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​​SOMOS EN ESCRITO
The Latino Literary Online Magazine

POETRY
​POESÍA

Poets of Círculo: Graciela Brauer Ramírez

1/21/2021

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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.
“Por escrito”

Lucha Corpi (LC) entrevista a Graciela Brauer Ramírez (GBR), Catedrática jubilada de la Universidad Estatal de California en Sacramento. Poeta y narradora chicana, y trabajadora cultural incansable. Miembro de “Escritores del Nuevo Sol” en el Valle de Sacramento y de “Círculo de poetas & Writers” en la Bahía de San Francisco, con sede en Oakland. 
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Invocación a las cuatro direcciones, Graciela Brauer Ramírez
AZTLÁN – El lugar de las garzas

LC:
Querida Graciela, cómo se ve claramente, en la portada de tu libro están estampadas las garzas, aves que normalmente habitan a orillas de los ríos en California y en México: Algunos de los ríos más caudalosos se encuentran en el sur de México y precisamente en el estado de Veracruz, del que eres originaria.

Me fascinó ver que tu obra comienza con una descripción del Río Americano (the American River) que atraviesa de lado a lado la Cd. de Sacramento, capital del estado de California.
​
Según la leyenda indígena mexicana, AZTLÁN era el lugar de origen de las varias tribus pre-colombinas, las que poblaban el continente de América, desde Alaska y Canadá hasta Tierra del Fuego en Sudamérica. 
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Foto por Janice Mccafferty
A primera vista se podría también decir que EDUCACIÓN: Una Épica Chicana de la catedrática, poeta y narradora, Graciela Brauer Ramírez, es un libro de texto histórico. Ofrece una visión y cronología histórico-política de acontecimientos que se suscitaron en la Cd. de Sacramento, capital del estado de California, durante las décadas de 1960 a 1980.

Al mismo tiempo, ofrece una vista panorámica del movimiento socio-político y pro-derechos civiles del pueblo México-americano en EE.UU., es decir de la población que se autodefine políticamente como chicanos. De una manera más general, bosqueja también el impacto de los logros de esta población, desde entonces hasta la fecha. 

Desde el punto de vista literario sigue las reglas de una epopeya clásica, es decir como lo fueran la Odisea o Ilíada en la antigüedad. Es un relato en verso y trata de las hazañas de héroes en tiempos de guerra y en defensa de su pueblo, su historia y cultura.
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Más aún, es la infra-historia de una familia californiana, con fuertes lazos culturales, literarios e históricos, con México y el sudoeste de Estados Unidos. Gracias. Graciela.  Lucha Corpi
Entrevista y plática: Lucha Corpi (LC) y Graciela Brauer Ramírez (GBR) en conversación.
 

Influencias: En familia o comunitarias: 

LC:
Tu obra culturalmente es parte de una tradición oral, pero lo es también de la literaria. Es en verdad, Una Épica Chicana, y una obra monumental. ¡Enhorabuena, Graciela!

Ahora, cuéntanos un poco sobre tu niñez y adolescencia en familia. Sabemos que tu padre fue de gran influencia en ti, quien estimuló tu sed intelectual por el conocimiento y la lectura. Aprendiste a leer a los cuatro años. Entiendo que tu convivencia con otros parientes, en ambos lados, también fue muy importante.

En familia, aparte de tu papá y mamá, ¿Quiénes más fueron de gran influencia en ti durante tu niñez?

GBR: Como digo en mi libro, Una épica chicana, por las noches, en familia, nos juntábamos en el patio y cada uno decía poesías o contaba historias. Por ejemplo, a mi tío Homero le gustaban las historias del mar y de barcos. Después fue marinero. Mi tío Sergio siempre nos contaba la misma historia sólo le cambiaba los nombres de los personajes.

A mí me subían en una silla y recitaba: “Mamá, soy Paquito, no haré travesuras…” Y también una que dice: “Guadalupe la Chinaca va en busca de Pantaleón su marido…” Dado que a los cuatro años yo no podía todavía hablar bien, recitaba este verso a mi manera: “aupe anaca busca a neon maido…”

Mi tía Elena, aun cuando ya estaba yo grande, se burlaba de mí imitándome, pues a esa edad temprana no podía yo hablar claro, pero, según yo, ya recitaba. También mi tía me decía que cuando terminaba yo les pedía aplausos al “púbico” (el público).
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LC: Me haces reír. Muy divertido. Ya entrando a la secundaria, ¿seguiste recitando poemas en público?

GBR: Claro que sí. Ya de estudiante, en la secundaria, recitaba en concursos y en uno de ellos gané el primer premio al recitar de memoria el poema “Los Motivos del Lobo” de Rubén Darío el gran poeta de Nicaragua. Hasta la fecha, ya en mi vejez, aún recuerdo todo este poema tan largo.

LC: Entonces, en cuanto a los lugares que fueron importantes en tu desarrollo durante tus años tempranos, sabemos que viviste en la Cd. de México y que sufriste los calores y el bochorno del trópico en el puerto de Veracruz.
                                                
En el prólogo de Educación: Una Épica Chicana, JoAnn Anglin, gran poeta y narradora, a quien también tengo el gusto y la honra de conocer, nos da algunos datos personales tuyos, pero bastante esquemáticos.

LC: Si te es posible, cuéntanos un poco de ti, de tu vida personal antes de unirte al cuerpo docente de la Universidad Estatal de California (California State University at Sacramento-CSUS).

GBR: Las gentes que tuvieron más influencia en mi infancia fueron mi papá y mi tía abuela Juanita. El me introdujo a la lectura, al grado de que cuando fui al kínder ya había leído varios libros de cuentos que él siempre me compraba.

Mi tía abuela Juanita tenía una tienda de abarrotes a media cuadra de nuestro apartamento. Ella tenía su recámara arriba de la tienda. A veces ella me cuidaba o cuando iba a la tienda inmediatamente subía a su recámara pues ahí tenía muchos libros. Ahí leí: Corazón Diario de un Niño, Las Mil y Una Noches y muchas otras obras que aún viven en mi mente y que me han ayudado a sobrevivir. Un día mi tía me sorprendió mucho cuando me regaló estos dos libros y algunos más.

También mi papá. Él era militar, y por algunas horas, también valuador en la mayor casa de empeño controlada por el gobierno. A veces tenían subastas y la mercancía que quedaba la repartían entre los trabajadores. Esta era generalmente de libros, los cuales él traía al apartamento. Entre esos libros leí, con ayuda de adultos, La Vuelta al Mundo en Ochenta Días, El Jorobado de Nuestra Señora de París y muchos más. Fui muy afortunada.
                                                  
LC: Nos has contado que debido al trabajo de tu papá, quién era militar, viviste en diferentes lugares. ¿Cómo afectó el pasar tu infancia y adolescencia en comunidades tan diferentes una de la otra?

GBR: Primero, era una bebé y mientras que las mismas personas me cuidaran, no había problema. Después, cuando contaba con cuatro años, mi papá me ponía en el tren los viernes por la noche y mi abuelito me recogía en el puerto de Veracruz en la mañana del sábado. El regreso era viaje opuesto, por supuesto, de domingo en la noche a lunes por la mañana. También pasaba todas las vacaciones en la costa del Golfo de México, que era la costa veracruzana.

Vivir en el puerto de Veracruz fue para mí una experiencia muy afortunada pues mi abuelito era una persona muy educada al haber estudiado en el seminario; había leído mucho. Con él aprendí bastante.

También en Veracruz vivían mis tíos quienes eran muy adeptos a las poesías. Mi tío Carlos, por ejemplo, sabía muchas de ellas de memoria. En las noches nos recitaba versos de sus autores favoritos como Díaz Mirón, poeta veracruzano. Mi tía Estela recitaba en las escuelas. Aún recuerdo una de sus poesías favoritas que dice: “…espera la caída de las hojas.”

Mi abuelito y su hijo mayor trabajaban en el ferrocarril me conocían y me querían bastante. A menudo, ellos me llevaban de viaje. Durante mis viajes la tripulación del ferrocarril me cuidaba.
 
