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​​SOMOS EN ESCRITO
The Latino Literary Online Magazine

POETRY
​POESÍA

Part jaguar, part thunder and rain

1/28/2021

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​​Husks

Abuelita tells me that I was born in the month of Tlaloc:
Part jaguar, part thunder and rain—grown like corn,
in a smoggy valley downstream from the Iztaccihuatl.
 
There, we knew how to cook for the dead: tamales
sweet as suffering. With molcajetes, we mashed hearts
stuffed with the blood of truths omitted while loving.
 
I don’t remember the bullet that split Julio’s skull. But,
imagine Mother hypervigilant for the sky falling.
Death threats, caseloads of Bacardi, comida cold.
 
Joy coagulates, like cars on the periférico. Finally,
we see corruption’s fangs taller than any volcanos.
Negrita is left at the pound. All night, camote carts cry.
 
Then came the trunks, the take-only-what-you-need, leave
the snow on the Ajusco, take Juanita Perez. Feel the bloody
slice of the interim between indigena and immigrant.
 
Here, my estadounidense classmates pretend I don’t exist.
Abuelita dies. Even Tlaloc forgets me in this blurry desert:
Santa Anas in our eyes, on the stingy side of survival.
 
Somedays, we even let ourselves feel the grinding
of the stone, identity sifting, the flattening of the rolling pin.
Next time, consider keeping all the husks when you peel me.

​Nursemaid Magic

 
Fear runs like a headless chicken
flapping into you at the market,
when you least expect it to— ​
wings tossing up dirt long after the machete
has been wiped clean of blood.
 
The blade is our phone. It swings
at safety every time the calls arrive:
“Los vamos a fusilar!” 
 
Meanwhile, Mami draws lines in the rugs
pacing—she squawks, her feathers awry.
 
Some will grab the rosary, others the gun.
There is no time to wait for pricy milagros
in the Plaza de la Conchita.
 
But I was with Juanita making maza and, I swear,
she left the virgencita on her gold throne,
and summoned the pumas, monkeys and nāhuallis
down from her verdant Oaxacan hills instead,
right into our kitchen in the big city.
She wove protective spells into my black braids,
combed out my anxiety with her whispery Náhuatl,
took me straight to the moon of her smiling face.
 
Some will burn copal, others learn about battle
from the zing-zing of hummingbirds.
 
It’s no wonder Mami, to this day,
though safely tucked into a California suburb,
refuses to answer her phone:
She didn’t have a nursemaid
like my Juanita. 

​The Body Remembers

 
My Abuelita nearly died in the fire
that ate her songbirds,
 
in the city Dad came from--
where he played the violin.
 
Maybe it was cigarettes,
maybe spontaneous combustion.
 
We don’t talk about those things
that happened in Juarez,
 
where youth was bought and sold,
like trinkets at the border.
 
But ask my mother and she’ll tell you
how Alzheimer’s brought it all back.
 
How the body resurrects wounds
before it dies: harkens back to terror
 
through touch. After the brain falters,
after fighting, escaping, crossing,
 
sweating, surviving. You still die
under a conquistador’s swinging sword.
 
I prefer fire.
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​Katarina Xóchitl Vargas was raised in Mexico City. She and her family moved to San Diego when she was 13, where she began composing poems to process alienation. A dual citizen of the United States and Mexico, today she lives on the east coast where—prompted by her father’s death—she’s begun to write poetry again and is working on her first chapbook. Somos en escrito is delighted to  be the first to publish her writings.

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We will never reach tomorrow for sure

8/20/2020

1 Comment

 
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​New Poems by Ivan Argüelles

TAMAZUNCHALE
 
antes de abrir la demencia para descubrir
palabra tras palabra que no tiene sentido
diccionario de pulmones ! pulgas y rascacielos !
para mejor comprender lo que pasa dentro del ladrillo rojo
al margen de la calle que nos lleva al sur donde
los muertos tratan de olvidar lo que pasó ayer
cuando la gran máquina de nubes y sonidos
se acostó al lado del mar que sufre tantas camas
inexplicables y sin eco y ahora dime que quieres
con tus ojos apagados y tu mente como sirena
de ulises llamando a todos los náufragos
que la ambulancia está lista a partir !
ya me voy  hacia la mejor tortillera que hay
para besarla en su coma de vidas paralelas
y entonces con una tristeza mundial
seguiré caminando un brazo mas famoso que el otro
una oreja de piedra y otra en ninguna parte
para qué poner en dos el uno ?
multiplicar significa morir !
 
