Heartburn
 
Yesterday I discovered what anaemia is:
quiet snowflakes turned the sky pale,
the grass capped in frost or is it called escaracha?
I whisper the word and try to hold on to it,
the way my tongue pushes against my teeth.
The day my mother departed,
cold moved in and innocence was frozen,
along with my meaning of all those words:


mami,              madré.             hija,                 niña


tongue-tied something got lost in translation.
They’ve given me iron to strengthen me,
if only it could forge us back together.
I try to eat my way back to you, so much flesh and blood.
I try to recover every dish you made me but I’m
still hungry, surrounded by empty plates
and the aroma of what was served.
Waves of indigestion chase me out of a dream.



Foreign
 
They’ve sampled my tradition in a spoonful,
too curious to refuse.
 
I’m a buffet laid out, my language colourful,
a sea teeming with strange delights,
 
that laps at their ears
the edge of their understanding.
 
It could be smooth sailing, I’ve heard,
but I feel a storm in the air
 
caught between hot and cold, clouded
partitions create boundaries
 
between concrete and abstract
why must there be one or the other?
 
I’ve always been good at balancing
the two from my head to my heart.
 
They say they care but I can’t read
their lips. I beg at their table
 
like wasps or flies trying to snatch back

pieces they’ve appropriated, I end up starved.



Time Machine

Spying an aeroplane smooth and silver
far above land, between space and rock,
living              two                  lives:
 
above sea-level, afraid of heights
saddled by a dialect, my tongue
blooms with foreign wounds,
 
I long to return to the shallows of the sea –
floating – or taste the crust of an arepa,
salted like your skin.  Touch down
 
on a landing strip and stake claim
to abandoned places with starfruit trees
shining ripe, straining to be plucked.
 
Let’s return: we’ll tread the wide, once
teeming asphalt, still hot from the sun.
Jet-lagged, no one will notice how much
 

                   we’ve changed.

​TAK Erzinger copyright 2023 from the collection Tourist (Sea Crow Press, Massachusetts)

by Amanda Rosas
​

Hominy is Dad standing in the kitchen, 
steam beginning to brim over his glasses 
as he pours sliced calabacita into an hoya 
already simmering a pork caldo.
Hominy is white, is yellow, is eaten out of
brown Dad hands from the can as if he 
were still that young varón working
the graveyard shift at the Corpus refinery, 
the perfume of lava soap rising from the
oil left over in his palm taken up to his mouth.
Hominy is a bowl of otoño and dad sipping tuetano 
out of the soup bone’s soul, its animal flavor, 
the decadent essence of life.
Hominy is the bullet hole in the heart, 
where dad is simmering you a soup.
In the flesh, still alive.

(Scroll down to hear Amanda recite her poem) 

by David Estringel

Después de la estela
 
Yellow wallpaper
peels
behind faded pictures
in dusty frames,
falling to the floor
in ashen drifts—ephemeral--
of births and wakes,
stabbing
to the heart
like first kisses
or cold sips
of Mexican Coke
but dulled
from memory
(and time)
like giftless Christmases
and old housedresses,
drying on the line.
What ghosts roam these halls,
Haunting bowls
of waxed fruit
and glass doorknobs,
lingering ‘round saints’ alters,
dust bunnies,
and jelly jar glasses
like palls
or the bitter of burnt almonds.
As a pale pink echo
of rose
peeks through the air’s must,
a voice whispers, “Recuerdas esto, ahora,”
leaving me to chuckle and smile.
 
How silly it is to mourn life as we live it.

Caja de memoria
 
Fingers,
gingerly sifting
through ecos de lavanda,
praise spirits
of modest treasures
in silent prayer.
Ribbon-tied letters.
A lock of hair tied with blue ribbon.
Viejos dólares de plata.
Tarjetas de oración a los santos (two for St. Jude).
Pressed flowers in wax paper.
A faded scapular.
Old report cards (Never was any good at Math).
Broken reading glasses.
Una camelia encerada
and
the smell of her.
Amén.

