Category: Women

"The rub recipe that’s been in your matriarch’s lineage before your hombre was even a thing"

4/28/2020

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.

Dial M for Machismo

by Marisol Lozano

Men, Mensos, Machos, Mamones.

Los hombres tell me my shorts are too short, I’ll make the older men think bad thoughts.
Los hombres tell me to cook, clean, be a woman.
Can’t you see, estupida? The machistas mow the grass you lay your head on while you think.
Los hombres are turning me into a consumable chick, breed as many kids as you can, in the baby mill inside your body.
You fucking dog.
Starve your kids, starve your hombre, bury them and roast them like winning hogs.
Salivate thinking about the man who has been roasting underground with potatoes, onions, chilies. Think about the sweet basting sauce that was carefully poured over his thick light skin. Basting liquid that was slowly and carefully massaged on his body making sure it made its way down the scores on his body.
Think, think, think.
Think about the rub recipe that’s been in your matriarch’s lineage before your hombre was even a thing. Let your mouth water as you think about crisping his skin on the grill
over coal. Watching carefully making the skin glassy and crispy for a midnight snack.
Los hombres no son Buenos hombres.

Los Machos stand by the wall, one foot planted on the ground one touching the wall.
Los machos say ‘en mi casa yo mando’ Code for, ‘My women. Eat my shit.’

Los hombres y los machos van a ver.

Los hombres y los machos are allowed to get angry.
They yell,
They kick,
They stomp,
They curse,
They drink.

They grab you like a doll and throw you to the wall.
Los machos named, Mario, Mariano, Marco, wrap their thick big hands around your neck and refuse to let you breathe.
Los machos suffocate you. Finish you off on the floor kicking and dragging you around your home.
Clumps of hair scattered on the floor, scratch marks on the floor trying to save yourself, broken nails, ruined face.

Grab a fistful of el macho’s hair and bring his skull to your direct vision. Slowly bring a dull knife to where his forehead and hairline meet, scrape the knife against the soft sweaty skin, and stab. Slowly, insert the dull blade into the skin making sure to hit the right spots that make him squirm.
Remind el macho why you’re doing this, he needs to learn.

Go around his head forcing the blade on him making him wince, feel the same pain you do. Hum a soft tune while you dig deep into his tissue scraping, digging giggling. Pull his scalp and listen to slurping and pulling of his tissue.
Listen to the cries of the demon, relish in his pain. He deserves this, he needs to learn and become broken. Do it for the failed women, who were fooled by these men.

Los hombres, los machos, y los mamones do as they please,
Cheat,
Lie,
Steal,
Laugh,
And we’re supposed to be okay with it.

Marisol Lozano is a BA English student with a concentration in Literature and a minor in Film Studies at UTRGV. A Chicana from the Fronteras trying to seam her Mexican and American identities together. A daughter of a Mexican man who was never swayed by the American dream and a proud Tejana. She loves her parents, sisters, dog, and grandparents.

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

8/22/2019

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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.

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

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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.

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--

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.

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Just as the divine spark engenders in the earth...

3/10/2017

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Girafa - Giraffe (Detail) Mixed Media, 12” X 28” Painting by Vanessa Garcia www.vanessagarcia.org

Two Poems/Dos Poemas

Por/By Carlota Caulfield

Inner chamber of the seashell (divine whisper)

And they will say: “A bit of smoke writhed in each drop of his blood.” -- Gilberto Owen

It would seem that I possess a religious bent;
a proof: a tongue sufficient
It would seem that I possess a religious bent;
to contain, direct, refined, and solid
has led me to the five points
of the universe: Quincunx.

Four rooms courtyard
that inclines its multiple forms
that resides in matter
that has vital layers
ceremonial passageways
of other architectures.

Just as the divine spark engenders in the earth    Guillermo Marín, Mitla, City of the Dead
life in all its richness, thus the Quincunx, seed
of a revealed cosmology, flowers in a dazzling
system of images and architectural designs that,
by being part of the universe of forms, suffers
frequently from a deceptively elemental logic.

What completes this text
are monumental stones
there where a hand learned how
to move, sculpt and assemble.

