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​
​​SOMOS EN ESCRITO
The Latino Literary Online Magazine

POETRY
​POESÍA

but we don’t go home until the field is done

4/13/2022

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Uncle Cedro and Cousin Johnny (middle two)

Toil and Soil and Privilege
​
by Joe Menchaca

little boy toiling in the beet field watching
white people gather for a track meet
toil and soil and summer sweat
rows extending to the end of dreams
melt youthful vigor into
puddles of warm despair
 
across the road they’re gathering
’neath the cover of umbrellas flowering
like tulips blooming in the manicured turf
they’re sitting on nylon camping chairs
’n sipping cold-sweat bottles of Gatorade
pulled from coolers the colors of fire & ice
 
I’m so hot and thirsty tired and dirty
said the little boy to the relentless sun
but we don’t go home until the field is done
while across the road cheers and laughter
and idle chatter waft on breezes carrying
the scents of sunscreen ’n privilege
PictureMom (right), Aunt Jennie (left)

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Amah (left), Mrs Mitotes (right)
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Aunt Mary circa 1930s
​The photos above show some of the author's family members. The third photo the author mentions in his description below is the one used at the beginning of the feature.

​In his words: The one of my mom and great aunt Jennie was taken at a migrant worker camp called a "Colonia." The next one is of my Great-Grandmother, the full-blood Yaqui from Mexico; my brother and sister and I called her Amah. Third one is my Great-Uncle and cousin in between members of one of the families who worked the fields with them. Those three were taken in Weld County, Colorado in the early 1940s. The fourth one is my aunt in a beet field taken some time in the 1930s. I included that one because it closely aligns with the poem's opening line even though it's not of a "little boy." They didn't take pictures of themselves working in the fields because once the work started, as the poem says, they don't stop until the field was done.
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​Joe Menchaca is an emerging writer of fiction, poetry, and nonfiction with a Master of Arts in Professional Creative Writing from the University of Denver. His poetry can be found in Dissident Voice. Joe’s writing is marked by an unpretentious, gritty, and raw yet lyrical style. Unflinching in his examination of self, literature, and culture, his distilled style reflects a sensitive and perceptive exploration of life. Joe, whose parents were migrant workers that settled in Colorado in the 1920s, was raised on farms in Northern Colorado, and in the summers, he worked hoeing beets and picking crops. According to family oral history, one of Joe’s maternal great-grandmothers was full-blood Yaqui from Mexico, and a paternal great-grandfather was full-blood Cherokee. Joe currently lives in Fort Collins, Colorado with his lovely wife of nearly forty years, and Tiny, their Chihuahua.

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“Eat the rich”

3/8/2022

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Three poems from City on the Second Floor with review and short interview with poet Matt Sedillo

L.A. is Full of Pigs
 
 
Los Angeles is falling apart
In the streets, in the suburbs
                                                                      In the wind
                              In a barely kept Hollywood bathroom
Wheezing, vomiting, coughing up blood
The past few days, these past few years
                              I have spread myself across this sprawl
                                                                                        And now fear this drive may kill me
May kill us all and I wander
                                          Over to general hospital
         Between whose walls desperation wears in high concentration upon the faces of the shopworn
And prematurely ill alike as they await upon news of illness they cannot afford to have
                                        Survival without insurance
                                            This may take a while
                             Los Angeles
                                                  Is full of untold misery
A homeless man sleeps next to me and I can smell the years of hard distance between who he is now
                 And who he may have been
        And all that stands between him and the bitter wind
Is chance, is the kindness of a night nurse who will let him sleep in peace
                                    Los Angeles is full of good people
                                           Who from time to time
                                            Can turn a blind eye
                                                 To killer policy
And I wonder how many more bounced checks, free clinics, carry cash
                                                                                                          And leave the account in the negative
                                                                       Stand between me and him, me and the bitter wind and if so
                            Where would I go from Venice to San Francisco
           There is an outright war on the homeless
        A war on the dispossessed, there are fewer and fewer options
They got shelters for women and children, all inadequate
But for me just man up homeboy
To that concrete pillow
To that cardboard blanket
And freeze your ass to death
                                              Yes, this city will leave you to die
              On the same stretch of sidewalk where banks stretch into the sky
And I wonder as even now skid row Is being gentrified
                                     As this city
                                  As this system
                                    As the pigs
                                  Push people
                                  Past poverty
                                  Past hunger
                           Past homelessness
                Towards the very edge of existence
                                   On Skid Row
                                                     Where all the so-called complexities of an economy
          Are laid bare, where the rich are literally stacked upon the poor
                                 Los Angeles
                  Is full of grotesque absurdity
Especially on skid row
Where they spend millions
Annually policing the misery of people with nowhere to go
Because when your pockets are empty
             And you aint got nothing
                   And change is just not coming
                      There is no real difference
Between a booming metropolis and a barren desert
And the world of money
Passes by you
Passes through you
        As though you
Were just part
          Of the scenery
Protected in the knowledge
They are serviced by pigs
Who speak the language of violence
The language
Of the nightstick
The language
Of untold misery
That will beat you for begging
          Beat you for sleeping 
        Beat you for breathing
Beat you
For doing whatever it is you need to do
           To survive the night
                     In the bitter wind
                                        Los Angeles
                                                Is full of pigs
​The Rich
 
                                                        The rich, well they're not like you and me 
               They see an opportunity and they grab it reach for the stars
And they, put ‘em in their pocket 
                                       Company stays in the red
                                                                          But they're backed by the government 
Snort the public dime into lines of pure profit 
                                                                       Research and development 
 
The rich, well they're a different breed
                                                 Champagne wishes and caviar dreams 
Thoroughbred stallions, quarter billion mansions on the sea
                                               Deepwater Horizon 
                       Blood diamonds 
                                                       Golden parachutes 
                                                                      Silicon messiahs 
Feasting on endangered species
                                        Served on silver platters in winter palaces carved from the tips of icebergs 
                             Six-figure charters
       Vulture capital 
                                      Million-dollar cufflinks plucking life like an apple 
                          Insured by suicide nets 
Lifestyles of the criminally negligent 
                                                                                                                 But you haven't lived 
                                         Until you've launched a car into space for no fucking reason 
Now that's what I call freedom 
                                                       
