 2 younger sisters, and we lived in Bremerton, Washington. My Dad was a truck driver. We were all three baby girls in a small, crowded room — it could even have been some kind of back porch, it was very light, sunny. I was standing in my crib, and my dad came in. I recall him looking at us, smiling in delight, as if he was thinking, Look at what I’ve created!
​
All my memories of those early years, up until the time I was around 11 years old, are pretty good. Due to the Second World War, we did some moving around. My dad was drafted into the Navy, so my mom took us back to their home area of South Dakota, where we lived with her parents for a while out in the country. Then my dad was stationed at Treasure Island and we came out here and lived in Hayward for a while. My mom was fine with driving back and forth cross country. Once he shipped out, she moved to Sacramento; we lived in the garage of an old friend of hers who rounded up beds and cribs for us.

My dad was probably a bigger influence on me than my mom. Later, some of my first poems would be about him. We had good conversations and he always paid more attention to what was going on in the world. I am a feminist, but always interested to hear the male point of view.

I don’t write about those specific locations, but I do realize that I became an observer at an early age, Some might find this now hard to believe, but I was a pretty quiet kid and on the shy side. Usually very obedient. We were strong on rule-following. I can look back at all those years like a slide show, scene after scene, in my head.

Going to school was where I became more outgoing. They were Catholic parochial schools from 1st grade through high school. At first, we lived in public housing. In retrospect, it was kind of dumpy, but with a post-war housing shortage, everyone was in the same boat. This was before the days of air conditioning, and the insides were small and crowded, so we all spent a lot of time outside. I walked through Southside Park to get to Holy Angels School, and we played at the park. Before I started school, my mom taught me how to print my name. I was satisfied to spend a lot of time on my own. I wasn’t rebellious, but I was pretty independent.

In 3rd Grade, with my dad’s VA-FHA loan they bought a house in a little subdivision, with railroad tracks and empty fields around us.

I think the religious sisters who taught in our schools were okay, but favored well-behaved girls. In those days of corporal punishment, even I got my hands whacked with a ruler a few times. But the boys got the worst of it. Even worse, in our school at least, there were often 50 or more kids to a classroom. One thing my sisters and I recall is that there was no sharp demarcation between not-reading and reading. It was just something we flowed into, like a creek into a river.

Also, we were strict-practicing Catholics. It’s almost 50 years since I left the church, but I have a great sympathy for writing that includes spiritual aspect, including the idea of mystery. And many of my poems directly or indirectly refer to Catholic terminology or ceremonial practice.  

About age 10 or 11, I read a lot and loved movies and wanted to make my own stories. Of course I didn’t understand about plot or structure, so the stories might start with a description of a heroine, but then just trail off with no conclusion

I loved words for as long as I can remember, and would read everything, breakfast cereal boxes to comic books to Reader’s Digest. I read the newspaper funnies and, before long, some articles and letters to the editor. In high school I wrote some letters to the editor myself.

I generally got good grades, but don’t recall creativity being encouraged. The emphasis was on learning the correct answers and responses, especially related to the catechism. But I will always be grateful to Sister Mercy in 7th and 8th grades for giving credit for poetry memorization.

We were part of the pre-Boomer generation, my friends and I would create little skits or dances and might perform them at lunch time on rainy days when we had to stay in the classroom. I didn’t know anyone who took piano lessons, although I took tap lessons for a few years. I would add that I was very daydreamy, but that fantasizing didn’t get written down much.

During elementary school, drawing was a more usual artistic outlet for me. The topic of fairness was on my mind from an early age. This would come up in my assignments for speech or debate classes. And I always wished to have more beauty in my life. I also saw life as struggle and that often surfaces in my writing.  

In high school, after turning in some essay assignments, I was recruited to be editor of my school paper. I became deeply involved in all kinds of writing then — interviews, reviews, profiles, etc., and also began to understand about layout and some basics of journalism. This was never seen as a real career prep, though, just an extracurricular activity.

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JoAnn at a reading in Placerville, California
POEMS 

Easter 1999, to my Dad 

​I’m thinking of you and thinking of Mom,
And many Easters now long gone;
Thinking of eggs and candy rabbits,
Of jelly beans and pastel baskets,
Of Lenten churches, purple-clad,
And Easter pancakes we sometimes had.

From out of the house, we’d all of us file
And into the old green Plymouth pile.
Some of us sang then, in the choir
While showing off our new attire – 
Our shiny shoes and new straw hats
– and briefly put aside our spats.

I remember those days, and I’m glad we had ‘em;
Memories that can still warm and gladden.

Now, thinking of flowers and alleluia,
Again I wish Happy Easter to you!

Neri’s Sculpture: “Nude”   (Written sometime in the late ‘90s)

She isn’t whole, doesn’t know if she 
ever will be. Since her shatter, she has started 
to disappear. Her once-strong edges
of sweeping curves, elegant angles

demarcated her world. Sometimes she 
misses what was solid, sometimes not. 
Unexpected barbs cannot hook 
her now, nor tear her substance. 

As the abrupt world flows around her 
shards of her being chip off. She is amazed 
at what can pass through.
Once somebody’s memory, now a faded 

dream of essence that uses space, shifts,
casts shadows. Exquisite tension holds 
the stones of her in shapely structure,
a cairn. She tries to move in fluid shimmer

gatherer of river gravels that lead to dissolve,
shuffling rocks that glint and reflect what pours 
into yet never fills her. Somehow the shaky 
sculpture keeps moving forward.

She is seen as through frosted glass,
and knows well the force of her yearning, 
but not whether she yearns to be whole  
or to fully dissolve.
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The Chagall Lovers   October 2003
  (Written for Arturo and Christina Mantecon)


Ascending each evening, they float in the sky
drawn up by kisses and each other’s eyes.

We hold our breaths, but they are buoyed up
above city streets on thermals of love

Their bouquets trail petals marking their flight
through satin blue evenings of levitation

They stair step the roofs in the forest of dusk
glisten as moon rise whispers its secrets

And gaze past their radiant halo songs
to stars chiming softly in heaven’s seas

Tender as tulips emerging from earth
they hold each other in night sky gardens

Up there with fiddlers and gods and devils
dancing with goats and calves and doves

Nourished on scents from the orange trees below
veiled in the rapture of fortunate love

Their hands round the necks of roosters and
horses, tangled in garlands braided in manes,

The town beneath is a chorus of wishes 
that rise up like bubbles, like scarlet balloons. 

They smile. They smile at gravity
that has nothing to do with them.

Secrets of a Babysitter

As if she were a robot with no curiosity,
They wave themselves away

Sure she has homework, they say it’s okay
To have some snacks or use the telephone.

She bathes the children, reads to them
Spoons ice cream into slack pink mouths.

Once they are in bed, she eyes drawer pulls
And door handles, cupboards and latches

She knows where the crème de menthe
Sits stickily on the pantry shelf

Where the glossy Polaroids are kept 
In the back of the lingerie drawer

While children sleep she fingers coupons
Foreign coins and keys in the kitchen drawer

Examines paperback books, CDs and videos 
Turns album pages, sits at the computer

Shakes each pill bottle in the medicine cabinet
Removes and pockets one from each prescription.

Sprays herself with golden scents from a mirrored 
Tray, slips on a silky camisole that skims her nipples

Smacks her lips as she tries on lipstick in shades
She’d never wear, wonders at its fruity, slippery taste.

The News   March 2007 

No news is not good news
No news means something is 
in a gather of foreboding, lurks
under snarled brush, just beyond
the darkened horizon.

No news means a smudge on the old
photograph, a missed chance to 
reclaim that patient sepia image.
Stains only worsen when rubbed.
To fray lacks the order of ravel.

There was a song, a vinyl record,
a larkish trill of hope rising, 
now scratched by disregard.
Something once held with care
set now among danger.

Imagination both helps and hurts.
News keeps breaking into or out.  
Patch the shattering — tape or spackle
may soften the force, but it comes. 
Seepage will enter, its outline remain.

Boy’s Ranch   November 2010

Before you arrive at the gate,
you have wound through the
clefts of pale yellow hills.

You have seen flocks — wild turkeys, 
then Canada geese — and shallow pools 
reflecting blue skies. Further, like old

men, crouched turkey vultures 
pause in their pavement feast. 
Beyond fences: cattle, tilting trees. 

Drive on through the oak grove where 
a loping coyote stares back. The gate arm 
lifts, lets you pass. Not such a bad place, 

you say at the last curve, as jays and
woodpeckers fly through the double rolls of 
razor wire atop the 20-foot steel fence.

My To-Do List   April 2013

I checked off the decision to
have two failed marriages.
And children who lacked confidence
in me: checked. The pet dog
who ate the poison. Checked. 
There was the boss who made me cry.
Check. The one who made me crazy.
Check. Plumbing that corroded, 
beloved serving dish that broke. Check.

Wrong turn that took me out
of my way for two years. Check.  
Many checks for arguments on
religion, race, sex, politics.
Laughing in the wrong place. Saying
Yes, saying No. Saying too much.
Not enough. Check, and check.
Unfiled income tax. What I owe family,
former lovers. All checked off.
Sleeping one more time with that man.
Not sleeping with another. Saying 
I’m sorry too often. Double checks.
Saying ‘sleeping with’ instead of sex. 