David Estringel is a Xicanx writer/poet with works published in literary publications, such as The Opiate, Azahares, Cephalorpress, Lahar, Poetry Ni, DREICH, Rigorous, Somos En escrito, Hispanecdotes, Ethel, The Milk House, Beir Bua Journal, and The Blue Nib. David received his BA in English at the University of Texas at Brownsville and his MFA in Creative Writing at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley. Currently, he is a working on his PhD in English (World Literature) and a Graduate Instructor of Composition at Texas A&M-Commerce. His first collection of poetry and short fiction Indelible Fingerprints was published in April 2019, followed his second and third poetry collections Blood Honey and Cold Comfort House in 2022. David has written four poetry chapbooks, Punctures (2019), PeripherieS (2020), Eating Pears on the Rooftop (2022), and Golden Calves (coming March 2023). His new book of micro poetry little punctures, a collaboration with UK illustrator, Luca Bowles, will be released in December 2022. Connect with David on Twitter @The_Booky_Man and his website www.davidaestringel.com.

by Reynaldo George Hinojosa Jr.

Tejanos
 
the breadth of my blood spans the rio grande, tunneling
every root into earth laid track, veins of cartesian slanted
monasteries praying for safe keeping and return. all love’s
angles need me dry as a bridge across centuries drifting,
drifting along tributaries, my eyes lifting border weight sunk
into lines like dams. god dammed me turn and bound sand
coffin lullabies shrinking miles bordering my measured body.
i crenellate, i bridge too far, moated, i solemnly melt harbors
into ice. brandished masks, graphite flares, long-speared songs
slit cascading tracks i can no longer see. beneath coffins, i river
along drifting castles, monuments laid against footprints and
obelisks turned fountains. too many feet leave dirt to consume
my blood, longing to be a mother for every lost child stuck in
the mouth of my soiled lands, softened under moonlight perils.
                                   
                                    &
 
my silver edged swards gulp air, grip for supple bodies in side
shore flotillas, clambering shoulders for another damp-
pressed lodged throat stuck from the same people split down
centuries long edges; umbra against moonlight, shaded dark
graphite bursts of genetic lacuna. arbitrary lacunae bodies
speak silence, a generation of silence, no longer listening
to wardens warranting god damned word-spills flooding me,
my river, my heart soaked in tragedy, soaked in sores weeping
my river, my name, my sense of belonging. my body is split in
imaginary sequence, sequins of words cleared out by spectacle
harvesters and mage icons. harvest my image, my name, my soil
forgotten to cowboys, forget vaqueros, lassoed my last memory
buried in the sand, in the clay, in oil stuck in the throat of nations.
 
                                    &
 
image iconoclasts barrel for barrel, priced, stocked, laminated to
touch, touch towered drill rigs silting my soil, my violent soil sold
and sunk beneath static statues and markers covered with moss, for-
gotten and left to wonder. i was born here hundreds of years ago,
but can’t remember why. when can i reduce the root to a seed? of all
the memories i carry across my body, i recall mesquite bean pods
indifferently, discarding yellow-tanned honey as nothing more
than a forgotten name. cabeza de pozo is only a myth to my hands,
to my lungs, my hands no longer carry generations of silence, my body
is already filled. i’ve eaten my share, drank the rio grande, subsumed
what is left, whispers still fill my cup—branch from the river, branch
from my throat, branch the sky, branched in solitude separate stilled
and stolen loose soil saved for savagery. i am witness to its reflection still
standing in tides grown from my blood. my blood is a memory i sift through,
speaking its name along the camino real. upwards, norteño, ever upwards
to heaven’s song: sol, my sol, my soil, my name buried deep within the soil.

Jalapeño Smoke
 
my mother burns jalapeños on the comal
choking me with centuries long memories
 
its sharp-sticks saturate the air like a mist
body full, expanding corners in my lips and nostrils
 
the piercing plates lap up my tongue
feeding me memorials of earth
 
verde encerrado en una coma
hooked, lined like mexico
jealous of my mouth
            that still speaks
 
its blister berry song lulls fire
torched-heart and fireworked
 
i remember the dreary fumes
steeling my name
cutting through my throat
 
capturing my voice alive
carving out the well’s swollen gland
speaking, speaking the spanish name
 