        The rich, well here's how it is 
                    Dollars and cents 
                            Trademark and rent 
                                        Facts and figures 
Lines on a ledger 
                                                                                                                   Derivatives and debt 
                                                           Building the future 
                                                        Increasing productivity 
                                                           Union busting back 
                                                  To the hundred-hour work week 
          Trimming the fat 
                Producing monopolies
                      With real money shortages and bets 
And that my friend is how the rich stay rich 
                              While the rest, make poor decisions 
                  And it's pure ecstasy 
           Living in the lap of luxury 
Pushing pharmaceuticals 
                       At the markup 
                              The market 
                                  Will bear your body 
                       To its altar 
             At a life-or-death bargain 
        The gospel 
    Of wealth 
Cause it is what it is 
And that's all it’s ever been 
                                              The less we spend 
                                              The more we keep 
                                              
                                               You see the rich 
                                                 And the poor 
                               Well, they're just like you and me 
Two hands 
Two feet 
The sky 
The sea
And everything between 
One heart that beats 
And the time
To make the most of it 
                                             So, you'll find no sympathy 
                                                                           Reaching into these deep pockets
                 All we ever asked was our fair share
       And God damn it, that's all of it
                                    So, while you're out in the streets screaming for peace and justice
We’re sleeping in satin sheets dreaming free and guiltless over oceans and tariffs  liquidating pensions then off to bid on porcelain and portraits at billion dollar auctions
                 You know you need us 
                                 You know we're selling your secrets 
                 You know you still send us DNA kits
            Watching the puppets
On television
              Debate freedom free speech
                            Fascism, democracy while we reach into the earth
And fuel the economy
           With space stations
                                            Yes, space stations
                                                                   Hydrating the red planet
We’re gonna survive this lava pit
So you got pots and pans
We got deeds and plans
                                                    Chopping down rainforest
                                                                                               Colonizing the moon
                                          We’re the rich, who the fuck are you 
                                             We’ll privatize the water supply
                                                   Then copyright the tears
                                                              Falling
                                                                From
                                                                     Your
                                                                            Eyes
                        Burn it all down
           What the hell you talking about
The icecaps are already melting  
                                                 You wanna start some shit 
                                                                                                      Eat the rich 
We're already killing your kids 
One carbon footprint 
One gas house emission
One oil rig
One naval ship
One free 
Trade 
Agreement at a time  
                                                     And we'll get away with it too 
                                                                                                                                            Nothing we say or do 
                                                        Is ever held against us  
                                              Haven't you been paying attention 
                                                                  We’re rich  
​Hammurabi
 
                               I grew up on television and so did my parents 
                                                  I Love Lucy 
                                       Lied to them sweetly 
                                         America's 
                                 Favorite redhead
                               Desires suppressed 
                                 In separate beds 
                                    Censors rest
                                       Assured 
                           Everything in good taste 
                       Everything in its proper place 
                         Every traumatic episode
             Ends with the threat of Ricky's hand 
      Never far from Lucy's face
                                                          Beaming in glorious black and white 
                                                                      Wrong and right 
                                                             Plot lines shade out the gray
                                                                    On John Wayne's 
                                                                       Shining silver 
                                                                       City on a hill 
                                                                   Of guns and butter
Where every 
             School child's desk
                        Doubles as bomb shelter
              Praying to the altar of the unquestioned 
                                                                              So 
                                                              Pledge your allegiance
                                                               Seal your documents 
                                                                  And lock and load
                                                                      Your freedom 
                                                                Because it is not free
                                                            Now fall to your knees 
                                      And praise be 
                                                                                                  To the only God
                                                                                                  In which we trust 
                                                                            The Atom 
                                                                       The Manhattan
                                                                            Hiroshima 
                                                                            Nagasaki 
                                                                    The nuclear family
                                   Nuclear testing 
                                                                                                          In the nuclear age 
Gave way 
To nuclear waste
That's me
   See 
I grew up 
In the eighties
                    Morning in America
                                       Ronald Reagan 
                                                          And Mr. Belvedere 
               Fresh at my door  
     Telling me life was 
                                                            More than mere survival 
                                             That I 
                                Might live the good life 
                                                                Yet when my time came 
                                                                                            Homer Simpson 
                                                                                                            Peter Griffin 
                                                                                                                         Al Bundy  
                                         Were all lying in wait
                   To convince me 
              I could raise a family
                    In a two story 
               On the single income 
                                                                                                                    Of a shoes salesman 
They lied 
And I cry 
Not for myself 
But for this oncoming generation 
                                  Of IPAD kids 
                                                  On the Hulu and Netflix
                                              Where you pick your poison 
                                                    But it rots your mind 
                                                         Just the same 
                                                      See them at cafes
                                                             Sit sipping
                                                           Job seeking 
                                                          Asking the net 
                                                       For deeper meaning 
                                                                                                                                      Who am I 
                               Where do I belong 
                                                                        Of what use can I be
         In days such as these
                                   Kids born of go go gadgets
Wired to networks 
                                                                                                               Connected
                                                                                       Directed 
                                                                                                  To the latest trends
                                                                 Surf the web 
                           In search of themselves 
                                                                  No different 
                                                          From medieval serfs 
                                                           Waiting on the bells 
                                                         Of the Catholic Church 
                                                               For the latest in
                                                                     Holy writ
                                                                    Holy script 
                                                                     Holy this 
                                                                        Since
                                                                 The golden rule  
                                                          Of Pharaohs and Caesars 
                                                              Romulus and Remus
                                                               Akbar and Alexander 
                                                              Xerxes and Hammurabi 
                                                            Since the days of scribes
                                                             And the books of Kings 
                            Since they from on high 
                                                                                                   Convinced us down below
                                                  That we
            Ever
     Needed 
                           Their 
                                                Code 
                                                                Of law 
                To tell us 
                                                                               We were free

Reading by Matt Sedillo and short interview.
Cutting Noise, a review by Scott Duncan-Fernandez

Why should you read City on the Second Floor by Matt Sedillo to hear something anti-greed or anti-colonial? Can't you got to Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram to see posts counting coup with the may or may not be true and the armchair warriors armed with glibness and not even one sentence memes, instant espresso shots of thought?
 
Poetry can cut through the noise. Needed now more than ever. Poetry can serve us Chicanos as it did in the Chicano Movement and before, our activism and words melded. The earth is dying, working people are abused and it’s the rich driving it with their pharaonic greed. It’s a message that needs to be believed acted upon and repeated. City on the Second Floor has the tradition, has the words and message and cuts the distraction.
 