Saving the money, getting the
cheapest substitute. Oh yeah, check.
Fearing dogs and horses. Check.
Smoking, check. Being persuaded, 
checked off again. In heavy ink.
The days I don’t know who I am.
Or why. Checking. Then, checking in 
too late. Checking out too soon.  ​
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Source   June 2015

Was I, then, in her? That serf girl, many
centuries past, who hauled hay. Potato
digger who sought small branches in the woods.
Who paused to stand, wipe sweat from her brow.
Was there ever a wondering of what lay in
far castle, or further down the road?  

Probably an unwilling or unwanted suitor,
to plant in her as she planted beans for
another crop, wondered how much to raise,
how much to keep, or pass on to the owners.

And what of her child, or several, wrapped
and slung against her soon worn body? And that
child’s child? And so on. Where in me is
planted the something of her? In how I
pause to touch a day lily, to smell a melon,
to note the lowering clouds? In how I have
birthed children? And now, these poems, planting 
words in a line for her who could not read.  

Word of Mouth   March 2016

I watch you sleep and lay beside you
and want to go where you go, behind
your eyelids. At times, you murmur
soft indistinguishable sounds, urgent
but amused, and I know you are not 
speaking to me. I try to imagine that
language, that realm: if you are in
a cabin on the mountain, or on the
mountain looking birds in the eye.   
They would understand you, shy looks
and cocked heads. Trust. Your voice
resembling chirps, assenting to flight
that’s regardless of wings, needs nobody.
You start a little. You must be tasting
the air, finding the currents, riding the
updrafts. I want to be the one you
return to. You can always land on me.  

A Day Muy Frio   (date unsure) 

Como esta?  Estoy bien. 
Oh yeah? Explain, por favor:
Where is your sombrero?
Your jaqueta? Your dinero?
Donde es el carro, to ride
to the supermercado? 
Donde es tu amigo?
Captured by la migra? 

NEWS poem:   (January 2020)
“Inmates Released into ICE Custody”


What do they try to carve when they slice
this man away? What shape beautified

by loss of his hands and eyes, when he 
becomes swiped off leftover clutter?

Look for the resignation, sour, like rain’s 
stain already marking his worn surface.

Instead of putting away the pain, and 
anointing what has healed, 

their hands rip off the new skin, 
throw it to the desperate dogs.  ​​
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JoAnn's chapbooks
PictureEscritores del Nuevo Sol anthologies
PLÁTICA: JoAnn Anglin (JAA) and Lucha Corpi (LC)
in Conversation:

 
LC: By circumstance, being an immigrant wife in the Bay Area, having no family here, being the mother of a young child, and years later going through a divorce, I began to write just as an exercise on spiritual and mental survival. I needed to know who I had become after getting married, and coming to the U.S. So many questions I had to find answers to. I felt that putting my feelings and life experience in the U.S. in writing would help me to make sense of my life and survive emotionally. It did. And I discovered I was a poet and writer in the process. You’ve told me the following about your beginnings as a writer:

JAA: We had no creative writing classes (in high school), no literary journals. On my own I wrote poems, which I rarely showed, and song lyrics which I never showed. These were mostly imitative of popular music, show tunes, or church hymns. It would take community college to really open my mind and awareness of other creative or philosophical paths.

My reading expanded, sometimes via assignments, and sometimes from recommendations from other students. Sometimes at home, I would want to talk about the reading, much as I’d liked to retell the movie stories when younger, but my interests made me the ‘odd duck’ in the family.  
 
LC: Was there a mentor/Teacher? Other poets at the time, from whom you learned your craft?

JAA: I wish I could say yes. One community college English teacher, Margaret Harrison, saw potential in me. I can see this looking back. She wanted me to apply to Holy Names College in the Bay Area, but I was positive this wasn’t something my family could afford. I knew nothing of scholarships, loans, or work-study. I didn’t see a way. I never saw a counselor. I soon dropped classes so I could work and afford a (junky) car. I even went to the draft office of the Navy, but was discouraged from joining. By age 20, I was married and pregnant. My husband’s story was similar. Later, after divorcing, we both finished college, me graduating with my BA at age 41!  
 
LC: You are a member of Escritores del Nuevo Sol group in the Sacramento area. Later you and some of the poets in Escritores also became members of Círculo de Poetas y Escritores in Oakland and the East Bay Area, including Santa Cruz. The late Francisco X. Alarcón was instrumental in establishing both organizations. As a matter of fact, I was invited by Francisco to attend a workshop-meeting of Escritores. I met many of you there. I was very impressed with the group. I am also very impressed with Círculo de Poetas y Escritores members:

Could you share how and when you and Francisco X. Alarcón met?

JAA: I have to give huge credit to La Raza Galeria Posada, the Latino Art Center in Sacramento. I became aware of their work when I was a public information officer for seven years at the California Arts Council. At the time, I knew vaguely of the Royal Chicano Air Force, the Chicano artists group, and of José Montoya and Esteban Villa. A couple of my co-workers were the artists Juan Carrillo and Loraine Garcia, and also Tere Romo and Josie Talamantez, so my consciousness was really being raised in this area. 

I began going to public LRGP events, one of them a poetry reading, organized by Galeria board members Art Mantecón and Francisco Alarcón. At the reading, Francisco announced the decision to start a writers’ group, the Taller Literario. The next week I called Tere Romo who became the Galeria director and curator. I asked if I could join, although I’m not Latino. Her answer: of course! Later the name was changed because people were confused by the word Taller when wrongly interpreted as referring to height. 

As I recall, Francisco and Art came up with the name of Los Escritores del Nuevo Sol, mainly because of Francisco’s fascination with the Aztec calendar. José Montoya stressed to us the need for preserving Latino arts and literature. We met monthly at LRGP, eventually having public poetry readings, usually related to major holidays – Mother’s Day, Day of the Dead, and such. When the Galeria went through some major inner turmoil, we began to meet at members’ homes. 

I cannot give enough credit and praise to Francisco Alarcón. Whether personally, socially, in poetry, or in politics, he was the most generous, kind, and forgiving person I have ever known. And I still remain in awe of his talent and energy. I believe that he was at times subjected to prejudice due to his accent or to his being gay. If he felt bitter about it, he never turned that bitterness on anyone else. Like others who knew him, I will never stop missing him. 

When the Crocker Art Museum hosted the Latino art exhibit, Our America, he invited several of our most active Escritores to be part of a project of ekphrastic art – each participant choosing a painting to inspire a piece of poetry. He also drew on his friendship with and knowledge of poets throughout California, particularly the Bay Area, which led to the positive interactions among the two areas. Some, reluctant to let the interaction fade, later founded the Círculo. We continue to be enriched by it. 

LC: How has (or not) being in the workshop helped you focus on your poetry in a more productive way?

JAA: One major thing: my membership in Los Escritores made me realize that my aptitude was for poetry, not fiction. We took turns facilitating exercises at our meetings, and I began to understand better the difference between words spoken and words on the page. Sometimes I’d bring a poem to read, and realize as I read it that segments of it, or just one word, didn’t really work. One of those exercises, by the way, was to give human personality to a non-human object. Francisco’s poem was called “Laughing Tomatoes,” which inspired him to write a series of related poems and became the title of his first children’s book. He also urged us to put together our first anthology of writing by Los Escritores. 
 
LC: I love your “My to do list,” poem. Do you remember what you were doing when the muse showed up? What was the first line, the first imagined “when”?

JAA: Thank you! Interesting that you refer to the muse. I recently read a writer’s comment that if you wait for the muse, you will never write. However, that poem did come to me more easily than most. I would say that the more you write, the more you will be able to write. In this case, I had made an off-hand jokey remark about something that I’d have to put on my To Do list, and then that the list was pretty long. I followed that train of thought and the poem came together rather quickly, with fewer drafts than usual. Audiences always like it, too. 
 
LC: As a published poet, what advice would you give to younger poets who are just beginning to make their poetry known and establish their authorship?

JAA: Write a lot and submit a lot. Read your work at open mics. Read what others are writing. Anthologies are wonderful for this. Do not be discouraged by rejection. It may or may not mean your poem needs more work. Often you will realize that your poem wasn’t quite right for one publication, but will be perfect for another. I have heard of poets submitting a particular poem dozens of times before it’s accepted.
 
I had an instructive exchange at a writing conference a few years ago. During a break, somebody next to me at a table heard I was from Sacramento. An editor, she asked me if I knew Indigo Moor. (He later became our poet laureate.) She said, He’s a wonderful writer. She had been a judge in a contest he submitted to. He hadn’t won the contest, but his name had become familiar to several people who would be paying attention next time his poems came across their submissions desk. 

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JoAnn at Luna's, March 15, 2012
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SHORT BIO

JoAnn Anglin has taught poetry writing in schools, at Shriners’ Children’s Hospital, for a program with Crocker Art Museum, at a senior facility, and most recently, for 8 years at California State Prison, Sacramento (New Folsom).  

JoAnn received a District Arts Award from the Sacramento City Council and the Sacramento County Board of Supervisors. A coach for 10 years for Poetry Out Loud, she is a member of California Poets in the Schools (CPITS), the Sacramento Poetry Center, the Círculo des Poetas y Escritores, and Los Escritores del Nuevo Sol/Writers of the New Sun. Several journals and anthologies have included her poems, most recently, The Los Angeles Review of Books.