LC: Cuéntanos también de tu familia materna y de tu educación formal y adolescencia

GBR: Cursé la primaria en El Colegio de San Ignacio de Loyola comúnmente conocido como Colegio de las Vizcaínas, una escuela católica en la Ciudad de México. Mis padres se divorciaron cuando yo tenía menos de un año. Mi papá tomó la responsabilidad de criarme. Él era militar así es que yo crecí regimentada, cosa que siempre le he agradecido pues aprendí disciplina, algo que me ha servido toda mi vida, y que él hizo con mucho amor.

A los 15 años me fui a vivir con mi mamá. Ella era una famosa cantante de música ranchera. Mi vida con ella era excitante pues me llevaba a los teatros y estaciones de radio en donde conocí artistas famosos de aquella época. Por otro lado, ella era una persona muy extrovertida y se impacientaba mucho conmigo por ser yo sumamente introvertida.

Con ella viajé en sus giras por muchos estados de México y lugares en los Estados Unidos como las ciudades fronterizas de El Paso, Texas y San Diego, California, además de Los Ángeles en California, entre otras.

Desgraciadamente mi mamá y yo éramos demasiado diferentes. Ella era una feminista que a los 40 años se hizo torera aficionada; yo vivía dentro de los libros. Con mis padres crecí en dos mundos completamente opuestos. Sin embargo, en ambos mundos, todas mis experiencias fueron muy buenas.
 
LC: En esta entrevista quiero hacer resaltar no sólo tu trayectoria poética-literaria sino también tu participación en el movimiento pro-derechos civiles y humanos del pueblo chicano en Estados Unidos. Al leer tu obra, me doy cuenta que tú fuiste testigo y participante en muchos de los acontecimientos que describes en tu libro durante “el movimiento chicano”. Cuéntanos sobre esta importante época de tu vida.

GBR: Mi participación en los primeros años de pertenecer al movimiento chicano, fue la siguiente: ayudaba en lo que podía como organizar eventos poéticos, así como los Simposios de Pensadores del Tercer Mundo y otros más.

También ayudaba en sus funciones para recaudar fondos como ventas de pan dulce, tacos etc. Me daba de voluntaria para ayudar a organizaciones como CAMP (College Assistance Migrant Program) entre otras. También tuve en el barrio, en el Washington Neighborhood Center, un programa tutorial en el que llevaba estudiantes de la universidad a enseñar a los niños.

Lo óptimo de mi participación fue cuando formulé y comencé a enseñar el curso “La Mujer Chicana” en el Departamento de Estudios Étnicos, de la Universidad Estatal de California en su campus de Sacramento-CSUS. El gran poeta y activista chicano, José Montoya, era catedrático en este mismo departamento.

Después de haber recibido algunos reconocimientos por mi participación en el movimiento chicano, mi mayor orgullo llegó un día cuando José Montoya me llamó y me dijo: “Gracias, Graciela, porque nunca nos has dejado”. Este ha sido el mejor reconocimiento que he recibido en mi vida.

José tenía razón. He creído siempre que es un derecho de todo ser humano tener acceso a la educación formal. Me uní al Movimiento Chicano Pro-derechos humanos y civiles. Para los chicanos, acceso a una buena educación era lo que más deseaban. Sentí como si un imán me atraía hacia ellos.

También a José Montoya siempre le viviré agradecida. El organizaba programas y recitales de poesía en la universidad. Fue él quien me apoyó é invitó a leer mi obra poética en público, por primera vez en mi vida. Cómo recuerdo cuanto sufrí, y las ansias que me causó, pues tenía demasiado miedo de leer en público. Yo había leído en programas escolares pero nunca en programas en público en general. José lo notó y con sus palabras me animó mucho. Al fin, temblaba pero lo hice.  La publiqué.​
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Graciela lee sus poemas al público
La Poesía de Graciela B. Ramírez

REBOZO


Rebozo que humillado
te escondías,
mas con la revolución
volviste altivo
en los hombros de Frida**
quien sin miedo
te sacó de penumbras
ensalzando
los colores brillantes de tus hilos.
Así volviste
a colorear las fiestas
adornando con gracia a las mujeres
quienes ahora en cuerpos
te lucían
o zapateando en moños
te enredaban.

Rebozo que en los campos de batalla
de la intemperie
protegías a guerrilleras
y en las noches
cubriendo a los amantes
creabas mundo privado
en que chasquidos
de besos
resonaban en el aire
y después el amor
bajo de ti hacían
porque quizá la luz del sol
​Ya no verían
Rebozo, con tus hebras
acaricias
de las futuras madres
sus vientres esponjados,
entibiando matrices,
dando calor a fetos,
enlazando dos seres
en comunión sagrada

Cordón umbilical
de madre y niño
porque cuando ellas cargan,
cual marsupias,
a sus tiernos infantes,
ellos saben
que no hay peligro alguno
porque tú con firmeza
los sostienes.

Y también con amor
cubres los senos
cuando el pequeño
cual gatito tierno
mama la tibia leche
de su madre
y arrullado
con ritmos de latidos
sueña
envuelto
en respiros melodiosos
y despierta al sentir
hondo suspiro
y se ve reflejado
en dulces ojos.
                                                                       
**Nota Bene: Frida Kahlo volvió a hacer famoso el rebozo de seda mexicano. A este rebozo también se le conoce como Rebozo de seda de Santa María, el pequeño pueblo en el estado de San Luis Potosí, en donde se encuentran los telares de rebozos. Ahí mismo también se pueden ver los sembradíos de las plantas de las que se alimentan las orugas que el público en general conoce como “los gusanos de seda”.

Frida también mostró el modo, arte y orgullo de portarlo el rebozo. Fue precisamente durante las décadas de los años sesenta y setenta que las mujeres chicanas, México-americanas y latinas volvieron una vez más a hacer legítimo el uso del rebozo, tanto el de algodón como el de seda. -LC
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Dios de la lluvia
Tlaloc
​

There came a day when
your gigantic statue       
was moved
from its birth place
to Chapultepec’s
sacred emerald forest
where hundreds
of crickets sing for you
the eternal
welcoming song
 
Slowly, so slowly
168 tons of stone
moved through
Tenochtitlan’s streets
cradled in the
specially-built trailer
going slowly,
So slowly.
 
During the night,
work crews
disconnected and
reconnected electrical
wires needed because
of your 23-foot height.
Perhaps you laughed
At all the attention
From the multitudes
 
After the 30-mile journey,
came the huge explosion,
like a Big Bang,
embedding our memories
back in our city recalling
years of invasions,
centuries of deep pain.
 
But finally, the gift
of spiritual Renaissance
as you passed
through the Zócalo,
The Great Temple,
El Templo Mayor.
At that precise instant
came the deluge,
your fertility water,
your life-giving water,
your survival water,
your baptismal water,
your melting jade rain
that poured over us
running in force
through our city
washing us in blessings
and forgiving waters
through archeological sites,
the burial homes
of your ancestors
the burial homes of
our ancestors.
Tláloc, the Great Tláloc:
The eagle and the serpent
Acknowledged you
As the Lord of the Third Sun,
As God of all Water.
 
PINCELADAS

Instantly becoming one
With the new born moon
And the eastern star
 
All of a sudden
Autumn smiles
Reddish leaves
 
Cosumnes River
Witness in silence
Courtship of cranes
 
The broom
Escapes from my hands
Dishes
Look at me with anger
Magic of Jazz
Is for me
Sensuality and
Spirituality
Interwoven
Only the pencil
Calls me by my name
Rain, flamenco woman
Dancer
Stamping
On the roof of my house.

**CHICANOS Y LA LENGUA
 
Esta es la historia de la gente…
que nace o emigra en retroceso,
a esas tierras que ancestros disfrutaron,
a lugares viniendo de regreso,
que ejércitos extraños conquistaron,
sitio donde las grullas con su beso
y su baile, colonias iniciaron.
Esta es la gente que con ansia busca,
un lugar en el sol, cosa muy justa. ...
 
**EPIFANÍA CHICANA

 Aztlán renace, del chicano cuna
su núcleo de las cuatro direcciones
aurículas en Utah y Colorado
ventrícula del sur en Arizona
y otra en Nuevo México hechicero,
Aztlán cuyas arterias cristalinas
de estrellas salpicadas son Ríos Grande,
Colorado y también el Sacramento. ...
 