Sedillo can see us. He knows we are entertained to inaction and death with the violins of streamed shows as the world burns in “Hammurabi”:
“Of IPAD kids 
                                                  On the Hulu and Netflix
                                              Where you pick your poison 
                                                    But it rots your mind 
                                                         Just the same 
                                                      See them at cafes
                                                             Sit sipping
                                                           Job seeking 
                                                          Asking the net 
                                                       For deeper meaning”
 
We, our bodies and minds, are commodified to the same kind of internet glibness, smiling and disposable as he points out in “Post”:
“Smiling at your service to gig economy
                 Side hustle, millennial, post industrial standard
Hire me as an adjunct
Fire me as contingent
Into a city I cannot afford to live in
Tell me my credit score
Better yet, tell me yours 
Promise me the world, then show me the door” 
 
More than exploited, we are commodified and vilified so the system for the rich can keep eating us. Keep us inactive and watching the television we grew up on. In the “The Rich” he lays the destruction of this planet at their feet, they escape culpability, they don’t even have to look at the misery down below as they live on “the second floor.”

Sedillo says they even want to colonize the heavens in the poem “The Sky.” I love the poem as it mentions our ancestors, compares the “beautiful brown mobile proletariat native to the continent” and the connection and guidance from the monarchs. These butterflies are like hummingbirds, messengers from the underworld, and masses of them traverse California and more of Turtle Island. These creatures are threatened by the ruining of the environment as tourists and towns commodify them, not listening to their message in their journey:

They are dying, we are dying.

It’s the Space Force Sedillo mentions vs butterflies. The suffocation of the void vs breathing.

We get a lot of witnessing of trauma in the literature of raza; we get the much more needed denouncing and recrimination in Sedillo’s work. No settler is slumming his way through these words for titillation of viewing traumatic experiences.  Sedillo isn’t smiling. This isn’t a sideshow for masters. This is not Taco Tuesday.

Support this poet. Poetry is spellcraft and ritual to heal and name what must be changed. Read City on the Second Floor. Cut the noise.

City on the Second Floor is available at FlowerSong Press.

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​Born in El Sereno, California in 1981, Matt Sedillo writes from the vantage point of a second generation Chicano born in an era of diminishing opportunities and a crumbling economy. His writing—​a fearless, challenging and at times even confrontational blend of humor, history and political theory--is a reflection of those realities.

Scott Duncan-Fernandez is senior editor at Somos en escrito.
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In some way responsible

3/7/2022

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The Redemption of
Roxy Salgado
by David A. Romero

Listen to David A. Romero read "The Redemption of Roxy Salgado" (text below).
“This seatbelt
Is suffocating
The walls
They’re closing in!”
 
These were the words of one Roxy Salgado
From Rowland Heights, CA
Psychology student at UCLA
Before she unclicked her seatbelt
And opened her car door to the 10 Westbound
Psilocybin was pulsing through her veins
A whole bag of magic mushrooms churning in her stomach
Against the advice of members of her cohort
Three of them in that car
Couldn’t manage to calm her down
Prevent her from tumbling out
Somersaults and side rolls
As her body went limp into the wind
The black pavement under the night’s sky
Illuminated by post lights.
 
It wasn’t Roxy’s obituary
In the following morning’s paper
But that of
Patricia Guzman
Mother of three
Resident of Pico Union, Los Angeles
Hailing from San Miguel, El Salvador
Severe trauma to her neck and spine
Blunt force trauma to her brain
From collision with dashboard
An airbag that never deployed
According to her husband Victor
Her last words were,
“Me duele”
“It hurts”
And fragmented questions
About the safety of their children.
 
Roxy awoke at a friend’s house in Southeast Los Angeles
With a headache
Sprained ankle
Some cuts and bruises
Unanswered texts and voicemails
Clothes embedded with gravel
And stained with blood and vomit.
 
Three months later
Roxy is in a state between uppers and downers
Leaning on a chain-link fence
Across the street from a house in Pico Union, Los Angeles
It is once again nighttime
Roxy looks in through partially open windows
Revealing the Guzman family inside
Victor and his three children
There is laughter
There is screaming
There are long silences and muffled whimpers
Victor often walks around aimlessly
Moves to start something
And abruptly stops
The youngest of the three
Lusita
Has a Dora the Explorer doll
Sometimes she talks to it
Clutches it tightly for hours
Crouched in the same spot.
 
One month later
It is the eve of Lusita’s birthday
Roxy has gathered that from outside surveillance
Roxy’s parents
Have no idea she has functionally dropped out of school
Roxy spends most of her days visiting friends and dealers
Going to parties
Kickbacks
Afternoon hangs
Walking the lampposts and pavements of Los Angeles
But every trip eventually takes her back to the Guzmans
On one walk
Roxy found a discarded piñata on a curb
An unlicensed paper mâché and chicken wire
Dora the Explorer
That day Roxy picked it up
Took it with her on the bus and dragged it home
Fashioned it into a costume.
 
Roxy stands now
In the Guzman’s kitchen with it on
After having broken in
Her mind is swimming
With guilt and hope
The pain of something that happened to her long ago
The little girl Lusita
Walks into the room
Sees Roxy
As a shadowed paper mâché monster
And screams
Roxy lifts her costumed hands
To try and comfort Lusita
She wants to hold her for hours
Tell her everything will be ok
Lusita runs away
Continues screaming
Roxy hears rustling in other rooms
Victor shouts,
“¿Qué es eso?”
Roxy panics
Tears the paper mâché head off
Sprints through the kitchen door
Through an alley
A block over
Roxy can still hear Lusita’s terrified wailing
Roxy is panting and sweating
She leans on a fence still partially covered
In the collapsing costume
She weeps
As the neighborhood dogs
Awaken the neighborhood
One snaps behind her
Teeth colliding with the fence
Roxy runs
Eventually finding her way home.
 
Roxy never returns to the Guzmans’
She goes back to attending classes
Asks for extra credit
Graduates
And in time
Finds a job
On her best days
She forgets what happened
On her worst
She drinks
Pops pills
Starts doing something
And abruptly stops
Or sits for hours
In the same spot.
 
The Guzmans struggle with the loss of Patricia
For many years longer
Lusita occasionally awakens with nightmares
Of a paper mâché monster in the house
But in time
The nightmares abate.
 
Victor
Keeps a copy of the paper
On his antique wooden nightstand
With the article about what happened the night Patricia died
And within it
It outlines how Victor
Swerved into the shoulder of the freeway
To avoid a head-on collision
With a truck heading the wrong direction
There is a statement
Issued by the trucking company
Giving their most sincere condolences
Promising the immediate termination of the driver
And in the cold calculations of the value of Patricia’s life
The announcement of a settlement.
 