Eduardo's voice traces a map of Mexico on the earth
while he tells of how “the colonial chroniclers never
referred to the architecture of Mitla without combined aversion
and admiration… Thus to speak of Mictlán (place of the dead)
we must detach ourselves from the Western concept of death…”

My absurd dizziness no longer rocks in the branches of the tule tree;
now, in the land of the spirits, it is content with a puff of wind
and a bold guffaw that perforates my eardrums. Yes, the church bells
have begun to set loose a timely splendor and murmurs:
Think of it this way, that amid the rubble of my energy suddenly looms
a presence, like that of a hallowed place, door of musical allusions.

I detach myself from the group.
I am content to see.
It matters. Several bolts of air
swerve around my
unfailing audacity
and city of voices
there where the wind
does not sound unfamiliar to the ear
nor is seeing spirits
an act of inner shadows.

What could be loved is erased
and eyes and lips, light and humidity
are stripped bare.

The enigma of flavors
is also resolved.
The night before kisses
Crossed two linguistic points.
Now there is no dialogue.

From the four cardinal points
will soon rise a cold and
ungenerous gust of wind. You will dissolve.

My death is associated with the earth,
but the other dead man in question
will have to cross a long and mighty river.

Techichi the little dog will guide him:
naked he will cross spiky peaks
and drink terrible storms.
The wind will slice his skin
like an orange.

More than any heartbreak, worse than death      Albius Tibullus, Book I, Poem VIII
itself, “What hurts is touching the body,
long kisses, and pressing thigh to thigh.”

With transfigured vision,
Friar Bernardo of Alburquerque
ordered built between 1535 and 1580
the façade of the north side
of the Oaxaca cathedral in the image…

From the four room courtyard flow moving friezes of water.
I read: the gods' anger with those who are ungenerous in spirit
was not placated by sacrifices of armadillos, rabbits, birds
and deer. Misers were condemned
to a subterranean palace to hoist dark shadows.

Once again Eduardo's voice blends with my mental torrent
that encircles the marvelous mountains, copulates with the stone
And drinks milk droplets from the tree that used to nourish dead children.
Inhabitants of the clouds. Branches from which I hang.
Schumann lieder that fuse with my own visions.
Copious tongues of rock: to listen, to recognize,
to descend to the interior of a jacaranda:
to design the interior patio
“was to get back onto the trail of my poem      Propertius, Book I, Poem IV
after biting my hands unreasonably
and stamping my feet in doubt and anger.”

Some elegiac distiches pound me with excessive skill.
What am I doing in the center of the city of the dead
humming a thousand popular tunes and with all those
poems breaking over me?

What is my skin doing turned into a spongy substance
enjoying each voicemark and stroke,
each perforation, each drop of blood that seeps from my pores?

Blessed recollection,
there where a scornful grimace
offers me landscapes.
Blessed misery of broken borders
that turns the heart into a semi prophet.
that “das harts iz a halber novi”
that is completed and heard
by a system of images:
it hits and turns with skill
for I was born in a city by the sea
with excessively white sands
and I never made a pact
with its hot winds
or its salts projected in my shadows.

If the sea breeze took my breath away,
I drowned and was resuscitated. And my mother
who couldn't hear the voices that filled
the whole house and went with me,
spoke alone with nanny Blasa.
Later they put an amulet on my chest,
There where no one could see presences or memories.
I think only of all the courage I've lacked
to go back to hearing the voices,
raised now, loud, without any semblance of
restraint, flowery battle of my own soul.

POEMA BILINGÜE/BILINGUAL POEM

From Quincunce / Quincunx. Translated by Mary G. Berg and Carlota Caulfield.

Estudio cromático

Te gustaría lentamente tatuarte con las notas del trombón.
Decir, no tengo más que esto, lo que abre la epidermis
y hace brotar sangre,
lo que queda cuando la muerte lo arrasa todo,
menos los sonidos del cuerpo.
Y así las uñas guardarán su color rosáceo,
los senos su firmeza,
el cuello su tersidad.
Reconocerás el privilegio enorme que se aloja
en las venas y podrás descender a un centro de quietud
sin aferrarte a nada.
Entonces la respiración empezará una vez más,
y con ella una salivación anfibia repugnante
hasta que tu mano se mueva con rapidez
y el sudor pierda su pestilencia.
Pero no sufrirás vértigo.
La avalancha caerá sobre ti como bendición.
Tu boca vibrará y escupirá hilos imperceptibles.
Después llegará el viento loco y comenzará el concierto.