**LC: Estrofas de Educación: Una Epica Chicana, p. 3 y 24
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Invocations on the Four Directions
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GBR: Aquí estamos José Montoya y yo esperando una de las cuatro ceremonias pre-Colombinas en Sacramento (la de los niños, la de las jóvenes o Xilonen, la de los jóvenes y el Día de los Muertos). En los setenta José fue uno de los iniciadores de ellas y tuvo a su cargo el altar del norte o el de los viejitos. Yo empecé en el sagrado círculo como a principio de los ochenta y duré en la dirección del norte con José como 25 años o más que fueron inolvidables pues pasar más de 9 horas en compañía de José preparando el altar, marcar el círculo con polvo de maíz, mantener el fuego en el salmador, esperar al grupo que iba a recibir consejos y dárselos fue una de mis mejores experiencias. Con él y los Chicanos aprendí muchísimo. 

Generalmente leo con mi grupo “Escritores del Nuevo Sol”. Yo soy la que organizo los recitales poéticos en Sacramento. Nuestros programas son en lugares como “Sol Collective”, “Luna’s Café”, y “The Poetry Center”. Hace tiempo iba con mi grupo de escritores a leer en las ciudades de San Francisco, Stockton, Yuba City y otros lugares en California. También en ocasiones leo como parte del grupo al que también pertenezco “Círculo de Poetas & Writers” con base en Oakland, California y miembros en varias ciudades del norte de California.  
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Miembros de “Escritores del Nuevo Sol” y del “Círculo de poetas & Writers”. Graciela B. Ramírez – toda de blanco, sentada, tercera de derecha a izquierda, Oakland, CA
LC: ¿Cómo y dónde pueden los interesados conseguir el libro Educación: Una Épica Chicana?

1) De la autora: email:  24bucareli@gmail.com 

2) I Street Press, A Community Writing and Publishing Center, Sacramento Public Library

3) Sacramento Poetry Center
 
LC: No hay duda, apreciada Graciela, que has tenido una larga y fascinante carrera como catedrática y poeta. Me encanta tu actitud ante la vida: siempre optimista. Eres de gran inspiración a todos nosotros, tanto a los “Escritores del Nuevo Sol” como los miembros del “Círculo de poetas & Writers”. 

Mil gracias por tu participación en esta serie de entrevistas, patrocinadas por el periódico bilingüe Somos en escrito y por “Círculo de poetas & Writers” en la bahía de San Francisco.                                                                                      

**En especial, mis más sinceras gracias a Jenny Irizary of Somos en escrito, por su paciencia y asistencia técnica en esta serie de entrevistas mes tras mes. Abrazos, Jenny.

**Igualmente, gracias a Paul Aponte y Betty Sánchez de “Círculo de poetas & Writers” (SFBA) y “Escritores del Nuevo Sol”, Sacramento por su ayuda con las fotos que aquí se incluyen.  
  
© Poetry, Graciela Brauer Ramírez, de su libro: Educación: Una Épica Chicana
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Robert René Galván's latest poetry book published!

1/3/2021

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Robert René Galván's Tía Luz Ruiz, center
Undesirable – Race and Remembrance is a collection of poems by Robert René Galván, inspired by a boyhood raised in the heart of Texas, days spent between his folks’ home in San Marcos and family in San Antonio. René has a way not only of shaping the meaning of words but how he wants us to see and feel what he has seen and felt: in this book, his memories become ours.

​​Born in San Antonio, he now lives in New York City, a noted Chicano poet and multi-talented musician. He is the product of a legacy fashioned by Galván’s antepasados who survived the Great Depression, the WWII years, the decades of discrimination and deprivation–a communal memory that he treasures and preserves in this book.
Two recent poems by René have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and one other for the Best of the Net competitions for 2020. 
Born in San Antonio, he now lives in New York City, a noted Chicano poet and multi-talented musician. He is the product of a legacy fashioned by Galván’s 
antepasados who survived the Great Depression, the WWII years, the decades of discrimination and deprivation–a communal memory that he treasures and preserves in this book.

​
​Galván tells of his elders riding on aging trucks to harvest a few dollars from the fields in the ’30s and ’40s, of his writer father filling his ink pen, its “barrel, incandescent as opal,” of the childhood home bought through a white friend so his family could buy it, even of the relentless reach of racism when recently a white man cursed him for being brown in a NYC supermarket.
​The subtitle, Race and Remembrance, speaks to the dark undertones of the obras in his book; the cover hints at the seemingly fun trips his elders made from Texas to California to harvest the grapes, pick clean the beet fields, and whatever other crop farmers were hiring workers to pick.
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The cover photo shows his mother, Eva Mireles Ruiz, third from the left, with some of her siblings and cousins, seated, legs dangling, on the bed of Abuelito Toño's truck, which carried the family to California and back as migrant workers. His Aunt Belia is far left and his Uncle Reyes (of the poem, “Hero”) is on the far right.
​An earlier collection of poems titled, Meteors, was published by Lux Nova Press (1997). He is also featured in Puro ChicanX Writers of the 21st Century (2020). Another book of poems, The Shadow of Time, is forthcoming from Adelaide Books in 2021. Other poems are found in Adelaide Literary Magazine, Azahares Literary Magazine, Gyroscope, Hawaii Review, Hispanic Culture Review, Newtown Review, Panoply, Somos en Escrito Magazine, Stillwater Review, West Texas Literary Review, the Winter 2018 issue of UU World, and Yellow Medicine Review: A Journal of Indigenous Literature, Art and Thought.
Copies are available in print and e-book formats from online booksellers (including Amazon and Barnes & Noble), but we ask that you support your local bookstores. 
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the single and only music

12/31/2020

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YOU ARE MY SUNSHINE ​

by ​Ivan Argüelles 

​
so folds the old year its broken diseased leaves 
its tripartite reconfigurations of an exiled sky 
its functionless attributes of lungs and bellows 
days like felled beasts hamstrings cut ears lopped 
days immersed in prussic acid and forged moon-dust 
atavistic months trapped in their own circularity 
unable to mouth their own unpronounceable names  
nor to rectify the phonetic damage done to their shapes 
seasons withered by oppositions of gas and distance 
like mountains collapsing into invisible lakes 
hemorrhaging light from their invariable wounds 
speaking like statues in a void no sleep can enter 
the enormous effigies of history shadowing copies 
of heroes and nameless saints down corridors 
and embankments where stricken cities grieve 
how much was lost in the fiction of calendar time 
the manipulations of politicians and bankers  
homophones of the great solar disk turned black ! 
like the serpent tail in mouth devouring its own being 
spirit without clouds animus of destroyed wharfs 
scripts of tattered glyph and cuneiform high and loud 
in atmospheres poisoned by future shareholders 
planets and asterisks commas and circumflex accents 
dizzying spirals hermetic consonants sung on one note 
vowels redder than the voice of no-beginnings 
impossibility of medical science to redefine the sound 
issuing from the late cycle’s numinous accident of birth 
and now !? and now the inarticulate diapason of darkness 
the lengthening afternoon without windows or hills 
the absolute innocence of door-posts and gate-swings 
paths that lead inward eradicated by technology 
everyone spying on everyone else using progress 
to justify the abyss into which uncountable beings fall 
never to be recovered and memory itself the bereaved 
ear and eye without meaning in the blank effusion 
when rock fragment and cliff reassert their primacy 
how many are the distances denied by this passing 
minutes and hours thumbs and echelons of ink 
dissolution of the orient—why move on into the plunge 
this is not next year but the single and only music 
to be recorded before electricity fails and doomed 
spacecraft earth turns to enigmatic azure powders 
you are my sunshine my only sunshine 
 
12-31-20! 
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​Ivan Argüelles is an 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.

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Tonantzin… Derramando flores/Spilling flowers

12/11/2020

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Iconic image by Robert Lentz

​Rezo a Tonantzin

​By Rafael Jesús González
 
Tonantzin
         madre de todo
         lo que de ti vive,
es, habita, mora, está;
Madre de todos los dioses
                           las diosas
madre de todos nosotros,
           la nube y el mar
           la arena y el monte
           el musgo y el árbol
           el ácaro y la ballena.
 
Derramando flores
haz de mi manto un recuerdo
que jamás olvidemos que tú eres
único paraíso de nuestro vivir.
 
Bendita eres,
cuna de la vida, fosa de la muerte,
fuente del deleite, piedra del sufrir.
 
concédenos, madre, justicia,
            concédenos, madre, la paz.