el lamento, razed buds steamed in effigy
torched-bust hammer-filled balloons
 
pyrrhic tastes, burn-swelled sweat
the arch of its name sinks like a submarine
rises like a whale
splashes long rivers we call home
 
el lamento, for loose soil
it levels me in ancient serenity
fusing its long root in my veins
 
mi raza es contigo, cuaresmeño, fat with liquid blister
circular spirit in the house that never leaves me
troubadour of the flamed-tongued vineyard
 
dragging me to the root
hardened es posible con suave
 
la muerte es tu clave
to the scorched light
burn-scarred across the shipless sail
heart-driven and anchored in me
 
mirrored to the centuries long current
buried in the light of my mother’s cooking
smoke-washed dream of my north star
 
searing every word for home
the earth still recognizes me
 
its fruits still hold my name

Reynaldo George Hinojosa Jr. is a Tejano-born writer and musician. He acquired his MFA in Creative Writing and Bachelor’s in Liberal Arts from the University of Texas at El Paso, and an Associate’s in Music from San Antonio College. Since arriving in Michigan, Reynaldo helped build, and currently helps run, the bookstore cooperative Book Suey. He is a 2022-2024 Lead Teaching Artist Fellow with Inside Out Literary Arts. He lives with his son, partner, and two cats in Hamtramck.

yo soy
 
frijoles as face paint
smeared on
as an act of war
of pride
of cultural dysphoria

twenty two years of tightrope walking
between centro and norte
between mis antepasados
and my future

between américa
the land of mangos and machismo
of caderas and cervezas

and america
the land of opportunity and oppression
of dreams and disappointments

here at “home”
rhythm and groove
are met with wide eyes
and clueless glances

fist pumps and stiff jumps
disguised as dance
don’t speak the language that my hips do
that las caderas de mis antepasados hablaron

aquí en mi país
my feet crunch piles of pine needles
and palm fibers

withered
broken
lifeless

from the violent footsteps that came before
of sandinistas
of somoza censorship
of american occupation
of culturally clueless tourists

but out of these piles
baskets are born
new livelihoods are created

women and weaving
a match made in mesoamérica

they weave
to reclaim their hands
from men and misogyny 
to communicate with craft
across time and space
to make their fingers dance once again
to el ritmo del pueblo

pine needles and palm fibers
promote production
provide payment
protest poverty

or so they say

baskets brought to market
living, breathing symbols
of mi identidad
mi historia
mi cultura

but this cultural umbilical cord will soon be severed
dollares in exchange for days of work
and lifetimes of tradition

a newborn basket will be brought “home”
to be exalted and sensationalized
on a gringo’s shelf

oohs and ahhs
disguised as cultural competency
don’t speak the language that my fingers do
que las manos de mis antepasadas hablaron
i am
of centro
and i am
of norte

yo soy



madre mar 


the water calls me 
babbling
beckoning



she invites me in with a gentle wave
and a briny hug

you are safe here
 
my mother calls me
crying
gasping for air

she’s gone
she’s gone
she’s gone
 
i dive
to escape 
to find
that heaviness consumes me

what a relief
 
salt creeps in
to each and every crevice
i sting with the harsh purity of existence
 
i choke back tears

i scream

can you hear me

winged creatures drown me out 
with their well-rehearsed repertoires
 
madre mar

i fill her with my tears

she roars with a ferocity
that only comes
from mourning the loss
of a creature so pure
 
earthbound no longer
she returns to her final resting place
in the open arms
of the mother who bore her
 
who gifted her a connection with the earth 
so strong
that the 
madre herself
weeps alongside me

for the woman with the sunshine eyes


​

pathology
 
who decided that a path 
was better than pathlessness

an existence of adventure
of liberation
freedom to roam, wander, and explore
as we please
 
aren’t you bored
of suffocating in a world
so dangerously addicted to 
order
predictability
schedules
and success
 
what is success
if not joy
fulfillment
freedom
reaped from talking to strangers
cooking a new recipe
and taking care of yourself
 
who decided i have to choose my future 
before i’ve even chosen a major
 
who said i can’t be 
a chef
a poet
a changemaker
all at once
 
let us overthrow the yoke of expectation 
the shackles of degree planning
 
there is room in our bodies
and our world 
for us to be whole
 
and no test or paycheck
can take that away
 
own it
live it 
breathe it
 
stomp your feet
take up space on these
long
         winding
                     imperfect
                                       infinite
         paths
 