07-21-20​
TEOCALLI
    for Joe who appeared  yesterday morning
for a fraction of an instant in the doorway
 
standing in the light of the morning sun
confused with radiance and dazzling
the stanzas of an unwritten poem shift
in the monumental distances of air
crane-feathered shafts rotate like minds
ablaze in the pyramidal distances of sky
stone built on stone stepping to heaven
solar flares like tongues speaking loud
the destructions of cloud and thunder
and ever deeper the effects of amnesia
rain drowning cities of fine dust citadels
of bone and tumult havoc of wheels
spun out of control bringing down all
ten directions and mountains reared
overnight to mark off the western margin
where the archaic sea darkens rushing
to mirror itself in a dream of feathers
and the twins up and down they go
tracing each periphery of rock and grass
measuring how far it is to the lunar aleph
fading like dissolved aspirin at dawn
what fills the ear at such an early hour
if not the Sanskrit parrot reciting
chronologies and adamantine dynasties
names none can rightly recall inscribed
on the reverse of coins or obliterated
by a mere thumb on porous sandstone
libraries ! the tomb of words and to speak
the labyrinthine dialects communing
with deities of the Unseen and Unheard
pages torn at random from the codex
depicting the origins of divine Chaos
night ! splendors of ink in canyons
where the dead revive use of their hands
such a morning atop the great Teocalli
converting sums of air into breathless voice
hail all the heights and renown of fire !
we have come down the Panamerican
visiting each of the summers of 1953
and talking backwards to mummified
relatives wrapped in serapes of liquid gold
we will never reach tomorrow for sure
the Nymph death will take one of us
before the prophesy can be fulfilled
every day is this single bright moment
standing like phantom pharaohs immobile
in the pellucid movie film of memory
you are me and I am you ! there is grass
and maps strewn all over the lawn
and avenues that stretch as far back as
the first city carved out of the womb
ten minutes apart the matching Teocallis
that cast no shadow only black light !
 
06-11-20
canción del parque chapultepec
 
cronología del aire ! arquitectura de las nubes !
soy de poco valor
que lástima ! las abejas en sus columnas verticales
de azul incendiado chupando chupando los huesos
de la hierba dormida
soy azteca
soy caldeo
soy de mucho valor
sierras de sueño blanco que veo nomás
cuando estoy nadando en mi césped de memorias
todo verde desde el hombro izquierdo de césar vallejo
hasta la rodilla derecha de garcía lorca
acumulando los dos las muchas muertes de la luz
aunque vivimos como momias en Tenochtitlan
apenas sufriendo el tránsito de los motores de las plumas
yo lo único que soy es la luna
chafada y transparente como aspirina a mediodía
y hay mares invisibles que suben los pirámides de la frontera
pistolas con ojos !
ahi viene la bala !
dame mi caballo corrompido
yo soy peruano
el último dios soy
el mero dios de la basura hieroglífica de chapultepec
fumando como nunca las chispas baratas
de las olas que han venido a ahogar el estado de california
poco a poco y a menudo con sus pronombres
y hierro de lenguas mas muertas que el sol negro
tapadera y tumba del fuego silencioso
de mis pasos en el jardín unitario de la duda
y por eso digo
yo soy
 
06-17-20
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​Ivan Argüelles is an American innovative poet whose work moves from early Beat and surrealist-influenced forms to later epic-length poems. He received the Poetry Society of America’s William Carlos Williams Award in 1989 as well as the Before Columbus Foundation’s American Book Award in 2010.  In 2013, Argüelles received the Before Columbus Foundation’s Lifetime Achievement Award. For Argüelles the turning point came with his discovery of the poetry of Philip Lamantia. Argüelles writes, “Lamantia’s mad, Beat-tinged American idiom surrealism had a very strong impact on me. Both intellectual and uninhibited, this was the dose for me.” While Argüelles’s early writings were rooted in neo-Beat bohemianism, surrealism, and Chicano culture, in the nineties he developed longer, epic-length forms rooted in Pound’s Cantos and Joyce’s Finnegans Wake. He eventually returned, after the first decade of the new millennium, to shorter, often elegiac works exemplary of Romantic Modernism. Ars Poetica is a sequence of exquisitely-honed short poems that range widely, though many mourn the death of the poet’s celebrated brother, José.