LC: Also, are you participating in any programs/readings in the area in the near future? How can people contact you about future programs and presentations? Do you have a newsletter? E-mail? Please tell:

JAA: The pandemic has pretty much stopped everything for now, although I’m encouraged with what people are doing via the ZOOM platform. A local publisher, 3 Bean Press, published my chapbook Heat in late January. I had one reading, and another scheduled, when everything was shut down. My work at the prison is now being done in a remote learning format and I really miss the in-class participation. Once the world evolves into whatever new shape it takes, I’d love to do more readings. My email is: joannpen@icloud.com.

LC: It’s been wonderful getting to know you through our mutual work with the Círculo de Poetas y Escritores, JoAnn. Mil gracias, JoAnn. Hasta pronto. 
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Let’s pretend I don’t exist

9/5/2020

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​Rinconcito is a special little corner in Somos en escrito for short writings: a single poem, a short story, a memoir, flash fiction, and the like.

Call me Lil Coffee Bean aka Exotic Fruit
(A quick reflection on being a drop of coffee in a cup full of cream)

By Estefanía Giraldo

Call me Niña
NO,
Pinta,
NO,
Santa Maria
Maybe just Maria... Don’t call me santa I’m not a saint.
 
When I die:
Anoint my lips with mango juice and a little bit of warm aguapanela, so that even in death
I’ll think of my mother.
Wrap me in hojas de platano como un tamal, and float me down the Magdalena.
Float with Magdalena.
Mary and Magdalene. Mary Magdalene.

I’ve lost track of what I look like.
My skin, hair, eyes, lips, nose.
Just rooms full of Marias
Let’s pretend I don’t exist,
Then you don’t have to call me anything at all.
 
When I was 18:
my boyfriend at the time told me he liked that we were in an interracial relationship.
That I was exotic. Unlike other girls.
Standing at the kitchen sink I took a second, then a breath.
The soap dish slithered from my hands, sending shards both seen and unseen.
All these years I thought we grew together, roots entangled but
mine had built bars around me, for safe keeping
while his had built a pedestal from which to better observe me.
 
Inside, in the place I can’t reach, but only feel.
I was the hand in front of my own face.
I had seen converging rivers, while he had seen–
well I don’t even know,
When we had sex I could only ever cum if I was on top.
That’ll show him.
Show him what?
 
I’ve lost track of what I look like.
 
At 21:
I slept with a woman, she was like me.
Don’t tell my mother. Don’t break her heart.
I let her lips close ‘round the roundness of my–
My lips on the wetness of her–
Ran my tongue down the valley-
I thought I saw–
***
God. Oh god.
Salt of my salt.
Afterwards we lay in bed together, thighs pressed against thighs and
I had to swallow hard at the lump in my throat when I realized
I couldn’t really love her because
I couldn’t love myself.
 
What do I look like?
 
Somewhere in the middle of the ocean of time and space there’s a transatlantic graveyard where drums reverberate in cool Atlantic waters.
Even after all this time,
We carry those rhythms in the beating of hearts, the beating of dancing steps.
These trees have been ripped out, roots raw and bloody seeking fertile grounds,
These roots seeking the warmth of a familiar sun,
The warmth of a familiar song.

I tried to grow on this rocky presbyterian mountain range, but no matter how much you water,
Guava trees will never give apples. ​
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Estefanía Giraldo is a Colombian-American actor, writer, and museum educator based in New York City. She is a graduate of the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University and has spent the last few years working at the Tenement Museum, a museum dedicated to highlighting the history of immigration to the United States and the stories of working class immigrant families from the 19th-21st centuries. Her writing explores the intersections of gender, race, language and migration.

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Poets of Círculo: Nicole Noel Henares

8/15/2020

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https://circulowriters.com/
Círculo ​​​
​A community of diverse poets and writers supporting literary arts in California.  Somos en escrito provides a venue for these aspiring  poets to feature their poetry, interviews, reviews and promote poetic happenings.
NICOLE NOEL HENARES

THE POET: A PERSONAL NARRATIVE

​I was born in the Monterey peninsula, California, in August, 1974. I proudly share the same birth date as the great labor activist and guerrillera cultural, Luisa Moreno, who organized the women of the Congress of Industrial Organizations, my grandmother’s labor union.
 
My grandparents and their families were members of the immigrant communities who worked on Cannery Row between the 1920’s and 1930’s in the Monterey Bay Area, California. After the collapse of the sardine canning eras in the 1950’s, my grandfather taught himself carpentry. Although it took him three times to pass the test, he became a general contractor. He was very proud of achieving his goal, as he did so without having any formal education.
 
All my cousins and I celebrated our birthdays at the Carousel in the old Edgewater Packing Company on Cannery Row. My fascination with Cannery Row and my family history began then.
 
I started school when I was five years old. I went to Marina Del Mar elementary school. Marina del Mar was a bedroom community of Fort Ord, the largest military base on the west Coast at that time. My mother was a teacher at the school I attended, and piloted one of the first multicultural education curriculums in the country under the tutelage of Dr. Charlie Knight, the first black superintendent of Monterey Peninsula Unified School District.
 
I read a poem when I was five years old. It was about strawberries and fairies. I felt inspired by the fairy book of poems I read then. But I didn’t write my first poem until I was seven. Every time I wrote poems I felt exalted. At the time, I wrote about many other subjects. But I loved writing about fairies. I was really into fairies.
 
I attended a predominantly white high school, in the city of Carmel, located near the city of Monterey. My high school English teacher was Ms. Gilbert--who is now Señora Quintanilla. It was in her classes, during my sophomore year, that we started discussing themes of race and gender. She had us reading everything from Chaim Potok to Lorraine Hansberry and Ray Bradbury. My favorite subjects were English, History and, French. I’m ashamed to admit that I took French and not Spanish to spite my father, because he used to tease me so much, telling me that I spoke Spanish like a gringa.
 
I was very shy around boys and didn’t feel safe around them until I was in high school. But I did have a lot of friends who helped me get through my freshman year. When I was in the ninth grade I was lucky to be mentored by a Latina student who was a senior. She advised me not to compare myself to the white girls. To be myself. She is now Dr. Lauren Padilla-Valverte, the head of the California Community Foundation.
 
The most memorable event in my life before age 18 was playing the Vivaldi violin concerto at the Spring Concert in 1989, my sophomore year, and getting straight A’s except for a B in math. I hated Math. I was 14.
 
Along with a B in Math, I got a D- in Health because pretended to sleep during Sex ED.  I was very uncomfortable in that class - I'm a survivor of early childhood sexual abuse.  In high school my friends and I were being groomed and molested by an older man we knew at the skating rink. Many of my girlfriends at that time were also victims of what we would call now intimate partner violence. It all bothered me. I didn't know how to talk about anything so I pretended to sleep.  The teacher threw erasers at me, but ended up telling my mom I was a "good kid" he just didn't understand what was wrong. Even in my poems from that time, I chose to focus on the resilience within love and connection for the world around me, rather than the pain. However, to fully understand our resilience the trauma it comes from needs to be acknowledged.
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1976
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1979
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1989
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1979
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1989
THE POETRY

They say the fourth plane that morning
             was heading here:

 
5pm
 
Lonely brass frog statues
            and armed barricades
surround the Trans-America Pyramid,
            glowing up Columbus Avenue
to lime and cherry chipped neon
            where strip club barkers idle:
Tonight, only the regular horny wander in,
            a hunchbacked
            Cornell educated former engineer,
            now poet, with rainbow suspenders,
            a skin condition, and Mork from Ork hair,
needing some semblance of normalcy
            in a stripper named Scout.
           
            Faithful restaurants
hesitantly remain open but empty;
            rows of tables,
            garlic,
            pannini,
            and chianti wait
            for customers
            who never come.
 
7pm
 
The streets are still,
            like Easter morning,
except, instead of church
            the people hide in the temple
of FOX, CNN, and ABC news, 
            praying the dead find resurrection
while polychromatic screens synthesize
            background music, instant replays
and red blocked letters           
 
AMERICA UNDER ATTACK.
 
In the bar with the photos
            of naked, now dead,
beat poets holding peace signs
            & flowers, a gaggle of workers
from the financial district
            dissolve around the television
that hovers morning into night.
            One stockbroker, his hair a perfect wave,
who says his friends worked in the Towers,
            loudly slurs through curled lips,
“I hope we bomb them, bomb them all,
            even the young, before they’re old enough to kill..”  
The bartender shaky with white knuckles,
            wants to reply
but the day has been slow
            and she needs the tip.
 
9:30 pm
In another bar, one of the only 
            in North Beach without a television,
an overly hormonal tranny torch singer,
            an English teacher,
and a piano player named Sam-I-Am
            share a basket of Danish cheese and crackers,
while arguing over the spelling of
            Afghanistan and the logic that Grendel
killed the Danes just because he was “evil”.
            They wait for  James, 
            who’s full of  Wizard of Oz
            masonic conspiracy theories,
complaints about backwards baseball caps
            and the price of hot-dogs,
to  hear what he’s gonna say.
 
11pm
Wearing wrinkled pinstripes,
            two young blues musicians
play guitar in an alley
            with Lightnin’ Hopkins’ vengeance- 
They never say a word
            about the tempo, terrorists,
or vapid late summer night.
            If John Lee Hooker’s
holy Crawlin’ Kingsnake,
            or a big legged woman
slithered next to them
            they’d only butter
from 12  to 7 bar blues.
            One of them has suffered heroin,
baby mama drama, and recently five days
            in the drunk tank.
The other, on vacation from Finland,
            has lost his wallet, passport,
            and two guitars
            in three months.  
Every blues is their blues;
            through the night in doorways
with purple and green mardi gras beads,
            lousy tarps and bottles of Hennessey
to keep them warm.