Nowhere in the article
Is given mention to a Roxy Salgado
Of Rowland Heights, CA
Or any other person
Who may
Or may not have been
In some way
Responsible
For the accident on the 10 Eastbound that night.
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David A. Romero is a Mexican-American spoken word artist from Diamond Bar, CA. Romero has performed at over 75 colleges and universities in over 30 states.
www.davidaromero.com

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"few will awake to find that the world kept turning and changed"

2/10/2022

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 Excerpts from
The Shadow of Time
​by Robert René Galván

The Shadow of Time
​

New Year’s 2018 – Bear Mountain
 
The International System of Units has defined a second as 9, 192, 631, 770 cycles of radiation corresponding to the transition between two energy levels of the caesium-133 atom.
 
 
The star glares through the glass;
A frozen lake between two mountains;
The world turns on its spine as it has for billions of years.
 
What’s a year?
 
An accretion of eddies within a vast storm,
An endless trek, but more than the distance
Between two points, a resonance we feel compelled to track,
First with arrays of stone, then with falling grains of sand
And complex contraptions of wheels within wheels,
The heartbeat of liquid crystal, the adumbrations of an atom.
 
I listen to what the geese tell me as they form a V in retreat,
The toad as he descends to his muddy rest,
The perennials as they retract beneath the frost,
The empty symmetry of a hornet’s nest,
And the choir of whales fleeing in the deep.
 
They all return like the tides, so tethered to the sun and moon,
While we chop at time with a pendulous blade,
Doomed to live in its shadow.



Awakening
 
And then, the machine stopped;
the sky began to clear
when the great gears
groaned to a halt;
the ground ceased
its shivering,
stars appeared
and beasts emerged
in our absence,
wings cast shadows
over empty streets.
 
In the gnawing silence,
a distant siren
reminds us of a gruesome tally;
we peer from our doorways
for a ray of hope,
long to walk the paths
we barely noticed.
 
In the ebb and flow
of life and death,
we inhabit the low tides,
a scant respite
from irresistible waves.
 
After a time,
most will return to normal,
become mired
in old assumptions
and petty desires,
to the ways that failed us,
 
But a few will awake
to find that the world
kept turning
and changed:
 
They will walk into the sun
And shed their masks.



Hommage à Neruda
 
What does the horseshoe crab
Search for in the murk
With its single hoof,
 
Or the she-turtle
In her lumbering butterfly
Up the shore?
 
Does the quivering hummingbird
Find solace as it probes
The dreaming delphinium,
 
Or the velvet worm
As it reaches with its toxic jets?
 
Are the choral cicadas
Worshiping the sun
After emerging from seventeen
Years of darkness?
 
What of the myriad species
That have come and gone,
The gargantuan sloth,
The pterosaur that glided
Over a vast ocean
From the Andes to the coast
Of Spain,
Saw the seas rise and fall
Back upon themselves,
 
Just as I slumber and wake
For these numbered days.



L’heure Bleue – The Time of Evening
 
The sun has set, but night has not yet fallen. It’s the suspended hour…
The hour when one finally finds oneself in renewed harmony with the world and the light…The night has not yet found its star.    
-Jacques Guerlain
 
As the world folds into shadow,
A grey tapestry descends:
 
The coyote’s lament from the wild place
Across the creek and the fading chorale
Of the late train awaken crepuscular birds
Who inhabit the rift like rare gods.
 
Abuelo sits in the cleft of a mesquite,
His rolled tobacco flickering
With the fireflies as a dim lantern
Receives the adoration of moths;
 
A cat’s eyes glow green
In the gloaming light
And a cloud of mosquitos
Devoured by a flurry of bats.
 
The outhouse door moans open
And the boy treads quietly
On the moonlit stepping stones,
Through the corn and calabacitas,
Under the windmill as it measures
The October wind;
 
Pupils widen like black holes,
Ingest the night spirits,
And he cannot yet imagine
A world beyond these stars,
Or that he will someday
Live in a place where it’s never dark.


 
Sarabande
 
                              for Zuzana Růžičková
 
 
She clutched the leaves
in her hand
as she waited
to be loaded
onto the waiting truck.
 
Somehow, an angry wind
lifted the notes
and they sailed
down the street
like runaway kites,
 
But the music rode
along in her heart,
persisted through
every kind of horror,
from Auschwitz
to Bergen-Belsen,
antithesis of the camp
accordion and broken
strings’ blithe
accompaniment
to endless roll calls
in the bitter cold,
starvation,
dehydration,
executions
and the merriment
of the guards.
 
Those pages looped
in her head
even as she wrestled
a stray beet from the cold ground,
digging with her fingernails
to feed her dying mother.
 
When she returned
to Prague,
her hands were ruined,
and new monsters
would soon appear
in the streets,
but the Sarabande sang
in her insistent fingers
until it circled the soiled world
like a golden thread.
 
 
 
 
* Harpsichordist, Zuzana Růžičková, is considered one of the great musicians of the 20th century.  She survived Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen.
 
The work in question is J.S. Bach’s E minor Sarabande from the fifth book of English Suites. Růžičková had written it out by hand at the age of 13 to take with her during her internment.
Click here to purchase a copy of The Shadow of Time from Adelaide Books.

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Robert René Galván, born in San Antonio, resides in New York City where he works as a professional musician and poet. His previous collections of poetry are entitled, Meteors and Undesirable: Race and Remembrance.  Galván’s poetry was recently featured in Adelaide Literary Magazine, Azahares Literary Magazine, Burningword Literary Journal, Gyroscope, Hawaii Review, Hispanic Culture Review, Newtown Review, Panoply, Sequestrum, Somos en Escrito, Stillwater Review, West Texas Literary Review, and UU World. He is a Shortlist Winner Nominee in the 2018 Adelaide Literary Award for Best Poem. His work has been featured in several literary journals across the country and abroad and has received two nominations for the 2020 Pushcart Prize and one for Best of the Web. René’s poems also appear in varied anthologies, including Undeniable: Writers Respond to Climate Change and in Puro ChicanX Writes of the 21st Century.

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Review of April On Olympia by Lorna Dee Cervantes

2/4/2022

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Book Review of 
April On Olympia 
by Lorna Dee Cervantes 
(Marsh Hawk Press, 2021)

by Rosa Martha Villarreal
—you and I are old;
Old age hath yet his honour and his toil;
Death closes all: but something ere the end,
Some work of noble note, may yet be done[.]
 
—“Ulysses,” Alfred, Lord Tennyson
The theme of Lorna Dee Cervantes’s latest book of poetry is implicit in the title, April on Olympia. When the artist reaches the summit of the mountain, she is faced with her own mortality. Just so that the reader is clear, she includes a section to allude to T.S. Eliot’s “The Wasteland.” April is the cruelest month because it reminds us that the natural cycles of rebirth and death will continue without us. But, as Tomás Rivera said in his existentialist novel …and the earth did not devour him, not yet. The earth has not devoured this poet yet, and there is something still left: the untarnished spirit of youth now imprisoned in an ageing body. There is still something left to do, a final journey of creative consciousness, the gift of a spiritual inheritance to kindred souls who await their conception and birth.
 