bury me on the path of pathlessness
so my remains may nurture 
the fertile soil 
and seeds 
out of which grow
the next generation
of warriors
pioneers
rebels
 
who want nothing to do with this path of yours 
who cannot be confined by your box
but rather explode out of it
with such fiery force
and passion
and purpose
your parasitic
predictable 
power-hungry capitalist system
won’t know what to do with it all
 
we are superheroes in our own right
we are the revolution

Sofía Friedman is a recent graduate of Tufts University of Nicaraguan and Peruvian descent. She double majored in Civic Studies and Middle Eastern Studies with a minor in Social Justice Anthropology. She grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area and currently lives in Washington D.C. She is published in the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum library and has self-published a number of poems and creative non-fiction pieces. In her free time, she loves to read, listen to Bad Bunny, spend time in nature, and travel.

My brother saw a lone hammer on the side of a building in Rockridge: “Take it,” he said; I said no, that’s somebody’s tool, like dad’s. “Then write a poem about it,” he said.
 
My father had every type of hammer:
 
Black-handled, rednecked claw hammer, Craftsman, ‘made in America’ (He was proud
of that);
 
Black-handled, rednecked Ball-Peen hammer, Craftsman, ‘Made in America!’ (He made
sure to tell me this);
 
Blondehandled claw hammer; then, a two-pounder, worn, worthy of a warrior who
straightened things, metal and moral;
 
Finishing hammers, hammers that mom did not know about until much after he bought
them “This is my money, mijo, don’t tell mama.”
 
He proudly stated, “look how well-made,” as he showed me the mallets and other
hammers that fed us,
 
And which he used to build the addition to our house, build a garage, frame, shape
 
Nail.
 
He was proudest of those that were his friends, his companions, those he altered,
shaped, the steel worn, the ballpeen softened, the rounded ends flattened or bevelled;
 
For the fence he built on the side of our home, righthandside, as you looked at the
house, he used his hammers;
 
For the metal door he emplaced on the lefthandside, a door he made from sheetmetal
He welded, shaped, something from Mexico in the U.S., he used his hammers.
 
He hammered and hammered, his hearing going as he did so, and I oblivious, was
frustrated when he asked me to repeat things.
 
In Mexico, Papa was a pailero, boilermaker; In the U.S. his work was as a welder,
bumper-straightener and chrome-plater;
 
He wielded hammers at work and at home, forearms bigger than most men’s biceps,
biceps rounder than most men’s deltoids.
 
“Mr. America” is what the pastor of our church called him, if not “Mr. Universe.” He
sought priests for counsel and his hammers to shape.
 
He had a sledge, which as a boy I tried to heft but failed to raise above my shoulders.
 
He taught me later how to do so safely, effectively, deadly-right. What power I felt and
what a gift passed on to me by way of his tool — I felt a warrior, finally.
 
The accuracy of hammering a nail he taught me, ‘no, mijo, not like that; do it over until you get it right,’ — this time, delicacy.
 
His hammers went to the four winds after he died: My brothers and their wives borrowed them. They ended up in the back of pickups — stolen; in garages, lost (divorces).
 
There is an emptiness in my heart and soul for those hammers, like the emptiness I
filled when I visited Toledo, España where I found our name, Vela, amidst craftsmen,
 
Jewel-makers — 
 
Men using, wielding tiny hammers, making out of gold and silver earrings, pendants,
wonders, tiny jewels they emplaced with tiny hammers brought me back to him
 
His work, his name, his purpose.
 
And I having found that forebears in Toledo used hammers to make of Damascus steel
 
Swords, shields, and armor for warriors felt closer to him, my hammer my pen, my page metal shape, my words the indentations, impact, bent ideas, but memory all the same.

​David Vela was born and raised in Las Vegas, Nevada to Tlaxcaltecan and Pueblan parents, father and mother respectively. He is the ninth of nine children, five of whom were born in Apizaco, Tlaxcala, Mexico, one in Puebla, Mexico and the others in Las Vegas, Nevada. 

