SOMOS EN ESCRITO
  • HOME INICIO
  • ABOUT SOBRE
  • SUBMIT ENVIAR
  • Books
  • TIENDA
Picture

​
​​SOMOS EN ESCRITO
The Latino Literary Online Magazine

POETRY
​POESÍA

just mop it up y ya se esconde

6/27/2021

1 Comment

 
Picture

Four poems of
remembrance and loss
​by Lupita Velasco

A note from the author:
These poems were written after my father, Antonio, took his own life—losing his battle with depression and alcoholism. 
No Me Quieren Escuchar
​

I run around with my insides in my hands 
taking them to you, to him, to them.
No one knows what to do,
so you all watch
as I stuff them back in
and conceal them with a cloth.
All is well
even though the blood drips out.
You can ignore it,
just mop it up y ya se esconde.
Todo está bien,
no mal,
just bien.
Hay que seguir aguantando
the pain.
Porque él se fue
sin tí, sin mí
corriendo del dolor de aquí.
​They Move On

I want him remembered,
not forgotten.
But, I’m not allowed to grieve.
Obscurity, sadness, pain
is what everyone sees.
Uncomfortable, intolerable,
 so they don’t speak.
As if erasing him erases the pain.
Now that he is gone the pain is gone.
Life goes on.
All is well.
Package it up with a neat little bow,
and away it goes.
Away from you.
He lives in me.
It’s hard for you to understand.
So, we pretend that you don’t see,
the sadness living in me.
See, you walked away from him
long before he walked away from me. 
Lo Que Dejo

Will I ever feel safe again?
Did I ever feel safe before?
No yo creo que no,
el alcohol siempre tuvo el control.
Querían descansar
de él, y no saber más.
 
Pero ya se fue, ya no está,
y en el vacío no podrán descansar.
O alomejor sí, pero yo no.
Yo siempre lo espere ver mejor.
Que algún día ya no iba tomar
y ya nomás sería buen papá.   
 
El, todos, yo, nomás ocupábamos amor,
pero nos dejamos llevar por el dolor.
Se nos olvidó, que para sanar el dolor
nomás ocupamos demostrar más amor.
Es fácil tenerles compasión a las personas buenas,
pero la compasión también es para las personas enfermas. 
Never Coming Back

A little girl looks to her dad for strength,
the rock that keeps things in their place.
I never knew how safe I felt
until I went one day without
the strongest man I ever knew
the funniest one too.
But he is gone, and this I know:
I have never felt this much alone.
Picture
Lupita Velasco was born in Calvillo, Aguascalientes, Mexico; but grew up as an undocumented immigrant in Oklahoma. As a sheltered immigrant, Lupita found comfort, adventure, and refuge in literature from a very young age. Reading is Lupita’s favorite escape and writing her favorite form of expression. Lupita graduated from the University of Oklahoma in 2011 with a bachelor’s in International Studies and a minor in Criminology. Lupita currently lives in Bethany, Oklahoma with her neurodivergent husband, two daughters, and four chickens.

1 Comment

Me llamo Marina; o quizá Malinche; o quizá Malinallitzin

6/23/2021

0 Comments

 
Picture
Malinallitzin and Hernán Cortés in the city of Xaltelolco, in a drawing from the late 16th-century codex History of Tlaxcala

A Letter From Malinallitzin 
​by José E. Valdivia Heredia

A quien lea mis penas:
 
Me llamo Marina; o quizá Malinche; o quizá Malinallitzin; o quizá la madre de Martín, a veces temaktekauani, la puta traidora que me llama mi gente… En estas noches eternas, en la penumbra de mis penas, no recuerdo mi nombre, no recuerdo quién soy, ni creo tanto que me importe. Aborrezco cada día que pasa y no tenga a mi lado a Martín, piltsintli, amado hijo; aborrezco el día que Hernando se lo llevó a ese infierno lejano que es España; aborrezco el día que mi lengua pronunció el primer sílabo de esta lengua diabólica que es el castellano, kaxtitl. Me siento enferma. El mundo alrededor de mí se derrumba. Mikistli: La muerte subsiste en estas tierras abandonadas por los teteo, los dioses. La plaga se roba mi tranquilidad, se roba mis recuerdos y deseo grabarlo todo antes que los teteo me despojen de este cruel mundo.
 