​Prayer to Tonantzin

​By Rafael Jesús González
 
Tonantzin
         mother of all
         that of you lives,
be, dwells, inhabits, is;
Mother of all the gods
                       the goddesses
Mother of us all,
            the cloud & the sea
            the sand & the mountain
            the moss & the tree
            the mite & the whale.
 
Spilling flowers
make of my cloak a reminder
that we never forget that you are
the only paradise of our living.
 
Blessed are you,
cradle of life, grave of death,
fount of delight, rock of pain.
 
Grant us, mother, justice,
          grant us, mother, peace.
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​Rafael Jesús González is an international activist for human rights and social justice, a bilingual poet and writer, Poet Laureate of Berkeley, California, and, always with our deepest appreciation, a frequent contributor to Somos en escrito. © Rafael Jesús González 2020.

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when skies did battle with skies !

11/10/2020

0 Comments

 
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Català: Hernan Cortés lluita amb dos indis by Antoni Gómez i Cros  (1809–1863) 

Two new poems by Ivan Argüelles ​

Historia Verdadera de la Conquista

great cadavers of heat circulating
like unspoken romance dialects in the ivy
& to sleep in summer’s ornate diphthong 
yielding to the profound ampersand
woven into the nexus of eyelid and sight –
why go on piercing darkness with 
Toltec lightning riding cordilleras that
differ from Spanish or Sanskrit as much as
distance diverges from the porphyry of longing ?
inversions of the horse and swart perspiration
armor soldered to glistening herculean frames 
and the flotilla of imported hills charging surf
the whiteness of the outer rim the deep indigo
that is fatal to the eye the immensities of cobalt
even as its avenues sprawl into nopal underbrush
flowers fired from archaic muskets like troops
of cloud-elephants prepared to seize the continent
blinding whatever passes for light in the gloaming
boomerang and volcano and ninety-degree alcohol 
when skies did battle with skies !
the ungovernable envelope of siglo de oro
with its plethora of misdirected synonyms
shepherds and avatars of lazar-house gods
the unique digit that transforms sound into space
echo after echo of an unheard Basque consonant
ready to detonate the lacerated backside of Cuba
the life of the ear and its golden assonance 
in the rushing welter of oceans on the other side
of the perforated and pearly Lobe
ringing syllabic disunities in rock and moss
mufti and corduroy of the managerial knees
sequences of traffic racing the invisible storms of Tampico
where gun-runners and affidavits of bright toxicity
lounge half-drunk in the ravaged tropical greenery
saliva and boredom of the new ruling class
borrowed gypsum thoughts heaving mountain-peaks
dialects of Chapultepec childhoods the works
hobbling with Franciscan mountebanks from the Old Country
gringo hospice dereliction of the Carretera Panamericana
where it is always the summer of 1953 BCE 
when the twins besieged the Popol Vuh motel 
ransacking dust and brick the bath of fame inches
within the insect who bears History on its carapace
and corn fields planted with munitions and
the unending Communist Revolution of Cuauhtémoc
the motor buried deep in Xochimilco floral beds
water follows water into the reverse of the leaf
whose exhausting idiom divides night 
into the multiple hemispheres of Oblivion
 
10-14-20
LAS AZOTEAS DE TENOCHTITLÁN  

half way through time in the center of space  
all directions go from the meridian straight north 
avoiding south where the dead thrive on monosyllables 
and the third hemisphere of time is shortened  
by the inch of light it takes to cross sleep’s boundaries  
mortals puzzle over birth and etymologies 
the eye’s memories are a confused reticulation 
a brief phase in eternity’s unfinished ant-hill  
dark labyrinth of coagulated stars and waters 
spectral resonance of the unfinished noon of marble 
when nothing moves but an incremental shimmer 
glare and intimation of a sun too soon blackened 
by coruscating elements of an aggravated city 
traffic of bacchants and hieroglyphs totem Spaniards 
who have left behind Galatea and her phantom shepherds 
for the colossal gold bricks and unstemmed tide of silver 
for the canals of sacred sewage Aztec immolated stone 
the top and pinnacle of a single multicolored plume 
signaling the end to the first day of a tropical infinity 
bulwark of crescent shaped frogs hidden in San Ángel 
the possibility that a new year might begin at last 
frame of water shivering Toltec vowels embossed 
in a mental armor the blaze and rutilation of horses 
climbing bone masses and the bruited nonsense 
of cadavers by the thousands left to be counted 
by augurs who imitate almanacs and friezes 
depicting enormous Revolutionary symphonies memory 
of children left to dry on rooftops with bleached linens 
sacrosanct rags panoply of rust and sugar skulls deaths 
by the hundreds with tiny horns blowing hats and wings 
terrific parades of cinematic automobiles Dolores del Rio 
the saint who ate the pyramids the offal of transgression 
mimics and sinners liars at the wheel Porfirio Díaz fading 
in the photograph of the Volcano and its slattern wives 
gesture of a phonetic pistolero to gain his daily share 
bread divided into fractions of oxygen and kneeless penitents 
of Guanajuato looking for the Surgeon of Nayarit 
who will soon be knocking at the door flummoxed and  
insensate with pulque the famous red margin of the Hours 
draping the pharmacy windows and the blow-out of night 
furious and intellectual the dialectic of darkness  
smoke and unending neologisms about the Life eternal 
to be sought somewhere in El Norte fiction of Hollywood 
countless abandoned motors and skins the frontera 
where the scales of justice tilt gagging on days-old urine 
cycles of pathos and iceberg lettuce spine chilling 
dreams recollecting the azoteas de Tenochtitlán  
Chabela and her amazing ink-spent hair the wind  
that takes its ropes and ties them around the Cathedral 
lifting from earth the archaic architecture of oblivion 
while worms with the mistaken eyes of devastated gods 
who live on cigarettes and cerveza in cantinas 
of peeling wallpaper and fly-swatters create words 
circular and soundless echoes tinny subtractions  
discarded illegible typescript on onion skin History 
 
10-19-20
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Ivan Argüelles is an 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.

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Para mis amigos de Somos en Escrito

10/30/2020

1 Comment

 
Thank you to Ivan Argüelles for dedicating “​POEM IN THE SHAPE OF AN INVISIBLE VOLCANO” to Somos en escrito! This poem encapsulates our conversation at LitCrawl 2020. It's an honor to present poets of this caliber.

Two new poems by Ivan Argüelles

POEM IN THE SHAPE OF AN INVISIBLE VOLCANO 
             para mis amigos de Somos en Escrito 
lava flowers colored like evening’s red and gold 
cities crescent-shaped and buried in a trance of cinders 
elevated ruins of the only remaining statue of Persephone 
elegance of hands cut from their pulse and shadowless 
Moorish architecture of the eyebrows of Vanity 
symbolism and margin of all phonetic errors 
power of silent detonations deep within the heart 
and clamoring for meat of the soul those denied passion 
stars divided in half at the molten strike of noon  
rhapsodies of words that have more sound than meaning 
the shapeless intuition of light to transcend itself 
in a glorious burst of sunflowers and solar homophones 
the tryst of lunatic and aphasic in the sewers of Tenochtitlán 
rain in porphyry torrents pouring from a cloudless sky 
and mortals like blind birds circling their own destruction 
with the tiny feet of a lost poetic meter and bewailing 
the day when thunder and mountain joined forces 
men who believed the sea was only a hemisphere of sleep 
and waves always feminine and plural were at the root 
of the enigma caused by consciousness at birth 
etymologies of distance and repercussion like drum-rolls 
in the faint ear of the adolescent afternoon assassin 
was love ever more futile and gorgeous in its escape ? 
sentient ovals of the moon in its perpetual fade 
aspirin and silken ropes that tie the shadow down 
to a body that has only existed in pharaonic dreams 
the constant disrepair of language  
illiteracy of the gramophone and sewing machine 
the enormous and inexplicable circularities of heat 
coupled with the mysterious rumors of mummies 
grief ! legends of the half-formed antiquities of rock 
tragic association of the sorrowing trigger finger 
and the dizzying instamatic nature of fire-flies 
death over and over in small print at the bottom  
and pages of water and fluid discrepancies of thought 
rushing in all directions with nowhere to go 
skies decrepit with the gods of mistaken pronouns 
oracle and augury and spit-fire demons wayward desires 
the entire panoply of historic deviation  
one by one the children and the dead going south 
volumes of unused scripts the crying at the end 
the sadness of leaves bereft of their own speech 
the longing and drift of undetected planets 
asleep forever between eons of galactic despair 
 