Hijo de soldador y pailero, a mother who was indomitable and self-educated in three languages, David studied at Yale and the Claremont Graduate School literature in English, Irish and Latin American authors, and has devoted 25 years to teaching literatures of Native Americans, Latin Americans, French (in French), Irish and British authors; he also loves and reads and has taught authors in Italian, including Dante and Petrarch, Boccaccio and Eugenio Montale. 

David was lead instructor in Paris in 2006 in a Study-Abroad program, teaching Latin American and American expatriate authors in a French Life and Culture course, and a course on terrorism and the French experience in Algeria during the Algerian war for independence. David has worked with military veterans and with Social Science professionals as writer and Editor. He was President of the Irish Literary & Historical Society of San Francisco, the only non-Irish or non-Irish American do be elected to that position for and continues to be a Board Member of that organization. He was Chair of the Irish-Mexican Association of the Bay Area for several years, recognizing the common historical and cultural connections between these cultures, and emphasized the prominence of heroes in first-responder professions from these cultures. 

David has worked with ambassadors and political personages in valuing and in disseminating culture in Ireland, Argentina, Mexico and in the United States, Northern Ireland and in the San Francisco Bay Area. 

He currently resides in Las Vegas, Nevada after living in the Bay Area for 28 years. 

J. M.Calleja was born in Mataro, Spain in 1952. Visual poet, multimedia artist and performer. Formed in the world of the image (photography-cinema), the artist realised various experi­mental films (8mm) between 1976-81. Coordinator and curator of different creative events.Expo­ sitions: Poesia Visual del'Estat Espanyol. Lleida1989(trav­ elling 1 year) and Poesia Visual Catalana. Barcelona 1999 (travelling 2 years). Anthologies:1 7 (Spanish Experimental Poetry) withJ.A.Sarmiento (1980),Poesía Experimental-93 (1993), Vl(r)US (2005), Poéticas Experimentales Catalanas with JordiMarrugat (2018),.•• xyzA-Cdef... (Anthology of Argentine  and Catalan  Visual Poetry)  with Claudio  Mangifesta (2019) and Vl(r)US-dos (2020).

lnstallations realised in Greece, México,Uruguay,Germany, France, ltaly and Spain. Performances realised in México, Brazil, Argentine, Uruguay, Italia, Germany, France and Spain Personal books: Llibre de leshores (1981), + Que mai per als ulls (1988), Mixtures (1993), Transfusions (1996), Alfabia (2000), Desfilada (2003), Homenajes (2007), Pets (2009), Mes de Maria (2011), ABCDarum  with K.P.Dencker (2013), Huellas. Poemas visuales 1974-2006 (2013),Album 013(2016),Travessia with  C.Mangifesta (2017),Dietari 015 (2018), Aquiahoraotravoz with A.Thornton (2021) and ln­ édits deis setanta (2021).
www.jmcalleja.com

Carlota Caulfield was born in Havana, Cuba.A poet, essayist and translator, she has been recognized with many awards, among them the 2016-2019 Mills College W.M. Keck Professor in Creative Writing, the First  lnternational Poetry Prize "Dulce María Loynaz," (Spain-Cuba 1999), and the lnternational Poetry  Prize, Poets of the World, ("Ultimo Novecento") ltaly,1988. She has been a Visiting Scholar / Poet in Residence at the University of London, University College London, University of Grüningen, New Mexico State University, Pomona College and the University of Barcelona. She is Professor of lberian and Spanish American Studies at Mills College (California).

She is an active participant in Experimental and Visual Po­etry events. Caulfield also co-organized art projects and exhibitions in Spain, Mexico, New York, Holland, Oakland and SanFrancisco. She is the producer of the documentary Llígans. The Art of the Catalan Painter Carme Riera, directed by Ona Vega in 2008.Her work Le malheur d'aimer. Home­ naje a Dora Maar (piece of art) was exhibited in "Gráfica contemporánea y poesía experimental." Sináptica Exhibi­ tion, Mexico, 2021. 

She is currently finishing a poetry book about New Mexican birds and completing her collection "Dreaming birds," drawings from the red dessert house (2020-2021).
www.intelinet.org/sg_site/Caulfield