Gardens, seeds, memory, and regeneration are recurring ideas and symbols in this collection. The mountain, both a symbol of total dissolution and proximity to the heavens, is where the seeds of fifty years of Cervantes’s artistic career—losses, loves, and quest for social justice—are taken to be planted in the fertile minds of future poets, much like the seed of her mother’s essence and memory in “Unimagined Title” bore fruit in her mind.
 
                       On my murdered mom’s
                       birthday: light rain on expired
                       seed; new garden, mine.
 
Cervantes conjures the ghosts of her literary and artistic godparents, guides of the subconscious mind’s nights of darkness, the givers of the word/logos, which orders the chaos of imagination just as the gardener organizes the fecundity of nature. The artists: Theodore Roethke, Gil Scott Heron, Billie Holliday, Federico García Lorca, Allen Ginsberg. The social warriors who shaped her sensibilities and gave definition to her indignation: César Chávez, Nestora Salgado, Carlos Almaráz. She elaborates in “River: for my murdered mother” that the inheritance of remembrance, sorrow, and the continuum of thought and passion through time are vehicles of freedom because the quest for justice takes longer than one lifetime.
 
                       I remember the river.
                       Word you didn’t want me
                       to use. Meaning Freedom.
                       Meaning liberation from the flame.
 
                       I remember the fire. The lap
                       of genius dissolving it all,
                       the light of the dying leaves,
                       bare fall of it all. I remember.
 
                       River of vein in the brain,
                       the great artery of culture
                       weaving it together with threads,
                       conversations. River of immense sorrow.
 
                       River of forgiveness. River of the riven
                       fallen. River of the gasping. River of icy
                       grasp. Fierce river. Fleet river.
                       Saltless self-revealed in the sunlight.
 
                       I remember the river: word
                       you didn’t want me to speak. Word
                       I free you. Word in your ancient reveal.
                       The word river, a substitute for desire.
 
Nothing is ever destroyed. Desire deferred is but a dormant seed of ancient tree waiting to be born once again. Encased in the stillness of stones, even the collective memories of an entire people seemingly dead await their rebirth. This concept is not mere fancy but an empirical reality because memory is an energy field. Energy is never destroyed, said Newton; can never be destroyed. Matter is energy in another form, birthed in the human mind, reimagined, re-arranged as Cervantes says in “Olmecan Eyes”:
 
                       Olmecan eyes reborn. The infant
                       stone unfurling in our navels.
                       Another civilization reconquers
                       the wilderness of today. Sun devouring
                       Earth, we are shadows of the way
                       we were, beneath the shifting planets,
                       the comets, the desolate inconsolable moon.
 
The ghosts of people from Cervantes’s past appear to her throughout this volume, not just her mother’s but other beloved ones, friends and lovers. “On Feinberg’s Theory of Physics: another for John,” Cervantes continues with the imagery of gardens, rivers, the rebirth and transforms the language of quantum science. An invisible sorrow evokes that same you, says Cervantes: the ever constant in the chaos, “circling aimlessly around some / nowhere no one’s planet loneliness.” The title is an allusion to the theory of retro-causality. After a life is lived, can the summation of experience, the culmination of passion and loss act like a subatomic particle assert itself in time-space and deflect the path of the past?
 
It would be inaccurate to quantify this collection of poetry as solely one individual’s existential reflection. Lorna Dee Cervantes has and continues to be a warrior for human dignity. The imagery of nature and its cycles of decay and regeneration is likewise expressed in political themes, which resonate as strongly as they did in her previous books of poetry. The opening poem “The River Doesn’t Want a Wall” clearly alludes to a former U.S. president’s incendiary rhetoric on a never-built wall that was meant to run along the U.S.-Mexican border. The wall would have done more than just to keep out people; it would have created an artificial, disruptive barrier in the natural world. Nature is not divided. Division is a human construct that is simultaneously a tool for functional organization and an instrument of oppression. Freedom, however, is a natural phenomenon. It is not a coincidence that Thomas Jefferson calls liberty an “unalienable right.” Resistance to oppression is endemic to animal life, of which we are but one species. The rivers of freedom will flood and wipe away the vanity of humans. “The river doesn’t want the Wall. / The land won’t let it. / The floods won’t cede.”
 
In “Poem for Black Lives Matter,” Cervantes asserts that love and memory are weapons of liberation from the false division of societal construct of so-called “race.” (Speaking as a person trained as a biologist, I can assure my readers that there is but one human race. The other human species that existed as late as 16,000-35,000 years ago have died off or been absorbed into our race.)
 
                       Love is a force
                       greater than fear
                       a presence
 
                       and a present
                       a prescience sense
                       a nuclear subatomic
 
                       fusion.
 
The historical division of people by “race” spawned a loathing for the offspring of miscegenation, los desdichados, the undesirables, who were exiled to the margins of society. The center of society, governed and possessed by those who had pre-privileged themselves as “the right people,” dictated who was what, who was worthy of their right to self-determination and who was not. (“College isn’t meant for your people.” “This neighborhood isn’t meant for your people.”) But the center cannot hold forever as Yeats said in “The Second Coming.” However, what is being reborn isn’t Yeats’s horrific beast of darkness slouching towards modernity creating chaos and despair. Rather it is a spiritual re-embracing of what was exiled, new possibilities of being, an aroused consciousness, an awareness that we are part of nature not its rulers. In “What IS XicanX,” Cervantes posits such a return to the one People, the source from which we first became human. Carlos Fuentes said in La región más transparente del aire, that the original is the impure with physical and symbolic miscegenation. The rebirth of a new era begins here with this new people recombined, returned from the exiles of division. XicanX, the mixed ethnic people, represents the inevitable. X encompasses all. Humanity is re-integrated, and we become “The People (and I birth) / in any language.”
 
Let me conclude where I began, with Tennyson’s poem: “[B]ut something ere the end. Some work of noble note, may yet be done.” For the for the visionary warrior—the poet Cervantes—the noble work is the invocation of memory, rebirth, and the quest for enlightened morality. The beauty of Cervantes’s poetry lures us into the realm of primal dreams and a reality that can only be discerned in metaphors. That said, there is just too much packed into each poem for a single review to do this book justice. Lorna Dee Cervantes made us wait since her last book, but it was worth it.
Click here to buy a copy of April On Olympia from Small Press Distribution.
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Lorna Dee Cervantes, a Native Californian (Chumash), is an award winning author of six books of poetry. The former Professor of English at CU Boulder, Creative Writing Program, lives and writes in Seattle.