10-25-20 
THE SYMPOSIUM 
                        “Oímos por espejos” 
                              Lorca 
this afternoon we discuss the state of poetry 
the archaic oriental ancient unfinished rock formation 
cliffs of rumor compacted into a few variable sounds 
the one you left behind in sleep is greater for  
its absence and the one you keep repeating as 
you stutter is the divine syllable not meant for human 
mirrors the ear and its occidental other stilled 
by a single blade of grass symbol of darkening 
and grief and as you pause for a moment sitting there 
discussing the state and condition of the already ruined 
art of the incomplete you have second thoughts 
it didn’t come from Ionia it wasn’t even in existence 
when they came over the Hindu Kush maybe it’s 
not polite to maintain this symposium and the others 
ragged hermaphrodites with bodies borrowed from 
some pre-Christian novel you oppose the direction 
their loosened vowels are taking projecting solemn auguries 
about the flight of skies about the inverted afternoons of Hades 
the Stygian helmsman and his broken oars the overloaded 
verses of tempest and bird-wing the adorned and adorable 
dead putti the fringes of sound the mind in its vocabulary 
of hesitation and phonetic spectra how is one to sleep  
with a head full of abracadabra and nonsensical whims 
about the origins of the Muses mountain born and 
dressed like kites or quicksilver inspirations to song 
and dance the nodding epithets and glories whatever 
the discussion is not straightforward drunken tousle-haired 
young men with skins of antelope or leopard how graceful 
their presences which just as soon disintegrate and the volume 
turned way up and cigarette chatter and gods of the sudden 
entrance appearing and disappearing clatter junk and 
long draughts of mescal and what can you do your fingers 
isolated from the rhymes and meters and a host 
of Latin pejoratives and dialect of rumor and repercussion 
the sea comes up to your knees and sunsets of Spanish gold 
and the vitriol of lovers who envy and nothing more 
what is there to explain and the anthologies spill open 
flower-fields and names like Eurydice or Beatrice 
abound and you look over your shoulder at Night 
secretive and whispering into a bottle that holds 
the Sybil green and upside-down vatic maniac tongue 
that none can understand the very bedlam and manicomio 
that poetry should be you try to assert but for 
the nymphs holding up drowned Hylas and the rivers 
rushing to lose identity and name and the Chaos 
of all human endeavor the critics and circus-masters 
naysayers and idolaters the fashion-worshippers 
and finally tiny and redundant in appearance the Rishis 
naked and dazed smeared with Vedic mantras uttering 
and stammering with their knees the ultimate truths 
the One and the Many and the Goddess the shimmer 
of distance and Echo her manifold faces and hair 
but for a moment visible before all the smoke and ashes 
and Memory disappear and left alone in an Empty Room 
you with the ghosts of Longing and Leaf 
Silencio !

 
10-28-20 
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​​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.

1 Comment

And let your warmth tell me I can defy any tempest

9/5/2020

3 Comments

 
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.

For My Not So “American” Mother
By Omar Limias

The true epitome of una chingona mexicana
Una loba known to no boundaries
Una mamá who with daring capabilities
dives into the mask that lies behind
El Machismo
The same mask that deceives the eye
Con “la cortesía”
How is it that those hazel eyes melt of autumn
That fender and tames the serpent,
sheer into their masks?
 
Tres guerreros productos de una guerrera
Body scarred from boundless battles
Pero luchadora
And you are mi espada
The same espada my abuelitos
Handed over to you
 
El barrio was your casa
It’s mi casa
Where las mañanitas became my sixth sense
Where la señora de la panadería yelled
¡Buenos días!
 
You and your curls shared a love-hate relationship
Wilfully chaotic, yet
unpleasant with the kiss of rain.
 
You’ve become the glistening moon
and my Midas touch.
Your hand gripped onto mine,
afraid
            of
                  letting
                             go.
Tonight, let your long shades of brown
hair cascade
y canta a la rorro niño
Concealing my eyes from the light
And let your warmth tell me
I can defy any tempest.
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Omar Limias, a first-generation Chicano writer born to a working-class family, is an undergraduate student at the University of Illinois at Chicago, majoring in English with a concentration in creative writing. Of himself, he writes, “Through his veins runs Purépecha and Mixtec blood, through his heart and soul runs his Mexican heritage, and through political and social consciousness grounded on the Southwest side of Chicago runs his Chicano identity.” 

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We will never reach tomorrow for sure

8/20/2020

0 Comments

 
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​New Poems by Ivan Argüelles

TAMAZUNCHALE
 
antes de abrir la demencia para descubrir
palabra tras palabra que no tiene sentido
diccionario de pulmones ! pulgas y rascacielos !
para mejor comprender lo que pasa dentro del ladrillo rojo
al margen de la calle que nos lleva al sur donde
los muertos tratan de olvidar lo que pasó ayer
cuando la gran máquina de nubes y sonidos
se acostó al lado del mar que sufre tantas camas
inexplicables y sin eco y ahora dime que quieres
con tus ojos apagados y tu mente como sirena
de ulises llamando a todos los náufragos
que la ambulancia está lista a partir !
ya me voy  hacia la mejor tortillera que hay
para besarla en su coma de vidas paralelas
y entonces con una tristeza mundial
seguiré caminando un brazo mas famoso que el otro
una oreja de piedra y otra en ninguna parte
para qué poner en dos el uno ?
multiplicar significa morir !
 
07-21-20​
TEOCALLI
    for Joe who appeared  yesterday morning
for a fraction of an instant in the doorway
 
standing in the light of the morning sun
confused with radiance and dazzling
the stanzas of an unwritten poem shift
in the monumental distances of air
crane-feathered shafts rotate like minds
ablaze in the pyramidal distances of sky
stone built on stone stepping to heaven
solar flares like tongues speaking loud
the destructions of cloud and thunder
and ever deeper the effects of amnesia
rain drowning cities of fine dust citadels
of bone and tumult havoc of wheels
spun out of control bringing down all
ten directions and mountains reared
overnight to mark off the western margin
where the archaic sea darkens rushing
to mirror itself in a dream of feathers
and the twins up and down they go
tracing each periphery of rock and grass
measuring how far it is to the lunar aleph
fading like dissolved aspirin at dawn
what fills the ear at such an early hour
if not the Sanskrit parrot reciting
chronologies and adamantine dynasties
names none can rightly recall inscribed
on the reverse of coins or obliterated
by a mere thumb on porous sandstone
libraries ! the tomb of words and to speak
the labyrinthine dialects communing
with deities of the Unseen and Unheard
pages torn at random from the codex
depicting the origins of divine Chaos
night ! splendors of ink in canyons
where the dead revive use of their hands
such a morning atop the great Teocalli
converting sums of air into breathless voice
hail all the heights and renown of fire !
we have come down the Panamerican
visiting each of the summers of 1953
and talking backwards to mummified
relatives wrapped in serapes of liquid gold
we will never reach tomorrow for sure
the Nymph death will take one of us
before the prophesy can be fulfilled
every day is this single bright moment
standing like phantom pharaohs immobile
in the pellucid movie film of memory
you are me and I am you ! there is grass
and maps strewn all over the lawn
and avenues that stretch as far back as
the first city carved out of the womb
ten minutes apart the matching Teocallis
that cast no shadow only black light !
 
06-11-20
canción del parque chapultepec
 
cronología del aire ! arquitectura de las nubes !
soy de poco valor
que lástima ! las abejas en sus columnas verticales
de azul incendiado chupando chupando los huesos
de la hierba dormida
soy azteca
soy caldeo
soy de mucho valor
sierras de sueño blanco que veo nomás
cuando estoy nadando en mi césped de memorias
todo verde desde el hombro izquierdo de césar vallejo
hasta la rodilla derecha de garcía lorca
acumulando los dos las muchas muertes de la luz
aunque vivimos como momias en Tenochtitlan
apenas sufriendo el tránsito de los motores de las plumas
yo lo único que soy es la luna
chafada y transparente como aspirina a mediodía
y hay mares invisibles que suben los pirámides de la frontera
pistolas con ojos !
ahi viene la bala !
dame mi caballo corrompido
yo soy peruano
el último dios soy
el mero dios de la basura hieroglífica de chapultepec
fumando como nunca las chispas baratas
de las olas que han venido a ahogar el estado de california
poco a poco y a menudo con sus pronombres
y hierro de lenguas mas muertas que el sol negro
tapadera y tumba del fuego silencioso
de mis pasos en el jardín unitario de la duda
y por eso digo
yo soy
 
06-17-20
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​Ivan Argüelles is an 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.

