|
POETRY
|
 Photo by Scott Russell Duncan Three Poems by Cesar LoveLa Abeja We know the buzz of her flying but once she lands and stills her wings she makes other sounds the sounds of her unpacking The pants of La Abeja have several pockets She unpacks her pockets at pachangas, parades birthdays, weddings, cabalgatas La Abeja makes her delivery Her delivery of cultura: New dances, first recipes, original games Fresh jokes, bold accents, cool spellings La Abeja arrives early and leaves late She tastes every dish, she dances every song Before she leaves the party La Abeja refills her pockets She stuffs them with cultura, poesía, canción La Abeja flies south to the zocalos North to the gazebos East to the pagodas West to the rodeos To attract her, water your flowers Water you poesía, water your canción. La Cena With every mouthful of your cod My arms become fins I am a fish cruising through oceans Oceans so open I swim as far as the moon With every spoonful of your mango salsa I grow body hair I am a chango swinging across treetops` Trees so high in the dusk I dribble the setting sun No dessert please I too am cooked I am a thin stalk of asparagus Sizzling in a pan Ecstatic in your oil Vowels I sing a vowel to the sky A vowel of the land My bare feet touch the earth This jewel that holds me That lets me stand That lets me walk I sing this vowel to the sky I sing a vowel to mi gente The vowel of mi familia I learn this vowel from my bloodline The comida shared The luchas won I sing this vowel to mi gente I sing a vowel to my love The vowel of ancient forests A vowel as old as redwoods As young as blossoms This vowel bloomed when I met you I sing this vowel to my love  César Love is a Latinx poet living in San Francisco, California. He is the author of two books of poetry, While Bees Sleep and Birthright, and he is a co-editor of the Haight Ashbury Literary Journal. He recently published Baseball: An Astrological Sightline, an examination of astrology and baseball. His website is www.baseballastrology.com.
3 Comments
 GHAZNI, AFGHANISTAN - NOVEMBER 2010: An Afghan boy rides his bike as a Polish and US soldiers from Task Force White Eagle patrol his village. Photo by Ryanzo W. Perez. New Poetry by Ivan ArgüellesTHE FALL OF KABUL carpet-baggers locusts cannibals lice the head turns to stone the moon is drawn out of its well and decapitated in a dust flurry minutes before the evacuation promises of paper-flowers fruit without vermin bread ! for two decades a series of statues come and gone artillery composed of offal and headwinds ox-carts bearing sultans of medieval dialects everything a matter of renunciation movies cosmetics opium military footwear the greatest Demon in the world has just surrendered his vices in a big photograph swap history is written on mattresses with bedbugs remember the Soviet carrion ? remember the big Buddha at Bamian ? five thousand years since the Aryans bruited the Vedas in the Hindu Kush and today nothing but a reversal of system and value blond poster-girls peeling off bloodied walls hoodwinked soldier boys from Iowa City haunted by the part they played dismembering the carcass of progressive Reform Jihad ! Mujahideen ! turn the volume up ! the Twin Towers were destroyed by fireflies a nuisance of idioms and heresy monstrous illiteracy of social media lies verbiage and tattooed air multiples of Zero Balkh the birthplace of Rumi surrenders ! President of USA suffers from PTSD a painted screen a flutter of Chinese diplomats wearing poisoned masks an x-ray of Night what good are stealth bombers and drones ? red ants versus black ants ! civilization ! mendacity of General Petraeus and the CIA operatives who drill like moles through earth nothing is solid and even less is holy the Beloved ! houris wearing burkas on Main Street Yea this day is Paradise and Gehenna above and below and forever ! 08-15-21  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.
 Excerpts from De Cierta Arenaby Maricela Duarte-Stern Jane y John Doe* El sol brilla para todos y mucho más cuando en el camino se van dejando sucesivamente pétalos anhelos uno mismo Dicen que el desierto palpita por eso los cactus danzan al ritmo inquebrantable del viento La noche es corta cuando se va en busca de un sueño el día es eterno para quienes ya no pueden abrir los ojos No hay tumba para ellos allí quedan mirando al cielo o mejor aún bocabajo en una charla inaudible con la arena * Nombres dados en Estados Unidos a cadáveres de identidad desconocida. Braceros Hay instantes incluso armoniosos atardeceres en que las aves buscan a la deriva la urna de sus sueños Sin embargo ese golpe a la memoria esa imagen no es suficiente para liberarte del pálido hastío de la ausencia Volteas tratando de alcanzar el sur te aferras a creer y hasta repasas metódicamente las calles lluviosas y los familiares rincones que dejaste inconclusos Tus manos ahora entrelazadas a la tierra saben que estas no son tus raíces y colocan obedientes la cebolla en la cesta deseando que sea la última Continúas afanoso te limpias el sudor justificando tu mirada inalcanzable Pero ¿qué hay en realidad en tus ojos? Cuando el poeta escribe se empeña en develar lo que hay detrás del pesado telón que lo sustenta Quiere alumbrar con una vela el más oscuro de los abismos Se aleja como un ermitaño más allá del canto de las sirenas de los sueños olvidados El poeta busca y en su travesía sólo logra recolectar las minúsculas huellas de la fiera que aún ruge a lo lejos Mientras escribo nada puede hacer la tinta al impregnarse en la hoja las aguas del tiempo no se detienen los pasos de la muerte hacen ruido no permiten escuchar el vertiginoso transcurrir de la vida Escribo otro verso sé que al otro lado del mundo y dentro de mí alguien muere  Maricela Duarte-Stern (Chihuahua, Chih. México 1976) Resides in Las Cruces, New Mexico since 2002. Compiler of: Rehilete, Antología Literaria para Niños. ICHICULT/FONCA 1999. In 2014 published El Gato en la Azotea, by Ediciones Poetazos. Co-author: Voces de la hispanidad en Estados Unidos: una antología literaria. 2018. Her most recent book of poetry: De cierta arena Ediciones La Mirada, 2019.
|
Archives
July 2024
Categories
All
|
RSS Feed