Algún día yo era de Paynalá; algún día yo era la hija de un cacique, venía de una madre poderosa, de una madre que tuvo que sacrificarme para salvar a mi gente de los mayas invasores, tlapoloani. La perdono porque sé que no fue fácil y sé que mi destino me lo obligó, que yo tuve que llegar a las manos de los españoles aunque mi gente me lo despreciara. Fui esclava de los Tabascos, quienes me regalaron a los sucios españoles, gente que atraía y repugnaba a la vez. Algunos decían que eran dioses, pero yo lo sabía diferente. La gente contaba de las bestias, tekuani, que montaban, que eran parte hombre y parte animal, que eran profetas venidos a rescatarnos. Otros decían que eran tsitsimimej, demonios blancos, que venían a matar con sus armas mágicas. Mikilistli: yo reconocí su humanidad, su mortalidad, su repugnante egoísmo.
 
Naturalmente, al saber los idiomas y las costumbres de estas diversas regiones, me encontré obligada a ser nenepili, la lengua, y auiani, la santa puta, de Cortés. Me regalaron de un hombre a otro como si yo no tuviera el derecho al amor. Y amor sí encontré en el hijo que me dió y después robó Cortés. En los días que pensé no más poder, mi hijo Martín, piltsin, me animaba a seguir luchando, y todo lo di por él. Ahora me encuentro en estas tierras vastas, abandonada y enferma de la plaga con la que nos castigaron los dioses. Alguna gente me mira y me adora; para ellos soy diosa aunque me sienta yo menos que un pobre insecto. Otros me miran y me desprecian; no saben que más me desprecio yo por haber pronunciado las palabras que serían mi fin; no saben que más me desprecio yo por haber sido vendida como animal entre hombre y hombre; no saben que más me desprecio yo por haber perdido lo que más me importaba en la vida, mi dulce Martín.
 
Si alguien lee estas penas mías, recuérdenme. Recuerden lo que sacrifiqué y justifiquen mi vida, que en estos últimos días no puedo justificar ni estas miserables palabras, ni mi miserable respiración.
 
Firmada,
 
Tonameyalotl, la sombra de una pobre mujer. 
Picture
José E. Valdivia Heredia is an undergraduate student of Religion and Latin American studies at Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania. They are a Chicanx writer from Northern California born to two parents from Michoacán, México. José has published a short poem in the Harvard Latinx literary publication Palabritas. 

0 Comments

They will return to the tree of the hanging head

6/18/2021

0 Comments

 
Picture
Xibalbá gate at Ek Balam, Mexico Photo by Mardoz

Two Poems by Ivan Argüelles

XIBALBÁ
 

seeing a head hanging in a tree
they asked which is the Way
it replied and said use the feminine
plural for whatever you encounter
first is the House of jaguars infinite
followed by the cold that precedes
and supersedes space and time
then the House of bats eternal
and the world ruled by centipedes
no book is safe no knowledge sure
they wandered up and down
black and green and white and red
growing up the twins of Xibalbá
from the east they took the mountain
that dwells beneath the sea and set
it on its peak in the west of never-be
great clouds of reddish dust swarmed
north and south but the only path
they ever found was the route infernal
into earth’s seething bowels of smoke
they went playing ball with skulls
of discarded gods and learned
to speak in Spanish and court royalty
from afar and as knights from some
strange tale of yore they sported
with conquistadors and landlords
and built cities overnight that
stretched from lake to lake and
sank within a week its pyramids
and ocelots and incense altars loud
all vanished but for the hieroglyphs
that narrated in literature’s fac-simile
the true story of the rising solar vowel
in innocence and betrayal and deaths
as countless as the stars that swirl
unseen by the denizens of Xibalbá
and of the moon’s twenty-eight mansions
each an error of motion and sound
and of other celestial bodies and
cigarettes and stairways the twins
repeated in their unaccounted births
will come a day they will return
to the tree of the hanging head
to enquire again which is the Way
& set forth once more to Xibalbá
 