0 Comments

For this country that is not yours

7/22/2020

3 Comments

 
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.

3 Comments

Poets of Círculo: Nancy Aidé González

7/18/2020

2 Comments

 
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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.
NANCY AIDÉ GONZÁLEZ

THE POET: A PERSONAL NARRATIVE

​I was born on a hot day on July 3rd at 12:24 PM in the Imperial Valley to my parents, Amelia and Jose Luis González. I am told I came out of my mother's womb crying for life with a full head of black hair that stuck straight up. I was named Nancy because it means “Grace of God.” My mom felt that I was a gift from God because she almost lost me several times during her pregnancy. She was fragile when she was pregnant and skinny. To her, it was a miracle that I was born because she had endured a painful pregnancy. My middle name was chosen to be Aidé because my mom loved a novela that had an actress named Aidé in it who was intelligent and beautiful. Aidé is a variant form of the name Heidi which means “of a noble kind.” When I was born, both sides of my family were at the hospital. I was the first grandchild on both sides of the family. I was greeted with an abundance of love.
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My story is interwoven with the story of my mother and father. My mother, Amelia, was born in El Paso, Texas, and was raised in Mexico by her Tía Cuca. Her father and mother had separated when she was a baby. Neither her father nor mother could raise her, so she was sent to live with her Tía Cuca in a peach-colored adobe house in Delicias, Chihuahua. Tía Cuca took in my mother, her twin sister, Tita, and youngest sister, Armida. She and her sisters worked to earn their keep at their Tía Cuca's who had them clean, cook, and feed the chickens and pigs. There she went to school and attended a very strict Christian church. My mom came to the United States when she was 16 to live with her aunt. She worked in the fields of the Central Valley, picking fruits and vegetables. Then she moved to San Bernardino to live with her Tía Cholita. My mother always felt like an outsider. She encountered racism in high school. She was told to “go back to Mexico” and called a “beaner” by her classmates. My mom learned English in high school.

My father, Jose Luis, was born in El Paso, Texas, and his family moved to San Bernardino, California, when he was a child. He did not know Spanish well. His father worked picking up garbage for the city as a sanitation worker, and his mother was a housewife. My father had four siblings. They were devout Catholics who attended church on Sundays. My father grew up playing baseball, chess, and wrestling. In high school, he was on the wrestling team. My father played saxophone in the school band. 
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My mother and father met at San Bernardino High School. My mother was enamored with him. He was popular and considered handsome by the girls. They went on dates, but my mom's aunt was strict and would only let my mom stay out until seven in the evening. My mother was very religious and conservative while my father went to parties and dated other girls. After they graduated from high school, they continued to date and fell in love. Eventually, they got married in a church in 1976. There are photos of them at the wedding in an album. My mom wore a white dress made of lace and looked radiant. My father had a light blue bow tie and cummerbund. They are smiling in their wedding pictures while they cut the three-tier cake and have their first dance. In the wedding photos, they are full of hope and joy.

They were young when they married. My mother had me a year later when she was 23 years old. She decided to go to junior college. My father worked at a carpet business for a while, laying down carpet in homes. My brother, Michael, was conceived two years later. Then my father started to work for the Santa Fe railroad. He began traveling to lay down tracks and fix the railroad tracks in different cities. My brother was born when my father began working for Santa Fe railroad. Then one day, my father injured his back, laying down the tracks for the railroad. The doctor gave my father prescription drugs for his back pains. The prescription drugs were not enough. My father turned to illegal drugs and alcohol to escape the pain. He began hanging out with people who did illicit drugs and became an addict. I was three years old at the time.

Once someone becomes addicted to drugs, their lives change, and priorities shift. The addiction takes over, the person's personality changes, this is something I learned as a child. My father's addiction affected our family. My mother did not allow drugs in our house. My father was angry, jobless, and in pain. He would leave my mother, brother, and me for weeks, then months. Each time he returned, my mother and father would argue. My father would beat my mother. I would hide in the closet among the softness of clothing in the darkness. My brother would be crying in his crib. After my father beat my mother, he would leave the house as quickly as he arrived. The door would slam and shake the house on F Street. The engine of his yellow Duster would rev then speed away. I would come out of the closet to find my mother on the floor. She usually had a black eye and was bleeding from her nose. I would lay on the floor and hug her. We would cry together. Then my mother would eventually get up off the floor. She would clean her face and put ice on her eye. We would sing Christian hymns until we were tired. A few days later, my father would come home and beg my mother for forgiveness on his knees. He would promise he would change and cry. My mother would forgive him. For a week, there would be peace. We would go to church together. My mom and dad would hold hands while watching TV. Then my father would leave.  

The last time he left, I was five years old. He called my mom from a crackling payphone in September 1982. He told my mom that he was going to make a lot of money on a business deal. The money was going to change our lives, and everything was going to improve. A few weeks passed, and my father was found with fifteen bullet holes in his chest. Joggers in the Arrowhead mountains discovered his body in the bushes. The autopsy report indicated the last thing he had eaten was blood oranges. The police did not investigate or look for who killed my father. Due to the condition of my father's body, at his funeral, the casket was closed. I remember people at the funeral whispering while looking at me, “Do you think she knows she won't see her father again?” I remember staring at the black and white tile of the funeral home while a woman from our church sang “Amazing Grace.” I understood that my father was no longer alive, and I would never see him again. 
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A recurring nightmare during my childhood was that my mother and brother were in a car accident. In my dream, they were in the yellow Datsun driving by in front of the house on F Street in San Bernardino. Then a semi-truck would come out of nowhere and crash into the Datsun. I would witness the crash in slow motion. In the dream, I would want to move from the porch to run towards them, but I could not move. I would be frozen, and when I screamed, nothing would come out of my mouth. I would wake up in a sweat, unable to move.

I learned early on that words had power. I learned that the words my father yelled at my mother hurt her. I learned that the words of the lullabies my mother sang to me soothed me. I learned that lyrics in music I listened to by the record player could move me to dance. I learned in church that the words of the Bible were important. Words could build up or tear down. They could hurt and create invisible scars. 

My mother taught me my letters and numbers when I was four years old. She was in junior college and then attended San Bernardino State University. She wanted to be an elementary school teacher. She worked as a teacher's aide when I was in kindergarten while going to University. My mother would read books to me. I loved when she read me Goodnight Moon, Curious George, Little Red Riding Hood, and Five Little Monkeys Jumping on the Bed. I would ask her to read the books over and over. When she took me to the library, I was overjoyed to pick new stories that ignited my imagination.

I struggled with reading in first grade. It wasn't until mid-first grade that I was taken to the optometrist. I had acute astigmatism and chose glasses with dark purple frames. I was delighted to have my glasses because, for the first time, everything was clear. Then to my dismay, I wore the glasses to school, and children made fun of me. They called me “four eyes,” and a boy told me, “You look ugly.” I sobbed in the bathroom all recess, and when I got back to class, I shoved my glasses to the back of my desk. I didn't wear my glasses at school. However, I needed my glasses to see, so I did not know what was going on in class. I couldn't see the letters on the board; everything was a blur. I disliked school, and I would daydream. I was seated in my chair in the classroom, but my mind was somewhere else. I would imagine being “Wonder Woman” and sliding down rainbows. It wasn't until third grade that I began to wear my glasses at school. I learned to read in third grade because I could actually see the words on the page without squinting. I had a reading anthology that my teacher sent home with me. I would practice reading every night with my mom or stepdad.