Photo by Poleth Rivas / Secretaría de Cultura CDMX 

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Rosa Martha Villarreal, a Chicana novelist and essayist, is a descendant of the 16th century Spanish and Tlaxcatecan settlers of Nuevo Leon, Mexico. She drew upon her family history in her critically acclaimed novels Doctor Magdalena, Chronicles of Air and Dreams: A Novel of Mexico, and The Stillness of Love and Exile, the latter a recipient of the Josephine Miles PEN Literary Award and a Silver Medalist in the Independent Publishers Book Award (2008). She writes a column, “Tertullian’s Corner,” for Somos en escrito Magazine.

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My Book of the Dead

1/23/2022

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An Excerpt of Ana Castillo's My Book of the Dead

These Times
 
In these times, you and I share,
amid air you and I breathe,
and opposition we meet,
we take inspiration from day to day thriving.
The sacred conch shell calls us,
drums beat, prayers send up;
aromatic smoke of the pipe is our pledge to the gods.
 
An all-night fire vigil burns
where we may consume the cactus messenger
of the Huichol and of the Pueblo people of New Mexico.
Red seeds of the Tlaxcalteca,
mushrooms of María Sabina,
tes de mi abuela
from herbs grown in coffee cans on a Chicago back porch,
tears of my mother on an assembly line in Lincolnwood, Illinois,
aid us in calling upon memory,
in these times.
 
In other days,
when memory was as unshakeable as the African continent
and long as Quetzalcoátl’s tail in the underworld,
whipping against demons, drawing blood,
potent as Coatlicue’s two-serpent face
and necklace of hearts and hands
(to remind us of our much-required sacrifices
for the sake of the whole).
We did what we could to take memory
like a belt chain around the waist to pull off,
to beat an enemy.
 
But now, in these times of chaos and unprecedented greed,
when disrupted elements are disregarded,
earth lashes back like the trickster Tezcatlipoca,
without forgiveness if we won’t turn around, start again,
say aloud: This was a mistake.
We have done the earth wrong and
we will make our planet a holy place, again.
I can, with my two hands,
palpitating heart; we can, and we will
turn it around, if only we choose.
 
In these times, all is not lost, nothing forever gone,
tho’ you may rightly think them a disgrace.
Surely hope has not abandoned our souls,
even chance may be on our side.
 
There are women and men, after all,
young and not so young anymore,
tired but tenacious,
mothers and fathers, teachers and those who heal and do not
know that they are healers,
and those who are learning
for the sole purpose of returning what they know.
Also, among us are many who flounder and fall;
they will be helped up by we who stumble forward.
All of these and others must remember.
We will not be eradicated, degraded, and made irrelevant,
not for a decade or even a day. Not for six thousand years
have we been here, but millions.
 
Look at me. I am alive and stand before you,
unashamed despite endless provocations
railed against an aging woman.
My breasts, withered from once giving suckle
and, as of late, the hideousness of cancer,
hair gone grey,
and with a womb like a picked fig
left to dry in the sun; so, my worth is gone,
they say.
My value in the workplace, also dwindled,
as, too, the indispensable role of mother.
As grandmother I am not an asset in these times
but am held against all that is new and fresh.
Nevertheless, I stand before you;
dignity is my scepter. I did not make the mess
we accept in this house.
When the party is done,
the last captive hung—fairly or unjustly--
children saved and others lost,
the last of men’s wars declared,
trade deals busted and others hardly begun,
tyrants toppled, presidents deposed,
police restrained or given full reign upon the public,
and we don’t know where to run
on a day the sun rose and fell
and the moon took its seat in the sky,
I will have remained
the woman
who stayed behind to clean up.
 
From My Book of the Dead by Ana Castillo © 2021 by Ana Castillo. Courtesy of High Road Books, an imprint of the University of New Mexico Press.
My Book of the Dead
 
I
 
They say in the Underworld
one wanders through a perennial winter, an Iceland of adversity.
Some end in Hades,
consumed by ¨res that Christians and Pagans both abhor.
<#>
My ancestors too imagined a journey that mirrored Earth.
Nine corridors--
each more dreadful than the one before--
        promised paradise.
You kept your soul but not your skin.
 
II
 
When my time came to return to the womb, I wasn’t ready.
Anti-depressants, sex, a trip, prize, company of friends,
love under moonlight
or generous consumption of wine--
nothing did the trick to ease my mind.
 
When the best, which is to say, the worst
rose from swamp,
elected to lead the nation--
I presumed my death was imminent.
Eyes and ears absorbed
from the media what
shouldn’t have been.
Had I time traveled back to 1933?
Perhaps I’d only woken to a bad dream,
or died and this was, in fact,
Purgatory--
(Did being dead mean you never died?)
 
The new president and appointed cabinet soon grabbed royal seats
happy as proverbial rats in cheese.
An era of calamity would follow.
Holy books and history had it written.
¦e Book of Wisdom, for example,
spoke of the wicked
rollicking down the road,
robbing the in¨rmed and the old.
¦ey mocked the crippled and dark skinned--
anyone presumed weak or vulnerable.
 
Election Night--
I was alone but for the dog, moon obscured by nebulous skies;
sixty-odd years of mettle like buoy armbands kept me afloat.
Nothing lasts forever, I’d thought.
 
Two years passed,
world harnessed by whims of the one per cent.
I managed--
me and the dog,
me and the clouds, contaminated waters, and unbreathable air--
to move, albeit slowly, as if through sludge,
pain in every joint and muscle.
Sad to behold,
equally saddened of heart,
and still we marched.
 
III
 
Sun came up and set.
Up and down, again.
My throbbing head turned ball of iron.
Thoughts fought like feral cats.                       Nothing made sense.
The trek felt endless,
crossing blood rivers infested with scorpions,
lost in caverns,
squeaking bats echoed, µying past, wings hit my waving hands.
 
I climbed jutting flint, bled like a perforated pig,
ploughed through snow-driven sierra, half-frozen—lost gravity,
swirled high,
hit ground hard.
Survived, forged on.
Two mountains clashed like charging bulls.
Few of us made it through.
 
(Ancestors’ predictions told how the Sixth Sun would unfold with
hurricanes, blazes, earthquakes, & the many that catastrophes
would leave in their wake.)
 
IV
 
(Demons yet abound, belching havoc and distress.
Tens of thousands blown by gales of disgrace.)
 