2004



Thou Mayest
 
THIS IS THE BREAD OF THE CHOSEN
THIS IS THE FOOD OF THE ACCURSED
 
we are a culture of beernuts/
fox sports/ major league/ too much/
shopping/ when the going gets rough/
 towers are bombed/
the tough are encouraged/ to consume/
Keep America Open For Business/
one night stands and three marriages
moralistic lies /a smoke and mirrors of values
and greed/ spooning chainsaws jetskies NASCAR
gasoline/ racing /
buy one pie get the second for free
 
we are a nation of flatulence
go team go
faster bigger MORE
where the package is more interesting than the toy
 
it’s a cataclysm of the heart
a wanton sickness
cheap words and extravagant catcalls
placing me head first
into the bellies of vases/legs flying out/
heart shaped orchid exposed/ only for/
a copulating squawk
 
as the coin twists in the air
the shock of the bourgeoisie/
the self proclaimed café hip/ just another
commodity for sale/ thinking poetry
is bread of the enlightened/ the chosen
so smug in hip righteousness/words
pockmarked in cheap jewels & artificial fruity
blossoms
 
this is the food of the accursed/ the morsels of the
damned/
the kernels of those/ who are nothing/
but a statistic to throw around in coffee shops/
a girl who has seen more death at sixteen/ than
anyone should/
she told me she couldn’t even recognize his face
because it was so covered in blood
when he was shot after school on the 29 MUNI
and she lives here/ in this city/ in our backyard
 
the slaughter  continues
/another kid in a coffin we’re not allowed to see/
another imprisoned /headlines just hyper-reality
television/
while others like them fight and torture in foreign
lands
 
and in our glittering high-rises
the twins dance tangerine waltzes /acerbic hipsters
syncopate f# on the half note/sip pinot grigio spritzers/
sway with venetian glass eggs up their stoned asses/
point that’s so bourgeois / in between
troubled time signatures/ and watery coughs from
next-door
 
yet it is the same melancholic tune at 2 am/ babies in
cradles of filth/
momma just a baby raised by the television/
 
so
come and see
come and see
 
DO YOU SEE
 
I am a deformation for the cursed
 
I snore variations composed on laughter   
with my cape on and kitchen utensil corsage
dirging sonorous nonsense / as a meal
 
my mouth is filled with muddied jellied flowers
juggling soured waters
pustulled clocks gnawing on the husks of time
 
between my black sounds
/the death among the bougainvillea/
live giant balloons/ and hummingbird springs
pale stalks of corn /blackberries/ without brambles/
snapped open fuchsia blossoms
/releasing nectar for the bleeding
 
while the arrogant wear their spoils
I swallow poetry
                as a prayer

2004



The Dance Of The Urban Honeybee
 for Ric Masten
 I needed to mail a letter
 so I go to my corner Walgreen’s
 and purchase 4 stamps for $1.99...
 Later, when the 48 cent difference occurs to me,
 I wonder if I paid extra
 for the red cursive emblemed cardboard
 and plastic wrapping,
or convenience?
 
 Yesterday I saw a man yell
 at hotel strikers-
 workers of less than $10/hour, locked out
 for demanding health benefits.
The man said the strikers made too much noise"
"Shut the fuck up!"
"Shut the fuck up!"
 
 They call me teacher, poet, guide;
 the honeybee sent out to find a new destination
 where the hive can find safety.
 
 Yet, I'm finding no answers;
my students think I'm crazy,
 too tough of a grader,
 there's a hole in the ceiling of my classroom,
and the heater doesn't work.
 
On the streets, panhandlers stand on their heads
 next to marquis that say, "All you could ever want to eat".
 While, Bitsey, the heroin addict midget prostitute
 crutches across Market Street
 her freshly amputated left stump
 swinging in rhythm
 with the swoosh of traffic.
 And what's most sad is that it is all so familiar.
 
So I dance my hallucinatory jig that's supposed to tell,
"this is where we go from here"
 to a vacant hive of
 no answers just
 a solitary moan of panicked despair.

2004



The Downcast Dreamer
 
Tonight in this limpid ball it's just me
and the alleyway mourning doves
saying to hell with it all.
 
I surround myself in miniature
ornamental beauty
because it’s easier to live
in the watery glitter of a snow-globe
than search for the ineffable
in the perfume of the city’s
rust and dream
white laced with sorrow
and the ash of rage.
 
I'm turning mermaid and a bit sea-witch,
my heart with the sexless ocean,
shiny hard and gaudy,
while the doves get drunk like pigeons
and hoot tintinnabulations of angels
and soundless blessings
to empty arms.

2005


 
Comfort Of The Dead
I dreamt of the dead last night, for the second time this week.
It was a most rare vision, perhaps past the wit of man to say what dream it was.
We were at a play that was being performed
            in a big auditorium with red, white and blue seats.
He had arrived early.
He wasn’t high, he didn’t even have a beer with him.
He had arrived early, and was waiting for me. He even saved me a seat.
The show was sold out. It was a performance of Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice - 
(Once upon a time, he ground scored an entire pocket book collection of Shakespeare for me                        because he knew that I loved Shakespeare.)
I was running late, in self pity and despair.
Then the realization set in-
Yes, our country had elected a president,
but he was still alive.
He never had died.
He was alive and he was waiting for me in an auditorium
where we were going to watch a performance of A Merchant of Venice.
Some of my students were in the lobby handing out programs.
I panicked to find my seat. He wasn’t angry, he held my hand
and whispered in my ear that of course he would hold a seat for me, 
he would always hold a seat for me.
He said all that he said when he was alive-
That his white last name did not matter,
he would always be proud of his brown skin.
It did not matter what the historians could or could not dig up,
his family had been here since before there were borders,
before this was even a state, and was just a place with a made up name.
“First we were generals and governors, then we were bad hombres:
All that glitters isn’t gold, the quality of our mercy is very fucking strained,
                        and why shouldn’t it be?”
The only thing that had changed,
was that he no longer said anything about his punk rock nihilism,
or wanting to watch the world burn.
The only thing he said he wanted to do was watch that play.
And as the curtain rose, he whispered,
“The poem’s the thing to love for eternity.” 
 
 2016
 


Then And Now
 
“If the problem with PTSD is disassociation the goal of treatment would be association- integrating the cut off elements of the trauma into the ongoing narrative of life, so that the brain can recognize that ‘that was then, and this is now.’” BESSEL VAN DER KOLK
 
Now that I have remembered I can never forget
            the tick of your heart against my cheek         
in cold and time travel and fog.
 
your caution knew me and hung in my mouth.
You were in trouble, needed to leave,
            but wanted to say,
            I didn’t need to marry a poet to be a poet
confessions stitched my griefs into silence.
            I knew you too.
 
You were water and mirror
            my body remembers in rhythms
and strange dreams haunt me.
            Dreams of the dead and regret
                                    when I am sitting in a vat of truth
addicted to the taste of illusion and shadow,
my greedy skin like dragon scales
all sense of myself
 made no sense.
             So I scratched and scratched
until my fingernails dug beyond flesh, beyond longing,
until there was nothing left but blood and bone,
and the stubbed beginnings
            of great green feathers.
 
Happiness is more than earthly delights.
(There is only so much sadness allowed.)
            The poems synthesize,
enter a temple of prayer.
My words tell me things:
Conjoin clever rhymes
            find coyness within symbols 
 that never dissolve like eighth notes carved into mountains.
Chimeras are imperishable and can mother beauty.
Forget the intoxication of anger and fear and rot
Now is winter in my kitchen.
Now is earth and my ear pressed to chest after washed dishes,
 thank you falls from lips. 
            Now is spring and cusp,
bending down onto knees and teasing 
            my cat with a bright pink feather attached to a stick.
Now is entwined fingers
                        speeding along the blur of blacks and golds
on a nighttime bridge of lights
            amid pandemic and awakening.
  
 
​
EL POEMA es la erección del ahorcado. Demasiado tarde y para nadie. Pero ahí.

-David Eloy Rodriguez

 I Will Wear Yellow

Te quiero,
entiendes?
 
I will wear yellow.
 
Estas palabras son las palabras
de mi sangre,
y mi alma,
entiendes?  
 
No entiendo como
tú eres como eres.
 
No entiendo nada,
ni el por qué devoras mi corazón,
mi cuerpo, mi cabeza, y mis ojos.
 
No entiendo nada,
sólo que te quiero.
 
No entiendo nada más. Te quiero.
 
I will wear yellow because
I am always trying to find light.
Every night the sunset echoes from behind the trees.
 
I remain a heart
in the green of mourning.
But I will wear yellow.
 
Tonight I am with the waning moon
who hovers
over the world
with her ever changing face.
I have listened closely to the secrets
the past has told.
Don’t worry so much about the future-
only the differences
between intention and expectation.
The oranges are beginning
to appear again,
and in May the jacaranda
will bloom electric and purple.
There is always the possibility of starvation
and catastrophe and ego and war,
but, even then,
there is the humble magic
of licorice
and I know how to find it.
 
Sometimes I hear pointing,
accusatory silences, and the sunset continues
to cry louder and louder with the click of time.
I will wear brass hoops around my ears and around my wrists.
I will fall into water.
I will wear yellow.
All lovebirds are mourning doves.
They know my sorrow, like you know my sorrow,
and have poured salt and pepper into these wounds,
 
reminding me to look for light
as my words turn into the echoes
of ragged claws scuttling
across the ocean floor,
and I dress my heart in yellow.
 
