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to splash color over an unwrapped thought

4/29/2020

OLVIDOS DE MI PADRE
by Ivan Argüelles

Follow along as Ivan Argüelles performs the poem

para mi hermana
I fell asleep in my father’s arms
though dead he’s been more than 20 years
I nestled in his reek of disguised alcohol
shaving lotion old spice tropic fantasy
it’s easy to forget just how hard it was
to earn his love and companionship
exile that he was with Guadalajara hair
a faint curse was ever on his lips
for the routines of Lutheran synecdoche
and sarcasm dripped constantly
in the twinkle of his cinematic eyes
still I burrowed in his post meridian clasp
a whole afternoon with his lemon drops
and Mexican newspaper headlines
in and out of oils and acrylics on canvas
street names for unknown saints and
incense burning dense as beeswax in the air
distance was his propriety and music
with Saint John of the Cross at 3 AM
blear-eyed from bar-hopping bouts
and mornings wrapped in tortilla dough
he hustled remote as a pyramid of oil
through days of anathema and dialect
how could I in his embrace ever fall
curtail my living self in his promised death
full hours of plight and anguish smoking
decks of pall mall cigarettes his hand
unwavering holding the subtle brush
to splash color over an unwrapped thought
a cathedral a half-dead donkey colonial
houses muffled in Aztec silver-work
filigree of bluish haze his archaic skies
riddled with recollections of a mountain
and the immense purple mysteries
of a Tenochtitlan buried in Toltec grief
winding sheets and Amarillo sweat dying
the ruffled edges of his floating bed
his caravanserai of forbidden paramours
a theater of nickel soaps and pulque
the brash despair of his uprooted life
going in circles long Sunday afternoons
when ennui put on a German mask
deriding the colloquy of his solitude
but to nuzzle up to his bristling breath
and die a hundred times just for once
before his own soul took to flight
five thousand miles from his birth
that crazy Mexican of elegance and ire
how far however far from the painted rocks
and shifting gravel of his planned walk-away
only the broken vowels of his idiom
the consonants of cactus and parakeet
cajole my drowsing ear this ancient day
when the whole world tilts drowning
in a gold-fish bowl and darkness overtakes
drowns in a gold-fish bowl
and darkness overtakes

03-19-20

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

4/28/2020

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Rinconcito

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

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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"and I imagined him leaping into a sky riddled with silk jellyfish"

4/23/2020

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Two poems
By Robert René Galván

Listen along as Robert René Galván performs "Hero"

Hero

Abuelita had a framed
photo of my uncle Reyes
on top of the television
where she watched
her novelas with impassive
eyes;

Tío was dressed
in full regalia,
clutching his
parachute,
the smile under
his helmet
belying a dangerous
profession;
what else could a young
man do to escape
the poverty of the unpaved
alley that was his namesake,
the anonymity
of a dusty town?

From time to time
my mother received
gossamer-thin
airmail letters
with exotic stamps,
and I imagined him
leaping into a sky
riddled with silk jellyfish
as I lifted each wafer
with steam and
pasted them into
a small album.

Another picture,
which had been entombed
in a drawer for many years,
shows him bare-chested
in the Vietnamese jungle,
enduring the sweltering heat,
angry insects and mottled snakes,
suffering malaria, trench foot
and agent orange,
watching over his men
while they shaved in the stream,
M-14 poised on his hip,
surveying the trees
with his mother’s
sad eyes.

Listen along as Robert René Galván performs "Curandera"

Curandera

Tía Luz was my mother’s aunt,
but our entire family called her tía;
in the neighborhood, she was known as La Bruja,
which is what the conquistadores
called indigenous healers
in their misunderstanding
of the art.

In her appearance
she could have passed
for those creatures
of European lore,
but embodied
a tradition that existed
centuries before
they arrived;

Her shelves were laden
with tinctures and vessels
containing herbs:

uña de gato for arthritis
chichibe for coughs
cuerno de vaca for impotency
lengua de perro for rashes
yerba buena for an upset stomach

She could predict an infant’s sex
by suspending a skeleton key
over the mother’s belly,
depending on which way it swayed,
or avert el mal de ojo by burning the resin
of the copal tree, healed a young boy’s
nightmares after the padre’s
beads and holy water had failed.

Robert René Galván, born in San Antonio, resides in New York City where he works as a professional musician and poet. His last collection of poems is entitled, Meteors, published by Lux Nova Press. His poetry was recently featured in Adelaide Literary Magazine, Azahares Literary Magazine, Gyroscope, Hawaii Review, Newtown Review, Panoply, Stillwater Review, West Texas Literary Review, and the Winter 2018 issue of UU World. He is a Shortlist Winner Nominee in the 2018 Adelaide Literary Award for Best Poem. Recently, his poems are featured in Puro ChicanX Writers of the 21st Century. He was educated at Texas State University, SUNY Stony Brook and the University of Texas.