V
 
(I hold steadfast.)
 
VI
 
 ca. 1991
 
The Berlin Wall was coming down. One afternoon beneath
gleaming skies of Bremen, Dieter was dying (exposure to asbestos
in his youth). “My only lament in dying would be losing memory,”
my friend said. “All whom I knew and all whom I loved will be
gone.” Once a Marxist, after cancer—reformed Lutheran. (It was
a guess what Rapture would bring a man with such convictions.)
A boy during third Reich, Dieter chose to safekeep recollec-
tions—from the smells of his mother’s kitchen to the streets of
Berlin that reeked of rotting flesh as a boy. Men had always killed
men, he concluded, raped women, bayoneted their bellies and torn
   out the unborn, stolen children, stomped infants’ heads, commit-
   ted unspeakable acts for the sake of the win, occupy land,
exact revenge,
glory for the sake
of a day in the sun.
 
(Do the dead forget us?
I ask with the lengthening of days each spring.
Do they laugh at our naïveté, long
for what they left behind?
Or do they wisely march ahead, unfazed?)
 
VII
 
Xibalba (Ximoayan & Mictlán
& Niflheim, where Dieter rightly should have gone)
cleansed human transgressions
with hideous punishments.
You drank piss, swallowed excrement, and walked upside down.
Fire was involved at every turn.
Most torturous of all, you did not see God.
Nine hazards,
nine mortal dangers for the immortal,
nine missed menstruations
while in the womb that had created you--
it took four years to get to heaven after death.
 
Xibalba is a place of fears,
starvation, disease, and even death after death.
A mother wails (not Antcleia or la Llorona
but a goddess). “Oh, my poor children,”
Coatlicue laments.
Small skulls dance in the air.
Demon lords plot against the heavens
 
I wake in Xibalba.
Although sun is bright
and soft desert rain feels soothing,
fiends remain in charge.
They take away food, peace of any kind,
pollute lakes, water in which to bathe or drink,
capture infants, annihilate animals in the wild.
(These incubi and succubi come in your sleep,
leave you dry as a fig
fallen on the ground.)
 
VIII
 
There were exceptions to avoid the Nine Hells.
Women who died giving birth to a future warrior
became hummingbirds dancing in sunlight.
Children went directly to the Goddess of Love
who cradled them each night.
Those who drowned or died of disease,
struck by lightning or born for the task,
became rainmakers--
my destiny—written in the stars.
Then, by fluke or fate, I ended underground
before Ehecátl with a bottomless bag of wind
that blew me back to Earth.
 
IX
 
Entering the first heaven,
every twenty-eight days
the moon and I met. When I went
to the second, four hundred sister stars were eaten
by our brother, the sun. Immediately he spit them out,
one by one, until the sky was ¨lled
again.
 
In the third,
sun carried me west.
In the fourth, to rest.
I sat near Venus,
red as a blood orange.
In the fifth, comets soared.
Sixth and seventh heavens were magni¨cent
shades of blue.
Days and nights without end became
variations of black.
Most wondrously,
God dwelled there,
a god of two heads,
female and male,
pulled out arrows
that pierced skin on my trek.
“Rainmakers belong to us,” the dual god spoke,
his-her hand as gentle as his-her voice was harsh.
Realizing I was alive I trembled.
“You have much to do,” he-she directed.
Long before on Earth a Tlaxcaltec healer
of great renown crowned me
granicera,
placed bolts of lightning in my pouch.
I walked the red road.
Then came the venom
and the rise of demons
like jaguars devouring human hearts.
They brought drought,
tornados, earthquakes, and hurricanes--
every kind of loss and pain.
The chaos caused confusion,
ignorance became a blight.
(Instead of left, I’d turned right,
believed it day when it was night.
I voyaged south or maybe north through in¨nity,
wept obsidian tears before the dual god--
“Send me back, please,” I cried.
“My dear ones mourn me.”)
 
X
 
The Plumed Serpent’s conch blew,
a swarm of bees µew out from the shell.
Angels broke giant pots that sounded like thunder.
Gods caused all manner of distraction
so that I might descend without danger.
Hastily, I tread along cliffs, mountain paths,
past goat herds and languishing cows.
A small dog kept up as we followed
the magenta ribbons of dawn.
I rode a mule at one point,
glided like a feather in air at another,
ever drifting toward
my son,
the granddaughter of copper hair,
sound of a pounding drum--
we found you there, my love,
waiting by the shore,
our return.
 
From My Book of the Dead:  New Poems by Ana Castillo © 2021 Ana Castillo. Excerpt courtesy of High Road Books, an imprint of the University of New Mexico Press. Buy a copy from the publisher here.
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​Ana Castillo is a celebrated author of poetry, fiction, nonfiction, and drama. Among her award-winning books are So Far from God: A Novel; The Mixquiahuala Letters; Black Dove: Mamá, Mi’jo, and Me; The Guardians: A Novel; Peel My Love Like an Onion: A Novel; Sapogonia; and Massacre of the Dreamers: Essays on Xicanisma (UNM Press). Born and raised in Chicago, Castillo resides in southern New Mexico.

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To the music of cruel spurs

11/28/2021

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This photo is of the Mireles family men who were vaqueros in South Texas. Third from the right, front row is the patriarch, Julio Samudío Mireles, my great, great, grandfather who was born in 1830. Next to him on the right are his son-in-law Dario Talamántez and his son. He also had 5 daughters with his wife María Francisca Silva, known as "Mama Kika."

Vaqueros
​by ​Robert René Galván

Inspired by the Moorish horsemen, 
the Castellanos
set out in wooden ships
across an alien sea
with stalls of stallions
treated better than men,
fed and lovingly groomed
for the day they would
dance upon the land
to the music of cruel spurs.
 
The Aztecas had never seen
such a creature
and thought it was an enormous,
sweating stag of which the rider
was a part – a mystical beast
to be feared, and yet the indios
became its master with lazos
and chaparras,
estribos and botas,
and when strays escaped
to the north and multiplied masteñeros gathered
and broke them for the gringos.
 
Alla en el rancho grande,
Grande Julio Mireles
went out with his nine sons
after a pot of café del campamento
and cigarros, huevos rancheros.
 
He taught the Tejanos
his craft, his charros
begat Kings in the fields
claimed by barbed-wire
and rifles (to steal a horse meant hanging), 
and when the dueño learned
all his secrets, vaqueros
gave way to “buckaroos”
with their chaps and lassos,
stirrups and cowboy boots,
mis padientes,
mojados.
 