 2020
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2018
IN CONVERSATION: Lucha Corpi (LC) and Nicole Noel Henares (NNH) 
 
LC: While I’m reading your wonderful poems, Nicole, I’m searching for the reason I haven’t been back to San Francisco just to sightsee on a May or October Sunday afternoon in such a long time. Living in Oakland and crossing the Bay Bridge wasn’t a big deal those Sundays, long ago. The bumper to bumper traffic on the Bay Bridge has become a deterrent now. And I am much older, too. Back then, I always loved driving my young son Arturo and me places, especially on Sundays. Driving by North Beach on our way to Fisherman’s Wharf on my VW Beetle—the Volchi. Taking a deep breath and pushing with my soul and stomach to inch up to the top of Nob Hill hills, fearing that the engine would stall and ... It never happened. After,  we’d make our way back to The Mission to savor a fabulous and, at the time, inexpensive meal at a Central American, South American or Mexican Restaurant.
 
Later, after Arturo left home, every so often I would meet Francisco X. Alarcón, Juan Felipe Herrera, Víctor Martínez, Elba Sánchez, Odilia Galván Rodríguez, Rogelio Reyes, Juan Pablo Gutiérrez and other writers of Centro Chicano de Escritores there and have a good time catching up, reading our new poems to one another, and laughing a lot.

​Enough reminiscing. Let’s talk about you.
******
LC: Nicole, did you live in San Francisco’s North Beach at the time you wrote these poems? When? Why?
 
NNH: From 2001-2013 I lived in Lower Nob Hill about a fifteen minute walk from near North Beach. I gravitated to that neighborhood because of its history with the Beats.
 
LC: How were those years different from your life in Monterey and your painful experiences in Carmel as you were growing up?
 
NNH: In 2001, after 9-11, everything was surreal in the ways it wasn’t surreal. In August 2001 one of my closest friends had OD’d on heroin and had to be identified by his dental records. Two months after 9-11, my godbrother was killed in a drug related murder.  There was something  familiar about all the chaos. It was easier to make sense out of the political chaos than my personal chaos, but I realize how much both were interconnected. In 2001 I started keeping a notebook again because I had moved to San Francisco to teach and to write. But I had always been writing intermittently throughout my life and expressed political views. I started keeping a diary in 1981 when I was five years old. My first diary entry was, “The hostages were released today, poor Jimmy Carter.”
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1997
LC: Did writing poetry offer you a way to deal with the unmitigated pain, “the green of mourning”?
 
NNH: The “green of mourning” was about the series of violent deaths I experienced in 2001, including all the deaths in 9-11 . The “green of mourning” circles also the edge of the wound of lost childhood. Compassion means to suffer with and to celebrate. Even as a child, writing was a way to find self compassion, and compassion for the world around me amid the effects of childhood sexual abuse. Though it is never directly stated, it is always there as a subtext. I love my family. Both of my parents were community activists, trying to do the best they could. The adult son of one of my grandmother’s cousins had been molesting me for years—it began when I was three years old, and went on until I was six. He was very disturbed. After my grandmother died and my grandfather remarried, this cousin defaced my grandmother’s grave and sent crazy letters to the house in cut and paste letters. I never talked about any of these things because I felt doing so would somehow betray my family. Only recently in facing these memories did I begin to remember how much my parents suspected but never knew what had happened much less how long it had been happening. When my father found out something was going on he said something to the cousin in English explicitly so I could understand. Part of the terror in facing this trauma is that it happened in a different language. I am still struggling how to allow my resilience to define me more than my trauma. Part of that I think has been speaking Spanish again, and falling in love with the Spanish language, as well as symbols of my childhood that were part of my resilience—like fairies, strawberries, and unicorns.
Picture
2013
LC: There’s a line in your poem “Now And Then”: “I didn’t need to marry a poet to be a poet.”
 
When I read it, I wasn’t sure whether the lover or the poet was saying it. I suppose it could be an interchangeable line, when the end of a relationship is clear to both. Could you elaborate?
 
NNH: I got engaged to my first husband within two weeks of knowing him. He was/is a great poet. But at that time I didn’t consider myself a poet. I put him on a pedestal as “the poet.” The person who said this to me knew me well enough to call me on my bullshit.  
Picture
2016
LC: Nowadays, what makes you happy? Angry? What springs feed your creative streams?
 
NNH: I have cultivated a relationship with the daisies and roses in my garden. Their shameless blooming and re-blooming never ceases to amaze me. I feel the same way about people. So many things make me happy—random messages from friends, projects, cats, ghost stories, the wonders of whimsy as a way to fight oppression. Anything that has hope most feeds my creative streams.
 
LC: It’s been a pleasure talking with you, Nicole. Mil gracias y tierno abrazo.
 
© Nicole Noel Henares
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The death they sold

8/7/2020

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Rinconcito is a special little corner in Somos en escrito for short writings: a single poem, a short story, a memoir, flash fiction, and the like.

El Bronx, Bogotá D.C.
By Laurisa Sastoque

May 28, 2016. 5:20 A.M. 2500 members of the public forces entered the area.
What they found: 130 underage sexual workers, 508 homeless people,
56 slot machines, 1000 “bazuco” doses, 1 kidnapped victim behind a false wall.

 
Two alleys in between a police command,
a military garrison and a church, L-shaped:
to the right, there was a clandestine market of stolen
objects, to the left, taquilleros that trafficked
one dose of bazuco for 2000 pesos--
queues of dried mouths and fidgeting thumbs. They sold
 
20 doses per minute, 8 taquillas sold
460 million pesos’ worth. They would command
the homeless to smuggle sacks of 2000-peso
bills out on their mules. Every day was shaped
by weed rolls and bazuco bags. They trafficked
cocaine residues cooked in red gasoline, stolen
 
bone and brick dust. Lives were stolen:
“The vicio does not spare anyone,” they sold
the promise of a lawless paradise, trafficked
the cheapest drugs. Influence would command
even the wide-eyed rich to trade their steel-shaped
watches for a night in an olla—4000 pesos
 
for a consumption safehouse—a few pesos
for a prostitute. “El bazuco had stolen
the glow in her eyes and her crystal-shaped
shoes when I fell for her. She was sold
to a taquillero three weeks after her first command--
she lost her teeth but never her beauty. They trafficked
 
her body.” Through tunnels, they trafficked
victims underground--sapos who were worth in pesos
less than the bullets they shot. Taquilleros’ commands
for imprisonment in “torture houses” had stolen
their limbs and their poisoned blood. They sold
their remains to be cremated and confined to pill-shaped
 
bazuco powder. Sometimes the devils in L-shaped
Bronx would hide the vice they trafficked--
the souls they lured—the death they sold--
for annual inspections. But with a few pesos,
they bribed their way into the streets they had stolen
to confuse the press and evade the police commands.
 
In 2016 public defense authorities dismantled the area.
They hope to build a Cultural District for the city’s people
by 2023, on top of blood-stained demolished walls.



Glossary:
bazuco,  illegal narcotic substance made from cocaine residue.
taquilleros, operators of points of drug sale within el bronx known as “taquillas.”                                                                                                                
vicio, refers to the addiction caused by bazuco.
sapos, translates literally to “frog,” figuratively to “snitch.”
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Laurisa Sastoque, born in Bogotá, Colombia, is a creative writing student at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, where she lives. Due to the Covid-19 situation, she is living in Colombia. “El Bronx, Bogotá D.C” is based on an area in Bogotá, Colombia known as El Bronx.​​

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For this country that is not yours

7/22/2020

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Rinconcito is a special little corner in Somos en escrito for short writings: a single poem, a short story, a memoir, flash fiction, and the like.

Two poems by Vincent Cooper

Veterano

​Before the election
I saw
Chicano veterans holding up
Vote for Trump
Signs outside of schools
And libraries.
 
Some Veteranos
Don’t know they’re Chicano,
They want that towering wall
Dividing America and Mexico
To smite gay pride and the rainbow flag.
 
Trump-sates the blood-thirsty hate from within
 
The void of my father
Was filled by a Veterano,
Who in 1967
(Dropping out of Brackenridge High School)
Heard the war song of
A westside Marine Corps Recruiter.
“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.
A Real Marine
You’re a marine? Thank you for your service
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.
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Vincent Cooper is the author of Zarzamora – Poetry of Survival and Where the Reckless Ones Come to Die. His poems can be found in Huizache 6 and Huizache 8, Riversedge Journal, and Latino Literatures. Cooper was selected to the Macondo Writer’s Workshop in 2015.  He currently resides in the southside of San Antonio, Texas.

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"says I oughtta be ashamed of myself"

3/15/2020

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Picture
photo by Scott Duncan-Fernandez

​Pass or fail

By Anthony "Glyph" Orozco 
The principals say I’m suspended
a recommended 80 days
say I should be ashamed
say the teacher 
feared for her safety
say I’m lucky 
none of the fists we threw
or desks we flung
landed on her as she jumped between us
say how irresponsible it was 
for me to recruit Cesar, 
one of the few Mexicans who liked me, 
to jump this other kid. 
 
When they leave the room for a moment
Cesar says he’s still high 
from smoking 
before the bus picked him up
and I say 
yeah me too.
After I lie
I think about what 
the other kid said
says my mother is like a brick
says she gets laid by dirty Mexicans.
 