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Erasure and a Rift

4/10/2020

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Two poems by Karen Gonzalez-Videla

Erasure of a Teenage Daughter’s Letter to Her Deported Mother

Mom,

It’s been a long time since                                          .
I           think                      how long
      photo album we made                             that summer.
Do you                  the copy I gave you?
Or did they take it              too? I still have mine.
some of                       are torn --
I couldn’t stop             shaking hands from
the afternoon you left.

One photo                   is whole —                  we hold hands
at the peak of that North Carolina mountain, out of breath
and trembling;                   wind shoves our clothes against skin, but
we ground our feet on                        soil beneath us and
refuse to fall. I wonder if we could have                           .

Maybe you wouldn’t                           other side
of a man-made border. Maybe I wouldn’t                     vomit
questions on                crumpled paper:
Did the air           different when you crossed             ?
Did you feel      future                        ,                                   ,
and                                  slip out of your hands?
Did you even notice                your foot crossed south?
Are you                       less          an outsider back there?
Or                    still a traitor that tried
and failed?

Love,

Rift of Red and Rojo

I’m stuck in a rift between
two stars. One red,
the other rojo. They blind
me. I need to close my eyes.
Won’t they dim a little?
Share light?

This reversed vacuum
spits out held-in polvo. My light dims,
there’s too much dust.
The stars shine brighter now.
Dos tres cinco siete.
Brighter still.

I was red for
three six seven years but
my star grew caliente,
switched to rojo but
my tongue tripped at the
rrrrrrrrrrrrrrr. Forgive me, for
“rat” and “rata” sound
so similar.

One of you should come get me,
claim me, take me.
I swear I’m a star.

Karen Gonzalez-Videla is an undergraduate student at the University of South Florida. She is currently pursuing a Bachelor’s Degree in Psychology and Creative Writing, and she loves combining these two passions in her fiction. Although she writes about a variety of subjects, she focuses mostly on the immigrant experience and the exploration of one’s womanhood. She has upcoming work at Sidereal Magazine, Ghost Parachute, and Vita Brevis Press.

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"Abuela was my bridge to the past, my culture"

4/4/2020

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Rinconcito

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

Autumn (para Abuela)

by Eric Noel Perez

After divorcing my grandfather (for the second time),
my grandmother packed a bag,
scooped up my mother and uncle,
and left Puerto Rico headed for the Bronx.

She touched ground in 1959, and I imagine she was like
the Latina version of Dorothy from The Wizard of Oz:
a stranger in a strange world

swept away by a tornado
of failed love, and broken vows,

hoping to find her yellow brick road
somewhere between 144th Street and Willis Avenue.

For herself. For her family.
   And eventually, for me.

When she arrived
light posts greeted her instead of palm trees,
parking meters hemmed in the new world
like iron stalks of cold sugar cane,

and for the first time in her life
she encountered the hands of autumn.

They were brisk, multi-colored hands that cracked
as they moved across her unaccustomed skin,

hands filled with more doomsday fire,
more foreboding than she’d ever dreamt
during her hot, San Juan nights.

Her dresses and sleeves grew longer
     as the daylight hours shortened,
palomas metamorphosized into garbage picking pigeons,

the deep, dark red of the leaves reminded her
of Caribbean twilight, and childbearing.

When my parents bought a house on Long Island
she cried.
My father asked, “Doña, que te pasa?”
She said she was going to miss me.
She didn’t know she was coming with us.
She cried even more when he told her.

The suburbs agreed with Abuela more than the city:
less noise, more birds, backyard barbecues and hammock naps.
Every night in summer
the crickets faithfully fingered
their miniscule fiddles,

and though they certainly weren’t coquis singing her to sleep,
she still appreciated their song.

Abuela was my bridge to the past, my culture,
built on girders of Spanish music and Bible verses,
family recipes, and orange fingers
that smelled of onion and Sazón,

a reminder that in spite of the Heavy Metal and Hip Hop I’d adopted,
mine was an inheritance of ocean music.

When I turned 16, she began to change.
It was little things at first, like, she’d forget that
I’d already eaten, and another plate of rice and beans would
                magically appear before me.

Important dates began slipping from her memory,
then the ingredients to her favorite dishes
as though bathed in too much Crisco.

Next to go were the names of old friends,

then the lyrics to her favorite boleros
            (Daniel Santos must have felt like
a jilted lover).