06-15-21
YESTERDAY
 

there were profanities and jingles the ruckus
and confabulation of the origins when gods
no larger than saliva or ink demand form and shape
the arms and excrescences of salt and helmets
the full panoply of the demons lurking behind
the cherry or poplar and the hills growing slow
but dense with sounds and commas and asterisks
speech was an impediment and the size of clouds
thunder rumbling and toxic in the shells where
nymphs take birth and hair and legends of opium
darker and stress of nightfall unexpected charms
the ululation behind the groves spark and tissue
will resignation and salvation ever be the same ?
somewhere the myth of time and the lesser entities
the moon plunging out of a comb or threads knotted
and the slender graceful waist of the woman whose
backside is missing or it is a lunation a shining
from afar when distance is only an echo the syllable
of a leaf  shaking in the tiny fragrance of sleep
what it is to dream that there is no beginning
only the surfeit and promise of death the marvel
and to learn to read before the hour is up and signs
written in erasable red and fictions tales of demigods
beings who stalk the backlands and ivy thick and
humid the steaming iridescence of the newest sky
can you remember a day when there was no light ?
 
06-12-21
Picture
​​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.

0 Comments

    Archives

    April 2022
    March 2022
    February 2022
    January 2022
    November 2021
    October 2021
    September 2021
    August 2021
    July 2021
    June 2021
    May 2021
    March 2021
    January 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    November 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    March 2017
    January 2017
    May 2016
    February 2010

    Categories

    All
    Archive
    Argentina
    Bilingüe
    Book
    Book Excerpt
    Book Review
    Boricua
    California
    Caribbean
    Central American
    Cesar Chavez
    Chicano
    Chicano/a/x
    Chumash
    Chupacabra
    Círculo
    Colombiana
    Colombian American
    Colonialism
    Cuban American
    Culture
    Current Events
    Death
    Debut
    Dia De Los Muertos
    Diaspora
    Dominican American
    Dreams
    East Harlem
    Ecology / Environment
    El Salvador
    Emerging Writer
    English
    Excerpt
    Family
    Farmworker Rights / Agricultural Work / Labor Rights Issues
    Flashback
    Floricanto
    Food
    Identity
    Immigration
    Imperialism
    Indigenous
    Indigenous / American Indian / Native American / First Nations / First People
    Interview
    Language
    Latin America
    Love
    Mature
    Memoir
    Memory
    Mestizaje
    Mexican American
    Mexico
    Nahuatl
    Nicaraguan-diaspora
    Ofrenda
    Patriarchy
    Performance
    Peruvian American
    Poesia
    Poesía
    Poesía
    Poet Laureate
    Poetry
    Prose Poetry
    Puerto Rican Disapora
    Puerto Rico
    Racism
    Review
    Salvadoran
    Social Justice
    Southwest
    Spanish
    Spanish And English
    Surrealism
    Texas
    Translation
    Travel
    War
    Women
    Young-writers

    RSS Feed

HOME INICIO

​ABOUT SOBRE

SUBMIT ENVIAR

​SUPPORT
​APOYAR 

Donate and Make Literature Happen

Somos En Escrito: The Latino Literary Online Magazine
is published by the Somos En Escrito Literary Foundation,
a 501 (c) (3) non-profit, tax-exempt corporation. EIN 81-3162209
©Copyright  2022
  • HOME INICIO
  • ABOUT SOBRE
  • SUBMIT ENVIAR
  • Books
  • TIENDA