One of my favorite teachers was Mrs. Whitfield. I had her for both fifth and sixth grade in El Cajon, California. She had us read Johnny Tremain, which is an historical fiction novel written by Ester Forbes set before the American Revolution. I remember that Johnny hurts his hand as a silversmith and could no longer use it. I felt empathy for his character, who had one hand and had a love interest named Cilla. It was the first young adult novel that I read that moved me. After reading Johnny Tremain, I became an avid reader. I would go home and read until it was time for me to go to sleep. Mrs. Whitfield also had my class memorize a poem a week. I remember we had to recite poetry to her and get graded. I memorized “Eldorado” by Edgar Allen Poe and “The Road Not Taken” by Robert Frost. She also let us pick poetry to read in front of the class. I was timid and I remember I chose to read “Let America Be America Again” by Langston Hughes in front of my class. I was only 12, and I did not fully understand all the concepts the poem addressed. I remember the line, “Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed-…” I remember shaking while reading the poem, each word was loudly spoken with conviction. The class clapped after I read the poem, and Mrs. Whitfield said, “Nancy is a poet!” Mrs. Whitfield believed in me and pushed me out of my comfort zone. She expected a lot from me as a student, and I excelled in her class. She made me feel seen. She awarded me a student of the year award in six grade.
​

I don't think there is an exact moment that one becomes a writer. I just know that I liked to write. I remember writing a short story about a grandfather and granddaughter in seventh grade. My English teacher read the story to the class and said I was talented. After class, he took me outside and told me I should consider going to college. I told him I planned on going to college when I grew up. My mom and stepdad had ingrained the idea into my mind that I was going to college when I was six years old. 
​

My mom would take my brother and me to daycare to attend afternoon classes at San Bernardino State University. After class, my mom would let my brother and me run in the grass. My mom met my stepdad, John, in a Mexican history class. They were friends at first then they began dating after my father passed away. I did not trust John when I met him. I would not talk to him and did not make eye contact with him. Then he slowly became an integral part of my life. He would take my mom, brother, and me to pizza. He would babysit my brother and me. My brother and I did things with him that we were not allowed to do when my mom was around, like jump on the bed and dance. He took us to have chili dogs for breakfast. He told us dad jokes, and he still does. My stepdad accepted my brother and me as his own. John and my mom got married when I was nine years old. My brother and I were in the wedding. I was the flower girl, and my brother was the ring bearer. My mom and stepdad have been married for thirty-four years. It is from them that I know how love can change lives. 
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In high school, I would write in a journal about my thoughts and feelings daily. I took Honors American Literature, where we read The Scarlett Letter and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. I took Honors World Literature, where we read Things fall Apart by Chinua Achebe and other African literature. I never saw myself in the books and stories that I read until my sophomore year at California State University, Sacramento. I took a Chicana Literature course taught by Professor Graciela B. Ramirez who assigned books by Chicana authors that impacted my life. I read Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza [1987], a semi-autobiographical work by Gloria E. Anzaldúa. I read Massacre of the Dreamers: Essays on Xicanisma by Ana Castillo. I read This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color, the feminist anthology edited by Cherríe Moraga and Gloria E. Anzaldúa. I read The Moths and other Short Stories by Helena Maria Viramontes. I devoured these books because I saw myself in the essays and literature. I found myself and my culture described within the pages on these books, and it was empowering. It was the first time in my life that I thought I could be a writer. I was published in Calaveras Station, the literary journal at Sacramento State. I was overjoyed when I saw my poem in print.  

Years went by, and I became an elementary school teacher. I would write poems in journals and napkins, but I never shared my work. It was not until 2011 when I decided I was going to take my writing seriously. I became very depressed because I wanted a child. I had been trying to conceive a child for a year. I have polycystic ovary syndrome, and I was put on metformin by my doctor. It made me ill, but I stayed on the metformin. Then one day, my mother said, “I hate seeing you sad. Perhaps you should accept that you might not ever conceive a child.” I contemplated this idea for a few weeks. Then I decided that if I could not conceive a child that I would give birth to thoughts and words in the form of poetry.

Poetry brought me back to life. I began writing poems and joined Escritores Del Nuevo Sol. At my first meeting, I read a poem about my female ancestors called “The Ones that Live On.” It was my soul that urged me to write the poem. Francisco X. Alarcón was a member of Escritores Del Nuevo Sol; he encouraged me to keep writing. Francisco X. Alarcón had a significant impact on me as a poet. He asked me if he could publish my poem on Poets Responding to SB1070 on Facebook. There, on Poets Responding to SB1070, I met other writers who were activists from across the nation. Joining a community of poets helped me gain confidence and discover my voice. I also joined the Sacramento Poetry Center and began hosting a poetry reading series called Mosaic of Voices for three years. I met brilliant poets while hosting the reading series. The readings were on Sunday afternoons; they became like church. Each poetry reading was spiritually and intellectually moving. I began submitting my work, and my poems were published in several literary journals and anthologies. My poetry friends became like a second family. 
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When I begin writing, I don't know where the poem is going or what will spill out onto the page. Sometimes I write poetry, then take a few lines and write another poem. Other times, a whole poem will come to me in the middle of the night, and I will get up and write it. Poetry that comes to me in the middle of the night rarely needs to be edited. Some poems I revise and re-edit until I feel they are done. I know when a poem is done when I feel it in my heart that there are no words I want to change or images I want to insert. Writing allows me to explore my emotions and communicate ideas about the world around me. Poetry has helped me heal and has forced me to deal with pain. It has helped me understand my life experiences. It has helped me forgive others and myself. I have written poems about my father and my infertility. It has helped me transform into a more introspective individual. Part of being a writer is observing and experiencing each moment. I notice the smallest things, dust in the air, the smell of earth, and sunshine through leaves. Poetry allows me to take my pain and make it into something heartbreakingly raw and beautiful. My soul moves me to put pen to paper and give birth. 
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THE POETRY OF NANCY AIDÉ GONZÁLEZ:   
“…something heartbreakingly raw and beautiful
”
La Virgen de Las Calles
           for Ester Hernandez

​She stands on the
busy street corner
selling delicate red
and white roses
hugged by baby's breath
and luminous cellophane
resting in a
once discarded
plastic bucket.
 
She understands the innate
beauty of roses,
their fragility
their fragrant hope
as they grow slowly
from bud to emerge
embracing change,
as they flush into
full bloom.
 
She knows of
piercing thorns
and truth of crossing
barbed wire borders.
 
She understands
the prickling sting,
the aculeus
of being an outsider.
 
She wears a large
sweatshirt with USA
emblazoned in block
print across her chest
but she misses Mexico
and the small town
she was raised in.
 
A red and green
rebozo hangs down
upon her head shielding
her from the fulgent sun,
a gift from her mother,
a reminder of home.
           
People stride past her
lost in their own thoughts
hustling to work,
on pressing errands,
wandering down the tangle
of the Los Angeles landscape.
 
She is La Virgen de las Calles,
waiting with a
heavy heart,
full of yearning,
dreaming of
new horizons,
a fountain of
humble tenderness
and abounding love.
 
La Virgen de las Calles
comprehends the
nature of roses,
their vulnerability
their need for nettle. 
Rose Ranfla

​Riding in the ’63 Impala
cruis’n  el corazón del barrio
passing by
carnalitos y carnalitas running through sprinklers
abuelas y abuelos on the porch talk’n about the old days
cholos playing handball at the high school
women in the beauty shop getting their hair did
rollin’ past
                          taquerías                              panaderías                     heladerías
Bumping
I’m Your Puppet
            La La Means I love You
                        Thin Line Between Love and Hate
                                    Sabor  A Mí
                                                               through the streets of Califaztlan
 
Chrome spoke wheels spin
low and slow
variations of pink paint layers glisten
hard top covered in a garden of  hand painted gypsy roses
lean back upon velvet pink interior
flip the switch
hit the hydraulics
                        dip and raise
                                                dip and raise
                                                                        hop       hop     hop
                                                                                                off the ground in the intersection
the journey has just begun
let’s chase the immensity
 of the moment
 in estilo. 
Serenade

​I become earth’s
remembrance of everything
creviced skin of red rock
endless pregnant season
toothless silence
 
I want to understand this world, your scars
stay cradled by tree arms
delve in splinters
 
my womb is filled with clay
barren it throbs
 
I want to say many things
but my words are trapped in caverns
where bats hide from redundancies
no one told me of the gritty essence
of the residue that settles
 
 
Black star dying
innumerable deaths in this life
we have come here to the waters
we are he and she
or man and woman
scent of copper and jasmine
we sip smoldering gravity
separated space fills
a serenade in golden afternoon
 
unborn twins sob
otherworldly whimpers                      timeless
they can be heard by the bees and ants
they enter this wasteland        we inhabit
nameless they will remain, my infants
 
Adrift we are.              Come to me.                 I am alone.
wild horses turnover the headstones
 
take my ovaries           spine               skull
take the truth I search for in crushed leaves,
in the fading contrails of fading light.
Zapata y Frida
​
By chance they meet at a bar
she drinks tequila shots
she wants to be life itself
he caresses his gun
he longs for uprising.
 
he strokes his mustache, his wet lips glistening
she touches her brow, her eyes aflame
they speak of monkeys and flowers, of war and borders
in the corner they become the world itself, spinning off axis
they laugh loudly and don’t notice people staring
“Take me away,” she says.
 
