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

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

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

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

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

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

by ​Byron López Ellington

​The snakes and arañas that skitter through the night
           Cucos y creepies and ghostly, ghastly creatures
Llorona and shadows and things that just aren’t right
           Death too young, life too old, vastly nasty features
Abandon and lying and truths too grand to know
           Solo, con miedo, y nada hacer puedes
The earth itself can scream and wither, be your foe
           And trap you in darkness por años o meses
Alive in your veins, sentimientos de raíz
           They crawl and creep and slither and wriggle in strife
Te forman, te moldean, you are them, so nice
           Y el mundo los necesita for its life
                      —For who you are is what they were, that old mess--
                      —Porque tu ser será lo qu’estarán, después.

Byron López Ellington is a Mexican-American poet, fantasy novelist-in-progress, and silly fellow from Austin, Texas. As of fall 2022, he is a student of creative writing and Spanish at the University of Iowa. You can find his other published works at byronlopezellington.com.

Elizabeth Jiménez Montelongo is a visual artist, poet, and facilitator. Elizabeth's work is informed by her Indigenous ancestry, Mesoamerican philosophy, Mexika & Mixtec art, Mexican culture, Chicano history, and her experiences as a woman. Her paintings and sculptures have been exhibited across the United States and her poetry is published widely, including in print and online journals, and in anthologies such as: Nos pasamos de la raya/We Crossed the Line (2017), Azahares (2020), and Harvard’s PALABRITAS (2020). She was 2021 Creative Ambassador of the San José Office of Cultural Affairs. She is a Board Member of Poetry Center San José and Editor of La Raíz Magazine. www.ejmontelongo.com

Angela Acosta is a bilingual Mexican American poet and scholar who grew up in Florida. She won the 2015 Rhina P. Espaillat Award from West Chester University for her Spanish poem “El espejo” and her work has appeared in Panochazine, Pluma, Latinx Lit Mag, and Eye to the Telescope. She has B.A. degrees in English and Spanish from Smith College, and she is currently completing her Ph.D. in Iberian Studies at The Ohio State University.

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

​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.

​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.

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.

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

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.

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.

​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.

Dr. Diana Aldrete is a bicultural, first-generation Mexican-Salvadoran-American living in Hartford, CT. She is a Visiting Lecturer of Hispanic Studies at Trinity College. She is also an abstract painter, a writer, and a musician. She was born in Milwaukee, WI before moving to Guadalajara Mexico where she did her primary education, and later moved back to the U.S. where she has been ever since. She has published a short fiction in Spanish “Los charales” in Diálogo: an Interdisciplinary Studies Journal, and the academic article “The Ruins of Modernity: Synecdoche of Neoliberal Mexico in Roberto Bolaño’s 2666” in Ecofictions, Ecorealities and Slow Violence in Latin America and the Latinx World, 2019.

                          i
Brooklyn a park bench a quart bottle of
malt liquor and a brother
how did that happen late spring early death
drone of skies ready to annihilate themselves
an ear wrenched from its rock formation
a buzz of intonations from the Mahatmas
stoned and iridescent in their vanishing
perched like quetzal birds on the telephone wire
high above planet Nothing all comes back
to this moment realization of these deaths
the masks of infancy withering yet beautiful
and Hey ! did you hear the eloquence emanating
from the jazz trumpet of Miles Davis ?
basements in accolades of marijuana smoke
decadence and livelihood waiting for births
for nomenclatures to disclose their irate vowels
in a backyard next door to Betty Carter
mind soaked in tequila playing boyhood one
Last Time and it all falls down the sudden repetition
of a life experience the onset of seizures
the rest of breath reduced to a red parenthesis
inside which the conflagration of ideas and love
recycled eerie representations of store windows
masked and hooded figures demons alluring
and baleful and after that what is there to know
a trip to the outback a dozen hospitalizations
mysterious tumors ventilators bad x-rays
memories of Mayo Clinic cold spells
long periods before and after that no one remembers
but for the poignant high notes the small echo
in its shell and the massive but absent seas
 
                            ii
the little red clarinet case pushed under the bed
sheets wrung out turning yellow from ichor of the gods
transpiration and head-wounds tilted off the moving
wagon on to the sidewalks of inferno and whatever
could that mean the isolation wards and always
the stranger at the door bare-knuckled with a bag
to capture whatever malignant spirits trying to escape
the maps were drawn tight around the peninsula and
causeways and trampolines for the kids to jump
up and down inside the coma where an excised cosmos
auto-destructs with all its plastic passengers
most of whom have traveled to the Yucatan and
harbored nights in Teotihuacan with vessels of ether
the countdown hasn’t even started before the finish
is a fait accompli the forlorn hills of dialect and
twilight the way they reappear in dreams half-beings
bereft of intellect and side-swiped by planetary diesels
plunging like headless horsemen down the Pan-Am Highway
motels and endless waiting rooms dismantled telephones
ambulances and more ambulances the wrong address
and finality of sliding curtains hanging like angels
left to dry from the wars and the doctors of hypnosis
and mercury just staring into the abyss devoid
of language the cuneiform of their brains working
overtime to excuse themselves from all culpability
and soon it’s another Halloween trick or treating
on the doorsteps of a missing basement and phantom
music ascends The Monster Mash with calaveras de
azúcar and the jingles and marionettes of memory
dancing sing-song in the cavities
I got the shakes I’m going fast
 
                           iii
cada día es el día de los muertos
 
11-01-21

​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.

Long has it been since I’ve heard the shuffle of old slippers on the linoleum floor. The clanging of pans. Squeaks from the rolling pin. The thump…thump…thump of black stone on black stone—the molcajete—mashing cumino seeds and cloves of garlic—with snaps and pops—into glorious salves that staved off hungers, deep and brash. I bless that heavenly transmutation—the thump…thump…thump that spun vulgar sundries into liquid gold. That elixir of lives, swirled with warm love and splashes of water from the tap, poured into pots—cauldrons of arroz con pollo, picadillo, carne guisada, and that pollo con calabaza I could never bring myself to eat—that set eyes and tongues aflame. But, the kitchen is quiet, now, with only the smell of black bananas in the fruit bowl, abandoned dishes on countertops, and—maybe—a sweaty piece of cheese that fell behind the stove. The molcajete is dry as a bone, grieving, quietly, in a corner next to the sink—no tears left to shed (slipped away like fistfuls of quicksilver)—with no philosopher’s stone to bring back the thump…thump…thump of this heart or home nor the alchemy of her fingertips. 

David Estringel is a Mexican-American writer/poet who was born in Alice, TX and grew up in Brownsville, TX for half of his life. He currently lives in Temple, TX with his five dogs and is finishing his MFA in Creative Writing at the University of Texas - Rio Grande Valley. David started writing three years ago at age 49 and has had his work appear in literary publications, such as The Opiate, Azahares, Cephalopress, North Meridian Review, Poetry Ni, DREICH, Horror Sleaze Trash, and The Blue Nib. His short story, "When Blood Wants Blood," recently appeared in Puro ChicanX Writers of the 21st Century (published by Cutthroat: A Journal of the Arts and The Black Earth Institute). His first collection of poetry and short fiction Indelible Fingerprints (Alien Buddha Press) was published April 2019, followed by three poetry chapbooks, Punctures (Really Serious Literature - 2019), PeripherieS (The Bitchin’ Kitsch - 2020), and Eating Pears on the Rooftop (Finishing Line Press - July 2022). His new book of micro poetry little punctures, a collaboration with UK illustrator and artist, Luca Bowles, will be released in 2022 by Really Serious Literature.