She started talking to herself often,
answering strange questions
from invisible inquisitors,

            even befriending her own reflection in the mirror,
sharing perfume with the unfamiliar face
that smiled sheepishly back at her).

Soon, all the attributes that composed my Abuela
fell from her in deciduous fashion,
stripping her of comprehension, of identity,

of life.

By the time the Alzheimer’s was in full season
she stood before us all diminished,
a photo negative of the woman I once knew,

naked as a tree in the heart of November:

limbs gaunt and knotted with age,

her memories scattered helter-skelter
like desiccated leaves around her slippered feet.

We moved her back to Puerto Rico in 1991
so she could die
with the touch of a familiar sun on her face.

Towards the end I hopped on a plane
and went to visit her in the nursing home.

She was sitting in a rocking chair on a veranda
behind a metal gate meant to protect the residents
from wandering off into traffic, into the death filled sea;

         her vacant eyes were like hollow conches,
     ribbons of light slipped through the iron bars.

                  She didn’t remember my name.

Abuela sat in silence as I held her frail, bony hand,
the same hand that had rubbed Vicks on my chest
      when bronchitis struck with a vengeance,

the same hand that dropped caramelitos into my pockets
              and loose change in my open palm
    whenever the ice cream man came tolling his bell.

Holding that hand now was like holding an old eagle’s claw.
My mother painted her gray nails, and cried.

I kissed her cheek over and over again, knowing
this time she was the one who would be moving,
and that I couldn’t follow (not yet, anyway).

As I stood to leave, large, warm tears stood in my eyes
as her eyes grew heavy with gloaming stars.

Gradually her lips closed, quietly, slowly,
    like the petals of a nocturnal flower.

Not long afterwards we received word Abuela had passed.

It was late April.
Spring was casting its colorful gems to and fro.
At her funeral I cast words of gratitude on her casket
                   like amapola petals.

October came. My first autumn without her.
The days still shrunk, the sun still cooled,
the wind still stripped the trees.

My mother, in an homage to hearts and healings,
made Abuela’s rice and beans.
They were good. Really good. But something was missing.

The clouds broke upon the cold, blue sky like waves on the Atlantic.

Wherever she was, a piece of me was with her,
and her with me, and I swore to myself that
no matter how much I loved New York
I wouldn’t forget Puerto Rico,

that no matter how much I dug the sound of an electric guitar
I’d hold a space on my heart’s altar for the cuatro.

Today, I have each foot firmly planted in two soils.
I taste life as I paint it, with two palettes,

and though much of the world may want me to choose a flag,
I have no problem straddling the border.

Driving to the supermarket with the radio on
my ears are filled with the clatter of synthesizer drums.
But it doesn’t drown out the timbale beating in my blood.

Eric Noel Perez, born of Puerto Rican parents in New York City, lived in the Bronx until he was 6 when the family moved to Port Jefferson Station on Long Island. He now lives in Bay Shore, NY. He attended SUNY Geneseo, completed a bachelor’s in English and Secondary Education, then later at Stony Brook University, earned a master’s degree. An English teacher for 25 years, he has also been a yoga instructor, motivational speaker, and non-denominational ordained minister. Last year, he published three books: Sweet Caroline: A Book of Love Poems, Rambling: Soul Searching on Long Island’s North Shore, and a children’s book titled, God Is.

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POETRY
POESÍA

to splash color over an unwrapped thought

OLVIDOS DE MI PADRE
by Ivan Argüelles

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

Rinconcito

Dial M for Machismo

"and I imagined him leaping into a sky riddled with silk jellyfish"

Two poems
By Robert René Galván

Erasure and a Rift

Two poems by Karen Gonzalez-Videla

"Abuela was my bridge to the past, my culture"

Rinconcito

Autumn (para Abuela)

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POETRY​POESÍA

to splash color over an unwrapped thought

OLVIDOS DE MI PADRE​by Ivan Argüelles

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

Rinconcito

Dial M for Machismo

"and I imagined him leaping into a sky riddled with silk jellyfish"

​Two poemsBy Robert René Galván

Erasure and a Rift

Two poems by Karen Gonzalez-Videla

"Abuela was my bridge to the past, my culture"

Rinconcito

Autumn (para Abuela)

Archives

Categories

HOME INICIO

​ABOUT SOBRE

SUBMIT ENVIAR

​SUPPORT ​APOYAR

Donate and Make Literature Happen

POETRY
POESÍA

OLVIDOS DE MI PADRE
by Ivan Argüelles

Two poems
By Robert René Galván

ABOUT SOBRE

SUPPORT
APOYAR