I can hear mama leaving work
breath short and quick
perm tired
keys jangling
quick little steps on linoleum.
When she comes into the office
she is a special shade of red
her brow tight
her mouth a slit.
 
They tell her everything
about how they heard I attacked the 
kid on my own the day before
they were actually calling my name 
on the PA system 
while Cesar and I turned 
first period English
into a pig roast
we have been reading 
Lord of the Flies. 
 
Mama listens without blinking.
When they finish
she asks them what they expect
after not doing a thing
after all the years in this school 
her son, everyday, gifted 
with new and exciting reasons 
to be ashamed of himself
for things he can’t change
says this shit would never slide 
if he was called nigger 
instead of wetback and beaner 
and all the other vile stuff I bring home
like some mutated science fair project.
 
They tell mama, 
who is not
a wetback
or a beaner
or a mutated science fair project,
they take bullying very seriously
say I will have to go 
to a detention school called 
RESCUE
say the only grade I can get
are either a C or F
I can only pass or fail
no in between. 
 
She tells them
her son didn’t pick this fight
says he has to defend himself 
as long as they don’t.
She snatches me 
out of the office
through the school 
across the parking lot
puts me in the car 
and says 
she loves me 
says I oughtta be ashamed of myself. 
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Anthony "Glyph" Orozco, a Mexican American journalist, poet and performer in Reading, Pennsylvania, has reported on immigrants, Central Americans, Mexicans, first-generation Americans and Afro-Latinos in the Rust Belt for the last seven years. He is also a board member of the community arts group Barrio Alegría, where he leads a bilingual monthly poetry workshop. He hails from a mixed family in Cincinnati, Ohio. His mestizo father came to the U.S. from Chihuahua, Mexico, in the 1980s and his mother’s lineage is traced back to the original 13 colonies and Europe. In his poetry, Anthony examines his indigenous ancestry, bi-cultural identity and eclectic Latino communities. 

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"Hang from the sun or the full moon"

11/20/2019

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Three poems from
​Desnuda ofrenda/Naked offering

by Vielka Solano
Naked/Desnuda, Anonymous/​Anónimo, and Offering/Ofrenda
Vielka Solano reads from her book Naked Offering
Naked
 
I like to go naked around the world
except maybe by the words
without pain covering my skin
my tempting volcanoes in the middle forefront
prideful
my roaring intestines drowned in merlot
 
Without Calvin Klein Victoria Jacob Versace or Lauren
Without capricious fabric covering my womb
my legs
my rebellious locks
 
Without palm trees of eaten up tricks
in minds infected with malice
covering my ass or my sex
 
Naked
Running through the patio of the dream
letting the gardenias embrace me
while Oscar smiles rascally
and allows the shameless wind
to move his branches
 
Sit in the middle of the green feast
and touch my thighs
with the wild grass that rouses my yearnings
and takes me to the flood
                                    Naked
            I love it
 
Naked
 
taste the sighs of the smells
mixed in the kitchen
the joy that reaches me slipping
through my insaciable tongue
 
Nak     ed
 
Masturbating the desire in the heat of July
or in the cold of January
Allowing the scars to hang from my
liberated body
without worrying about the dirty look
in the rotted thought or the infected desire
the net of schemes
the nonsense speeches
 
y qué coño
                        I like
to walk naked in the world
without the necessity of a dress
to guide my steps
or the accepting smile approving of me
            and let them say I am a daringcrazybitch
that the flesh is for sale
                        I love  being  naked
 
Y qué coño
 
so what

 
Anonymous
 
(In silence
for fear of deportation)
 
Breaking the story into segments
embracing this one as of now
propagating an idea without divisions
Overturning this fit of promissory letters in the pan
and cooking it
Filling it with frozen heat
of the fucking men
brutes
pardon
those who believe they throw the longest piss
whips encountered between divided rays
 
Overturning the spell of the awarded queen
without a face
that stomping made herself present
among hard nipples tattooed of joy
among a conglomerate of patriarchal injustice
destroying the thoughtful skirts
and the intellect pregnant with blasphemy
 
Remembering the beginning
 
Embracing this afternoon populated by bodies filled with dreams
overflowing with perfumed shit
pardon
shitted
and a collective pain that spills the buckets
made of complaints
that raise up the anger and the grapeshots
and the stars
and the somatic hate that embraces the streets
yours
mine
theirs
breaking
a continent
two continents
all the continents
           
                        brainless psychopaths
                        wander the alleys
on two feet
 
They also wander in my house
shhhhhhh in the white house
hearts without wings without ventricle without future
a culture labeled by skins of yellowwhiteblack
among speeches of porcelain
anemic countenance
cheap supremacy
 
                        Doors closed
borders
                        bargaining the Northern power
like shit of putrefied beings
homeless of emotions
 
I want to take this chunk
strip it off those assholes
poor beings
with out souls
despicable
macabre
            Pardon
Kill them
Pardon
pardon
                        Wicked ones
Finish them

 
Offering
 
Run!
            Run!
                        Run!
 
Hang from the sun or the full moon
Place the white gardenia between your thighs and
Run!
            Run!
                        Run!
 
Leave your curls free in the wind
covered in bloody
stars
 
mutilated by wicked minds
masturbating with the feast
that has driven them for millennials
 
Like you
they
were born behind a crucifix
of a fish with a double eye
and like you
they embrace dreams that
not even from the owls’ hands
were possible to reach
 
They rode on stinging ants
like habanero ají
without a plan
without premeditation
only treachery
without an advantage
 
They battled in between the ass
of a macabre professor
and the yellow earthworm
pregnant with fucking complaints
 
Like you
they tripped on a sugar cube
and strawberry marmalade
that took them to hell
and so
like you
chased a stranded dream
in between plates without plantains
and without rice
without even a cloth doll
 
Run!
            Run!
                        Run!
 
Let the June sun change
the scars of your clitoris for stars
embrace the full
moon
 
So many more like you
beat the ferocious dogs
trying to protect the center
that one the trafficker couldn’t touch
nor did the witches market
without magical brooms
They
also played Mambrú se fue a la guerra
qué dolor
            qué dolor
                        qué pena
while they pulled down their panties in an alley
in the puddles of redwhiteblack rain
and so they would come out
of the hiding place riding on little sea horses of the red sea
wrapped in sheets of abandonment
 
Ay little girl!
                        Ay my child!
Bury the coins of this rancid coyote
that crosses the fence
used as a rotten symbol
that runs the banks and mixes
in the cemeteries
            Stomp on them
Break the nostrils
of those saber-toothed tigers
Tasmanian tigers
cavern lions
woolly beast
megatherium
exterminators of your universe
that arrive with constrictive force
destroying your innocence
 
Ride your story
drag them to the center of Monte Merapi
bury them in the Nyiragongo
so their lava of more than 200 thousand degrees
disintegrate their rocky conscience
 
Let’s go!
            Let’s go!
                        Let’s go!
 
Hang your curls of quartz
citrine amethyst or tin
Lift them over the sunset
and turn them in on platters
filled with fresh flowers
 
Hang also your pink womb
over the swamp of black stars
that touch your feet
Together with their womb
offer it to the gods
 
Lift your dream
            Fly!
                        Fly!
                                    Fly!
 
I am already here 

Vielka Solano lee de su libro, Desnuda Ofrenda
Desnuda
 
Me gusta andar desnuda por el mundo
salvo quizás por las palabras
sin dolor cubriéndome la piel
mis tentadores volcanes en el medio al frente
orgullosos
mis tripas rugientes ahogadas en merlot
 
Sin Calvin Klein Victoria Jacob Versase o Lauren
Sin tejidos caprichosos cubriendo mi vientre
mis piernas
mis hebras rebeldes
 
Sin las palmeras de artificios carcomidos
en mentes infectadas de malicia
cubriendo mis nalgas o mi sexo
 
Desnuda
recorrer el patio del ensueño
dejando que las gardenias me abracen
mientras Óscar se sonríe pícaro
y deja que el viento descarado
le mueva las ramas
 
Sentarme en el medio del verde manjar
y tocarme los muslos
con la yerba silvestre que provoca mis ganas
y me lleva al diluvio
desnuda
me encanta
 
Desnuda
 
Saborear los suspiros de olores
revueltos en la cocina
la alegría que me alcanza resbalando
por mi lengua insaciable
 
Des     nu       da
 
Masturbar el deseo entre el calor de julio
o el frío de enero
Dejar que se cuelguen las cicatrices
de mi cuerpo liberado
sin importar la mirada mal puesta
el pensamiento podrido o el deseo infectado
la malla de artimañas
los discursos sin sentido
 
Y qué coño
                        me gusta
andar desnuda por el mundo
sin la necesidad del vestido
para guiar mis pasos
o la aceptada sonrisa aprobándome
y que digan que soy putatrevidaloca
que está de venta la carne
me encanta   andar  desnuda
 
Y qué coño
 
y qué

 
Anónimo
 
(En silencio
no vaya a ser que me deporten)
 
Partir la historia en segmentos
abrazar este de ahora
propagando una idea sin divisiones
Volcar este arrebato de letras promisorias en el sartén
y cocinarlo  
Llenarlo con el calor congelado
de los putos hombres
brutos            
perdón
esos que se creen que tiran el caño más largo
flagelos encontrados entre rayos divididos
 
Volcar el hechizo de la reina condecorada
sin rostro
que a pataleos hizo presencia
entre pezones duros tatuados de gozo
entre conglomerado de injusticia patriarcal
arrasando las faldas pensantes
y el intelecto preñado de blasfemia
 
Recordar el comienzo
 
Abrazar esta tarde poblada de cuerpos llenos de sueños  
cargados de mierda perfumada
perdón
cagados
y un dolor colectivo que derrama los baldes
hechos de quejas                                       
que levanta las rabias y las metrallas
y las estrellas
y el odio somático que abraza las calles
la tuya
la mía
la de ellos
rompiendo
un continente
dos continentes
todos los continentes
 
En dos patas
psicópatas descerebrados
deambulan los callejones
 
También deambulan en mi casa
shhhhhhhh en la casa blanca
corazones sin alas sin ventrículo sin futuro
una cultura de razas etiquetadas por pieles amarillasblancasnegras
entre discursos de porcelana
semblantes anémicos
supremacía barata
 
Puertas cerradas
fronteras
regateando el poderío del norte
como mierda de putrefactos seres
desamparados de sentimiento
 
Quiero agarrar este trozo
arrancárselo a esos pendejos
pobres seres
des  alma  dos
infames
macabros
perdón
ma tar los
Perdón
            perdón
mal va dos
a ca bar los

​
Ofrenda
 
¡Corre!
¡Corre!
¡Corre!
 