II
She places her hands on his face
studies his indigenous features
examines his eyes
“I know you” she says.   “I have known you all my life. 
You will cause my slow death.”
 
III
She unbraids her hair
her pink ribbons fall to the tierra
he take off her embroidered dress
he places his hands upon her small breasts
they devour each other’s skin
thrusting and precise piercing
moaning until night melts into brightness
there are  no promises made
upon the wet grass
 
after she places her head upon his chest
and hears  the drum of his heart
“You will remember me.” she says.
 
IV
They ride horses through Morelos
near sugar cane fields
“It is better to die on your feet than live on your knees,” he says.
“Death knocks at my door,” she says.
“I have no mercy,” he says.
“Please have mercy on me,” she says.
 
VII
The next time they make love
she unhinges him
touches the wilderness with abandon
 
hunger drives them deeper into
the topography of vermillion desire
 
VIII
An eagle sits on a cactus
and watches them dance to corridos
she pulls him close with her rebozo
“We are home,” she says.
 
IX
That night she has a dream
she is in the forest alone
she is a deer and arrows puncture her flesh
she awakes sobbing  and gasping
paint splattered on her face
 
She reaches for him.
“No llores,” he says.
“I want to be your soldadera,” she says.
 
X
He vanishes in the middle of the night
he leaves her a rifle with a rose in the barrel
she takes her brush and paints.
Railways
 
Smell of dirt and sweat
Mingled with whiskey and cigarettes
the train resounds, he is home.
 
All day he mends railroads
comes home & takes of his dusty boots,
the sour aroma of twilight.
 
I watch his face
think of the softness of the figs
growing in the backyard,
play with dolls.
 
He calls me outside
talks to me as he smokes a joint
about constellations and the dangers of night,
I tell him of the butterfly I caught and set free.
 
The red porch paint peels,
nearby the cactus grows entangled
this is our small space
his jagged hand caresses my face,
above a shooting star scars the sky.
 
Then he and my mother fight
A blur of fists, blood
his departure marked with dissipating smoke.
 
I don’t want to know the details 
of where he went
or how he felt as all those bullets
punctured his flesh.
 
All I hear is his distant voice on the cracking 
phone line saying, “I will be home soon.”
 

On the way to the funeral
we stop as the train roars 
car after car after car speed by
weight & rhythm of wheel on steel,
he has gone home.​
Foreigner

I am a foreigner in my own country
there is torment in the disconnection,
I examine the geometries of mountains and
plateaus
pass by clamorous rivers,
the land remains the same.
 
The land remains the same
in the mirror, reflection
my face is my own
my wide brown eyes
my carefully drawn red lips,
the world has changed.
 
The world has changed,
I send a letter to a good friend
Wait for an answer that might never arrive,
the mailbox is empty
I must fill my own emptiness.
 
I must fill my own emptiness
the dirty laundry piles up,
politicians recite alternative lies on television
lying has somehow become the norm,
I march with millions in protest against injustice
raise my voice for the voiceless,
raids round up “unauthorized” immigrants
to be sent to Mexico,
there is an unraveling of fear and hate.
 
There is an unraveling of fear and hate
my soul knows the unsayable,
I drive to work and back home
throw things on the ground to see
how they fall,
pick up wilted flowers
try to revive them,
find a dead seagull on the path
blood encrusted with dirt
broken wing hanging,
I search for the bare skinned essence of
light within darkness.
 
I search for the bare skinned essence of
light within darkness,
at the park a small girl holds a red balloon
she becomes distracted by laughter
lets go of the string
watches the balloon float to meet the sun,
I want to peel the sun
lay my fingers on permanence.
 
I want to peel the sun
lay my fingers on permanence,
rays illuminate a thick black arrow tattooed
on the cashier’s forearm,
I want to follow the arrow
to where it might take me,
so I may arrive at the unseen,
become connected.
 
I am a foreigner in my own country
the land remains the same
yet my world has changed,
memory filters through lace wings
those I thought I knew,
have become strangers.
Expedition of the Heart
for Christina Fernandez

A woman’s voice whispers in español
there is no silence during daylight hours
only memory arranged and scattered                          days that become years
map charted life
air thick with absence,  un canto.
​1910, Leaving Morelia, Michoacán
 
Through Michoacán the fishermen throw
 nets into clear waters
fish sink          heart sick
light is submerged
revolution leaves dust
thick insurgent shapes arc
 
She clasps her hands gazes out
in the womb a child stirs
door-heart creaks in the empty house
resolve ripens becomes honeyed
she has died and has been resurrected
she must leave the river that sings
now the monarch beckons.
1919, Portland, Colorado
​

Stains have been scrubbed in laundry detergent
bleached in stark bubbles
that shine like prismatic marbles
creating rhythm on washboard ridges
soft hands massage grime, bitterness
 
Wooden pins fasten three shirts and a bed sheet
alabaster they flap in the breeze
 
She knows she must travel lightly
leave segments
 to soak
            to lift
                        to float feathered
                                    and bask in the impermanent sunlight.
1927, Going Back to Morelia
​

What is known, will be known
what I take in this black chest is not mine, it is ours.
 
These tracks will take me back
to the smell of copal and agave nectar
where I will kick the scorpion and hold the snake
I will invoke la Virgen.
 
I clasp these words written on crumpled paper
words that have carried me through vacant terrain
I hold these needles which I will use to thread together shreds
mend each emotion filament by filament.
 
I am not who I was
you will know me anew
I will rename each radiant blade of grass
each distant storm after you.
1930, Transporting Produce, Outskirts of Phoenix. Arizona
​

Be careful not to bruise the apples
that is not to spoil the flesh
I was told to twist the stem gently
leave the tree as it is
fruit is placed into wooden crates, carried to the truck
 
We were told there would be water and a bathroom              there wasn’t
we were told we wouldn’t be sprayed with pesticides,                      we were
we were told many lies.
 
We watch majestic seasons clinched in foliage shift
follow the crops in old cars where they lead
we are strangers yet friends
we are hombres y mujeres
always leaving behind                        something       someone             each other
always searching orchards and rows for distant secrets, trying not to bruise.
1945, Aliso Village, Boyle Heights, California
​

I trust one and perhaps I trust none
I wear an apron
sweep and mop the houses of others, then my own
 
I clean mirrors so I can see
what is and what is not
wipe reflections with rags
as solitude encloses
 
After dusting, motes remain and gather
these granules the soul accumulates.
 
How far I have come,
each sepia detail crisscrossing
small daily miracles.
1950, San Diego

Faith has brought me to where I am
These things I touch with my two hands:
a hot stove, pots, pans, a cup of tea, my children
I belong to myself, to others.
 
This space is mine
this spot where the floor is illuminated
                                                and love collapses
I need to tell you, you are enough
 you will leave pieces of yourself scattered                through the world
you will be drawn back by generations
of madres, padres, hermanas, y hermanos
you will envision your ancestors existed
far removed from desolation
that they were not  lost
 
You will scrape together details of their lives
become the author of your history
tell their stories with your words
 
Our narratives will continue
we will find our way home.
​© Poetry: Nancy Aidé González
Nancy Aidé González is a Chicana poet, educator, and activist. Her work has appeared in Huizache: The Magazine of Latino Literature, La Tolteca, Mujeres De Maiz Zine, DoveTales, Seeds of Resistance Flor y Canto: Tortilla Warrior, Hinchas de Poesía, La Bloga, Fifth Wednesday Journal and several other literary journals. Her work is featured in the Poetry of Resistance: Voices for Social Justice, Sacramento Voices: Foam at the Mouth Anthology, and Lowriting: Shots, Rides, and Stories from the Chicano Soul.

  
Edited by poet and writer, and member of Círculo de Poetas y Escritores, Lucha Corpi, for Somos en escrito Magazine. ​
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