Chromatic Study

You'd like to tattoo yourself slowly with the trombone's notes.
Saying: I only have this, this that rips my skin open
and makes blood gush out,
this that remains when death wipes out everything,
except the sounds of the body.
And thus fingernails will keep their rosy hue,
breasts stay firm,
neck smooth.
You will recognize the enormous privilege lodged
in your veins and be able to descend to a center of quietude,
breaking all ties.
Then breathing will begin yet again,
and with it, a repugnant amphibious salivation
until your hand moves rapidly
and sweat loses its pestilence.
But you will not suffer from vertigo.
The avalanche will sweep over you in benediction.
Your mouth will vibrate and spit out imperceptible threads.
Later the mad wind will blow and the concert will begin.

Carlota Caulfield, a poet, writer, translator and literary critic, has published extensively in English and Spanish in the United States, Latin America and Europe. Her most recent poetry books are JJ/CC and Cuaderno Neumeister / The Neumeister Notebook. The recipient of several awards, Caulfield is the W. M. Keck Professor in Creative Writing and head of the Spanish and Latin American Studies Program at Mills College, Oakland, California. Her webpage is www.carlotacaulfield.org.

Mary G. Berg, a Resident Scholar at the Women’s Studies Research Center at Brandeis University, Boston, Massachusetts, has translated poetry by Juan Ramón Jiménez, Clara Roderos, Marjorie Agosín and Carlota Caulfield and novels by Martha Rivera (I’ve Forgotten Your Name), Laura Riesco (Ximena at the Crossroads), Libertad Demitropulos (River of Sorrows). Her most recent translations are of collections of stories by Olga Orozco and Laidi Fernández de Juan.

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SOMOS EN ESCRITO
The Latino Literary Online Magazine

POETRY
POESÍA

"The rub recipe that’s been in your matriarch’s lineage before your hombre was even a thing"

Rinconcito

Dial M for Machismo

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

Tres Millas a mi Libertad

SILENCE OR SUBTLETY IS NOT HER THING

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

From The Introduction

From Poem Songs

A Message from Las Hijas de la Madre

Re Membering Herstory

Rememory of Strange Fruit

Nom de Guerre

Just as the divine spark engenders in the earth...

Two Poems/Dos Poemas

Inner chamber of the seashell (divine whisper)

POEMA BILINGÜE/BILINGUAL POEM

Estudio cromático

Archives

Categories

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ABOUT SOBRE

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​​​SOMOS EN ESCRITOThe Latino Literary Online Magazine

POETRY​POESÍA

"The rub recipe that’s been in your matriarch’s lineage before your hombre was even a thing"

Rinconcito

Dial M for Machismo

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

Tres Millas a mi Libertad

SILENCE OR SUBTLETY IS NOT HER THING

Excerpts from The Canción Cannibal Cabaret, a performance workBy Amalia Ortiz​From The Introduction

​From Poem Songs​A Message from Las Hijas de la Madre

​Re Membering Herstory

​Rememory of Strange Fruit

​Nom de Guerre

Just as the divine spark engenders in the earth...

Two Poems/Dos Poemas

Inner chamber of the seashell (divine whisper)

POEMA BILINGÜE/BILINGUAL POEM

Estudio cromático

Archives

Categories

HOME INICIO

​ABOUT SOBRE

SUBMIT ENVIAR

​SUPPORT ​APOYAR

Donate and Make Literature Happen

SOMOS EN ESCRITO
The Latino Literary Online Magazine

POETRY
POESÍA

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

From The Introduction

From Poem Songs

A Message from Las Hijas de la Madre

Re Membering Herstory

Rememory of Strange Fruit

Nom de Guerre

ABOUT SOBRE

SUPPORT
APOYAR