Cuélgate del sol o de la luna llena
Ponte la gardenia blanca entre los muslos y
¡Corre!
¡Corre!
¡Corre!
 
Deja los rizos libres al viento
cubiertos de ensangrentadas
estrellas
 
Mutiladas por mentes malditas
masturbándose con el manjar
que las ha manejado por milenios
 
Como tú
ellas
nacieron detrás de un crucifijo
de un pez con doble ojo
y como tú
abrazaron sueños que ni siquiera
de manos de la lechuza
les fue posible alcanzar
 
Montaron hormigas picantes
como ají habanero
sin plan
sin premeditación
solo alevosía
sin ventaja
 
Batallaron entre el culo del profesor
macabro y la lombriz amarilla
preñada de quejidos pendejos
 
Como tú
se tropezaron con un terrón de azúcar
y mermelada de fresa
que las llevó al infierno
y así
como tú
corretearon un sueño varado
entre platos sin platanos
y sin arroz
y sin ni siquiera una muñeca de trapo
 
¡Corre!
¡Corre!
¡Corre!
 
Deja que el sol de junio cambie
las cicatrices de tu clítoris por astros
Abraza la luna llena
 
Otras muchas como tú
aporrearon los perros bravos
tratando de resguardar el centro
Ese que no alcanzó a tocar el traficante
ni el mercado de brujas
sin escobas mágicas
Ellas
también jugaban a Mambrú se fue a la guerra
qué dolor
qué dolor
qué pena
mientras les bajaban los pantis en un callejón
entre charcos de lluvia rojablancanegra
Y así salían del escondite
montadas en caballitos de un mar rojo
envueltas en sábanas de abandono
 
¡Ay muchachita!
¡Ay niña mía!
Entierra las monedas de ese rancio coyote
que se cruza las verjas
usadas como símbolo pútrido
que recorre los bancos y se revuelve
en los cementerios
Pisotéalas
Párteles el olfato
a esos tigres diente de sable
tigres de Tasmania
leones de las cavernas
bestias lanudas
megaterios
exterminadores de tu universo
que llegan como fuerza constrictora
arrasando tu inocencia  
 
Cabalga tu historia
arrástralos hacia el centro del Monte Merapi
entiérralos en el Nyiragongo
que su lava de más de doscientos mil grados
les desintegre la conciencia pedregosa
 
¡Vamos!
            ¡Vamos!
                        ¡Vamos!
 
Cuelga tus bucles de cuarzo
de citrina de amatista o de hojalata
Levántalos sobre el atardecer
y entrégalos en bandejas
colmadas de flores frescas
 
Cuelga también tu vientre rosa
sobre el pantano de astros negros
que tocan tus pies
junto al de ellas
ofrécelo a los dioses
 
Levanta tu sueño
¡Vuela!
            ¡Vuela!
¡Vuela!
 
Yo ya estoy aquí

Desnuda ofrenda/Naked offering is available at Amazon.com
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​Vielka Solano was born in February in a year close to the fall of the Chivo, in Santiago, Dominican Republic. She studied medicine at the Autonomous University of Santo Domingo, where she became a doctor, as well as the University of California Davis after immigrating to the United States in the late 1980s. First published in Dominican Republic magazines and newspapers. after many years of silence after immigrating, she reemerged, "taking in words in breathfuls," with the publications of Mujer de Carne y Verso, Vivencia y Soledad (2011), y De la Guerra el Amor (2013). She has participated in international poetry conventions in countries like Cuba, Colombia, various times in Mexico, and the Dominican Republic. Her poems have been published in anthologies such as: Antología de poetas dominicanos, Dominican Republic (2011), Solo para locos, N.Y. (2014), and Voces de tinta, Oaxaca, Mexico (2016), as well as newspapers and magazines in the Dominican Republic, Argentina, Mexico, New York, and California, where she now resides.

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"...a three mile walk of anticipation."

8/22/2019

2 Comments

 
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The Road to Columbus

Tres Millas a mi Libertad

Follow along as Rebecca Granado performs "Tres Millas a mi Libertad"
I could taste freedom from my bedroom window. Where the silhouette of that town was visible. Nothing but dry, barren land came between me, and that town. It was a three mile walk of anticipation, and well worth it back in the day. Blazing that trail, the sun beating down on my shoulders, the hot tar road under my feet. Vultures circling in the sky, helicopters calculating their radius. These were the sights when I walked that stretch of road.
 
The migra would pass me on that road at top speed in their hummers as they were led to the scene by an anonymous tip. Up ahead I could see a roadblock in the making, marked by orange cones and bright reflectors to warn all traffic that suspicion lay ahead.  My route would detour on the halfway point, before the port, before customs, before the suspicion marked by the men in green. The halfway point was the Go For It Café. a.k.a. Old man Bobbos.
 
What better place to taunt the men in green. They would watch us with their binoculars partying at the café. In the distance on a hill next to a mansion is where they would retreat. How did we know they were watching? We had binoculars, too. Suspicion was all around. We would shout gritos to the migra while we danced, sang, and drank our 40’s to Chalino. What were they gonna do? Nothing. We are American citizens in our every right. These men in green had arrested our antepasados at one point. Maybe it was a long time ago, but we carried that desesperación.
 
La neta éramos sinvergüenzas en esos tiempos. I mean we would walk 3 miles carrying a box of empty Negra Modelo bottles for refills. We were thirsty. Not only for la crema de la cerveza pero también por la libertad, que nos esperaba en el otro lado. Sabíamos que algo nos esperaba. Cruzamos día tras día, buscando esa libertad. Queríamos escapar! Get away from the rigidity of the red, white, and blue. Al cruzar, presencia militar, cuernos de chivo, chalanes acompañando los jefes. I'm home, I would think to myself. Tranquilidad, protección, ánimo. Where else but home would we cruise in bulletproof trucks, being chased by army tanks, shot at con unos r-15’s.
 
Yo quería ser la novia de un Mafioso. Yo quería ser adornada con joyas y viajar a lugares exóticos. Llegar a mi destino, pero en un jet privado. Disfrutamos de la comida más rica, usábamos ropa de la tela más fina, escapábamos a las playas más bonitas del mundo. Las mexicanas no nos querían a las chicanas. Ellas veían que cruzábamos dia tras dia. They longed for our life on the other side and we wanted their freedom, on their side. We had it both ways, and they couldn’t, and they hated us for it.
 
La vida aparece como fantasma y la muerte desaparece al cerrar los ojos.  Learning to run, duck and dodge, jumping out of moving vehicles, this was the life, this was the freedom we sought. Cada vez que cruzábamos y regresamos vivos, nos daba mas valor seguir cruzando. Cruzaba la garita a todas horas, en todas condiciones, faltandoles respeto a los aduanales. Me valia madre. When you escape bullets, death, rape, and secuestros no one can touch you, it changes a person. Yo no pensaba lo que a mi me daba valor, le quitaba honor a otra persona.
 
My intuition guided me all along that road to freedom. It whispered in my ear as I chugged, as I exhaled the smoke from my toke, as my paranoia grew. Constantly having to watch over my shoulder, trusting no one, especially not myself. Now a hundred miles and twelve feet of steel fence obscure my view of that silhouette. I can no longer thirst for that road. The bottles remain empty. Binoculars with no one in sight.
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Rebecca Granado, born and raised in Columbus, New Mexico, dropped out of high school and traveled the country by bus, living in tents along the way. “An undeclared social researcher,” as she called herself, she resumed schoolwork and earned a Master of Science in Family and Child Science and Addiction Studies from New Mexico State University in Las Cruces. This story in Somos en escrito is her first publication. Rebecca is working on a first novel. ​

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SILENCE OR SUBTLETY IS NOT HER THING

7/23/2019

1 Comment

 
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Excerpts from The Canción Cannibal Cabaret, a performance work
By Amalia Ortiz

​From The Introduction


​The Making of a Revolution                                                          
Performance art does not subscribe to the tradition of
High Culture. It is revolutionary art.
                                                                                                           —Norman Denzin
​The Canción Cannibal Cabaret, a collection of poem songs and prose poems set in a post-apocalyptic future, tells the story of the revolutionary leader “La Madre Valiente” who aims to incite future revolutionaries to join in intersectional feminism and activism. After an environmental apocalypse, a refugee raised under an oppressive state, La Madre Valiente studies secretly to become the leader of a feminist revolution. Her emissaries, Black Bards and Red Heralds, roam the land reciting her story, educating, and enlisting allies in revolution. This is the premise of my punk musical.