Robert René Galván
11.6.21
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Robert René Galván, born in San Antonio, Texas, resides in New York City where he works as a professional musician and poet. His poetry collections include Meteors (Lux Nova Press), Undesirable – Race and Remembrance (Somos en escrito Literary Foundation Press), and The Shadow of Time (Adelaide Books). His  poems also appear in Puro ChicanX Writers of the 21st Century and various magazines, including Yellow Medicine Review: A Journal of Indigenous Literature, Art and Thought, Adelaide Literary Magazine, Azahares Literary Magazine, Gyroscope, Hawaii Review, Hispanic Culture Review, Newtown Review, Panoply, Somos en escrito Magazine, Stillwater Review, West Texas Literary Review, and UU World. He is a Shortlist Winner Nominee in the 2018 Adelaide Literary Award for Best Poem. Two poems by Galván have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and another for the Best of the Web for 2020.

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Cuando las recordamos

11/2/2021

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Poetry of Remembrance
by ​Rafael Jesús González

​Cuando bailan las calacas
y cantan las calaveras
es cuando las recordamos
y las amamos de veras.

                        © Rafael Jesús González 2021            

When the skeletons dance
& the skulls sing
is when we remember them
& love them for real.
​
                © Rafael Jesús González 2021
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Rafael Jesús González, Prof. Emeritus of literature and creative writing, was born and raised biculturally/bilingually in El Paso, Texas/Cd. Juárez, Chihuahua, and taught at University of Oregon, Western State College of Colorado, Central Washington State University, University of Texas El Paso (Visiting Professor of Philosophy), and Laney College, Oakland, California where he founded the Dept. of Mexican & Latin-American Studies. Also visual artist, he has exhibited in the Oakland Museum of California, the Mexican Museum of San Francisco, and others in the U.S. and Mexico. Nominated thrice for a Pushcart prize, he was honored by the National Council of Teachers of English and Annenberg CPB for his writing in 2003. In 2013 he received a César E. Chávez Lifetime Award and was honored by the City of Berkeley with a Lifetime Achievement Award at the 13th Annual Berkeley Poetry Festival 2015. He was named the first Poet Laureate of Berkeley in 2017. Visit http://rjgonzalez.blogspot.com/. 

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Join a New Grito!

9/13/2021

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Mexican and Central American Independence Day Celebration 

A NEW GRITO FOR CHANGE

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On September 16, 1810, Father Miguel Hidalgo delivered the Grito de Dolores, a declaration of independence from Spanish colonialism; and a call for the abolition of African slavery, for an end to the caste system exploiting Indians, and for social and economic reform. Today, Mexicans and Central Americans are forced out of their home countries by a history of U.S. military intervention and exploitation, including International Monetary Fund and World Bank debt payments, imposed austerity programs, privatization schemes and “free trade” agreements: U.S. corporate domination to create a source of cheap labor. People that migrate to the United States face ICE repression, denial of their right to organize and lack of legal enforcement of workplace protections: forcing them into low-wage jobs.

Join us in a New Grito: a call for worker rights for all such as human rights, independence from poverty, full legalization and fair trade not exploitation!
 
Performances by Diana Gameros, Francisco Herrera, Enrique Ramírez, Elizabeth Esteva and Diego Sardaneta
 
Poetry by Rafael Jesús González and Nancy Esteva 
 
Presentations by David Frias, San Francisco Living Wage Coalition; Sara Terry Manríquez and Elvia Villescas of Las Hormigas; Karen Oliva, Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador; Porfirio Quintano, Hondurans in the Diaspora; Meredith Wilkinson, Network in Solidarity with Guatemala; Diana Bohn, Nicaragua Information Center for Community Action; and David Bacon, Dignity Campaign organizing committee
Wednesday, September 15
6 p.m. – 8 p.m.
​

Register in advance for this virtual event
https://bit.ly/NewGritoforChange
Donations to benefit the San Francisco Living Wage Coalition, Las Hormigas of Ciudad Juarez, Trabajo Cultural Caminante and Bay Area Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador
​

For more information, contact (415) 863-1225 or sflivingwage@riseup.net or visit www.livingwage-sf.org
Celebracíón del Día de Independencia Mexicana y Centroamericana

UN GRITO NUEVO PARA CAMBIO

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El 16 de septiembre de 1810, el Padre Miguel Hidalgo entregó el Grito de Dolores, una declaración de la independencia del colonialismo español; y una llamada para la abolición de la esclavitud africana, para un fin al sistema de la casta que explota a los indios, y para la reforma social y económica. Hoy, mexicanos y centroamericanos están forzados a salir fuera de sus patrias a causa de una larga historia de la intervención militar estadounidense, la explotación del los pagos de deuda del Fondo Monetario Internacional y Banco Mundial, los programa impuestos de la austeridad, los esquemas de la privatización y los acuerdos de "libre cambio": la dominación corporativa de EEUU para crear una fuente de obra barata. Los migrantes a los Estados Unidos, enfrentan la represión de la migra, la negación de su derecho de organizar y la falta de protecciones legales en su lugar de trabajo: forzandolos a aceptar trabajos de bajos-sueldos.

Unámonos en un nuevo Grito: una llamada para los derechos del trabajador tales como los derechos humanos, la independencia de la pobreza y la completa legalización y "fair trade" sin exploitación.
 
Música por by Diana Gameros, Francisco Herrera, Enrique Ramírez, Elizabeth Esteva and Diego Sardaneta
 
Poesía por Rafael Jesús González and Nancy Esteva
 
Presentaciones de David Frías, Coalición de Salario Digno de San Francisco; Sara Terry Manríquez and Elvia Villescas of Las Hormigas; Karen Oliva, Comité en Solidaridad con el Pueblo de El Salvador; Porfirio Quintano, Hondureños en la Diáspora; Meredith Wilkinson, Red en Solidaridad con Guatemala; Diana Bohn, Centro de Información de Nicaragua para la Acción Comunitaria; David Bacon, Comité organizador de la Campaña Dignidad
miércoles, 15 de septiembre
6 p.m. – 8 p.m.
​

Regístrese para este evento, virtual en línea
https://bit.ly/NewGritoforChange
Donaciones para beneficio de la Coalición de Salario Digno de San Francisco, Las Hormigas de Ciudad Juárez, Trabajo Cultural Caminante y Área Bahía Comité en Solidaridad con el Pueblo de El Salvador
 
Para más información, comuníquese al 415-863-1225 o sflivingwage@riseup.net o visite www.livingwage-sf.org
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Me llamo Marina; o quizá Malinche; o quizá Malinallitzin

6/23/2021

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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. 
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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. 

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