…….
​
Questioning authority is at the heart of my work. Ultimately, The Canción Cannibal Cabaret constitutes the synthesis of much of my past work. It combines activism, politics, writing, music, performance, costumes, visual arts, and POC aesthetics. It also claims a rightful space in academia as the work of an educated woman of color. What this book cannot capture on paper is expressed in live performance. As Denzin explains, “We should treat performances as a complementary form of research publication.” Like Cynthia Cruz, I am skeptical of the literary world’s new, self-interested embrace of political poetry. As so many grapple with the question of how to move forward in the shadow of a presidency at war with the weakest, least able, and most marginalized among us, I also agree with her assessment that, “The solution is a drastic reimagining.” So suggests La Madre.

​From Poem Songs

​A Message from Las Hijas de la Madre

​Welcome, hijas y hombres. Welcome, fugees and flaggers. 
Welcome, bossholes, broadbacks, and boots on the ground.
​All you civilyoungs and warhorses who daily tow the line. Worm workers in low appointments and Elect allies alike.
​
If you have willingly broke curfew to secret meet and receive the herstory of La Madre Valiente, then we salute you. If any notes of this testimonio ring bona fide, we hope that you not bury these truth bones, but instead ingest them to your memory to spit up and feed others in times of need. So suggests La Madre. So, we swallowed herstory and hid it in the safest place where no law can destroy it—deep inside our own flesh where only death can pry it from us. And so, we now feed you the same nourishment once fed us. And you, when you are full enough to rock rebellion, can continue the song.
 
As a live performer trying to connect with people, obscuring meaning from an audience does not work. I see nothing wrong with clarity of meaning. But what I see as a strength in my work, other academics have labeled a weakness. These criticisms have not deterred me from trying to create a poetry that is above all else accessible. My poetics highlight the intersection of racial discrimination, poverty, and gender inequality impacting the lives and identities of people of color. I center and claim space for marginalized voices in my writing, therefore, it must be decidedly political and accessible.

As an activist artist, I believe art can inspire change. When I create art it is a selfish act. I feel immediate catharsis in sharing my art. Yet I also claim space for dialogue for other disempowered voices that do not have my luxury of an audience. My art is desperate. It is crude and angry and bleeding. It is didactic and loud because it cannot aff ord to go unheard. “Your silence will not protect you,” the great feminist poet Audre Lorde wrote in her rallying essay, “The Transformation of Silence into Language and Action”:

Because the machine will try to grind you into dust anyway, whether or not we speak. We can sit in our corners mute forever while our sisters and ourselves are wasted, while our children are distorted and destroyed, while our earth is poisoned; we can sit in our safe corners mute as bottles, and we will still be no less afraid. (42)
Silence or subtlety will never be my choice.
​
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Las Hijas de la Madre

​Re Membering Herstory

In her domestic appointment in a home of the Elect, La Madre Valiente would slip out of her quarters at night to study a restricted device she had stolen away. This was how La Madre began to recover so many herstories lost to the State. Before the Pocked Eclipse, the learning was webfree, but those untangled herstories were burned or flooded during the Fall.

It was sometime after the death of her last son that La Madre Valiente began her recitation of the old folk songs. (Words on paper or the discovery of fugee use of devices is punished with expulsion from the State Gates.) And so, La Madre began to share herstory in secret.

She returned to the old folk songs and repeated them among the mothers and the colored. Her campaign spread faster than violence through the tenements. Her anger gained momentum, as the dark and poor women’s children suffered more than others. Even the Yardie gangs set aside their fracasos with one another to begin to fight for some- thing larger—perhaps true homes instead of block corners in State yards.
​
The herstories La Madre loved most—those that spread quickest through the tenements—were the songs of workers and mujeres past long before the Fall—old folk songs of fugees like us long forgotten.

​Rememory of Strange Fruit

     ​with thanks to Abel Meeropol and Toni Morrison
Strange fruit, not hanging but withering in crowded trucks— Loss is expected in transport. Drivers still get paid big bucks. Brown bodies praying for the pardon of our southern breeze— The south still produces strange fruit, just not entwined in trees.

If the fruit survives delivery, it can be bought and sold.
Market prices double if fruit is ripe and not too old. Dried and rotting in the desert, trampled falling off trains— Bondage continues in this land, though not with chains.

​Growers and traffickers supply consumer-demanded yields.
There’s a fortune to be made from strange fruit fertilizing fields.
Rememory of blood on leaves, rememory of blood at root— The profits from the bitter crop outweigh our losses of our strange, strange fruit.

​Nom de Guerre

You think because we are women we are weak, and maybe we are.  But only to a certain point… We can no longer remain quiet over these acts that fill us with rage. And so, I am an instrument who will take vengeance.         
  --Diana, Huntress of Bus Drivers
​                                     I eat the cries of the dead.
     I am a hunter               a huntress of men.
Some people think me a monster.
For others, fantasies of vengeance I foster.
​
                                    I am Diana the huntress.
We are Diana the huntress.

                                     I wear the moon on my head.
I am a hunter               a huntress of men, born in the barrio in a mass grave threatening to those holding chains to enslave

                                    I am Diana the huntress.
We are Diana the huntress.

                              Hello, from the gutters of Juárez.
Hello, from the slums of Mumbai.
Hello, from the brothels of Thailand. Hello, from sweat shops in LA.
You will know my name. You will know my name.

                                    Hello, Malala assassins.
Hello, Boko Haram.
Hello, from my Pussy Riot.
Hello, from my Gulabi Gang.

You will know my name. You will know my name.

                                  My hounds are free and unfed.
I am a hunter                 a huntress of men. My Wild Hunt’s broken loose— ghost riders crunching bones beneath their boots.

                                    I am Diana the huntress.
We are Diana the huntress.

                                                  Join me all you who have bled.
Become a hunter            a huntress of men.
Fight corruption.      Protect the powerless.
Left with no recourse, unleash your huntress.

                                     You are Diana the huntress.
Become Diana the huntress.

                                     Hello, from the classrooms of Yemen.
Hello, from Radical Monarchs.
Hello, my Arming Sisters. Hello, Hijas de Violencia.

They will know your names. They will know your names.

                                   Hello, auto-defensas.
Hello, Nevin Yildirim.
Hello, my Ovarian Psycos. Hello, to my Red Brigade.
                                                  And they will know your names.
They will know our names.
They will know my name. They will know my name.       
justice frozen in our crosshairs--
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​Amalia Leticia Ortiz is a Tejana actor, writer, and activist who appeared on three seasons of “Russell Simmons Presents Def Poetry” on HBO, and has toured colleges and universities as a solo artist and with performance-poetry troupes Diva Diction, The Chicano Messengers of Spoken Word, and the Def Poetry College Tour. The first of many other awards, her debut book of poetry, Rant. Chant. Chisme (Wings Press), won the 2015 Poetry Discovery Prize from the Writers’ League of Texas Book Awards and was selected by NBC Latino as one of the “10 Great Latino Books of 2015.”
The Canción Cannibal Cabaret is due for release July 27, 2019, in San Antonio, Texas. For more information and to purchase copies of the book, contact Aztlan Libre Press at: 
​editors@aztlanlibrepress.com and aztlanlibrepress.com.

1 Comment

this is the love of perfect form

2/17/2019

0 Comments

 

Rinconcito
is a special little corner in Somos en escrito for short writings: single poems, short stories, memoirs, and the like.

the body is as solid as the thought that holds it in place

by Carlos Schröder

​# 4

this was the love of perfect form
the verb the nerve the web colliding
ensuring the demise of muscles
tissues
the melting into you
mouths
speaking in tongues
never until now
then
understood
the meaning
leaning towards the light
like plants
unconscious barely

and words and words
and more than what i ever wanted
and more than what i ever got

this is the love of perfect form
these are the loves of perfect form
a conjugation
mispronunciation
the name is changed

the body is dreamed.


# 7

this is the occasion of language
of changing from utterance to word
from sound to meaning

this is the hour when the sun sets down
reassuring our instincts and betraying the scientific certainties

and it is this sun
sinking
obliterating itself
in the promise of a day following this one ceasing
that gives us hope
a glimpse of what we are
a structure upon which to fall as the lover falls into the arms
of the receiving lover
who holds
tightly
waiting for his turn to fall
to be held
to be had
to be over.


# 9

the body is as solid as the thought that holds it in place

the torturer knows this
and lets the victim know
that he can think of the body
as chapters in a book
independent from each other yet connected

then tears the pages
one by one.

Picture
​Carlos Schröder has taught English courses at Northern Virginia Community College in Alexandria, Virginia, since 2004 and before then, taught at the University of Maryland. A native of Argentina, his creative work, mostly poetry, has appeared in publications both in the US and Argentina in English and Spanish and he has had a play produced in Buenos Aires. He is an active member of the Asamblea Permanente por los Derechos Humanos (APDH), http://www.apdh-argentina.org.ar, and with local groups in Washington DC, where he resides.

​Rosa MIzerskiFebruary 16, 2019 at 12:04 PM This poem is absolutely phenomenal and sublime. One of the most poetic expressions of love in the manner of Octavio Paz
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