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Círculo Entrevista de Zheyla Henriksen ​

6/19/2020

2 Comments

 
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https://circulowriters.com/

Círculo ​

​A community of diverse poets and writers supporting literary arts in California.  Somos en escrito provides a venue for these aspiring  poets to feature their poetry, interviews, reviews and promote poetic happenings.
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​Zheyla Henriksen
​ZHEYLA HENRIKSEN
PREÁMBULO: EN SUS PROPIAS PALABRAS:

Niñez y Juventud de Zheyla Loor Villaquirán
Nací en Portete, un pueblito ecuatoriano aislado y al cual sólo se llegaba en barco, Mi padre me registró a los 6 meses que viajó a la ciudad, el 20 de febrero de 1949. Creo que no quiso pagar la multa, así que todos mis documentos tienen esa fecha. Pero yo festejo el verdadero día en que nací: el 16 de agosto de 1948.
 
Creo yo tendría 6 años cuando mamá dejó Portete, donde nacimos todos, con sus dos últimos hijos, mi hermano Manolo y yo,  para vivir en la ciudad de Esmeraldas. Jamás volvimos, aunque siempre teníamos las maletas listas porque mamá decía que nos iba a mandar de vacaciones con una hermana mayor que vivía allí. A la ciudad sólo se llegaba por medio de un barco muy primitivo. El dolor de la muerte de un hermano de 16 años y por la causa que ya se nos la iba llevando el mar (literalmente porque mi hermano y yo pescábamos desde la cocina), mi mamá decidió abandonar el pueblo. Portete, sigue siendo un pueblito, pero al frente se ha construido un resort muy moderno. Con la marea baja se puede cruzar a pie del hotel al pueblito. Al subir el mar hay que usar una lancha.
 
Que yo recuerde, estaría yo en 4to o 5to grado cuando comencé a escribir poesía. Casi todas mis compañeras de la  escuela primaria eran mayores que yo y tenían enamorados. Supongo que sabrían que yo escribía poemas, por eso me pedían que les escribiera acrósticos para sus enamorados.
 
No recuerdo los poemas. El único poema que la memoria recuerda es el de mi primer amor por un torero imaginario que conocí en la “plaza”. Con decirte que yo no tenía ni idea de lo que era amor ni tampoco de lo que era una “plaza de toros”. La única plaza que yo conocía era la que también llamábamos mercado. Así es que a mi toreador “lo conocí” en el mercado. Mi maestra no creyó que yo hubiera escrito ese poema, pero lo corrigió y recuerdo la palabra “contendor” supongo de “contender” que ella substituyó por la mía:
 
Pasando yo por la plaza
vi a un hermoso torero
que por mí daba la vida
que por mí daba su amor
 
Estamos ya cara a cara
vamos para mi casa
que tengo todo arreglado
para realizar nuestra boda
 
 Aquel torero garboso
le tocó pelear con un toro
de los más feroces que había
 
El toro ya lo vencía
cuando alzó la vista hacia mí
y dijo: ¡oh morena!
¿aquí habéis estado?
 
Sí, aquí me hallo mirando,
Mirando cómo peleas
por vencer a tu contendor
Pero, ¿de qué me vale ese honor?
 
Y así terminó mi vida
con aquel torero
que por mí daba su vida
que por mí daba su honor.
 
 
Mis hermanos mayores ya vivían por su cuenta y las mujeres ya casadas, pero todavía había dos hermanas que estaban en un internado estudiando en la ciudad. Allí nos fuimos Manolo y yo. Ya estábamos en edad escolar y por primera vez nos separaron. Me pasé todo el año llorando y por eso perdí mi primer grado. Mi escuela quedaba al frente de la de mi hermano, pero no estábamos juntos.
 
Mi escuela primaria era monolingüe. En la secundaria teníamos un profesor que había aprendido inglés por sí mismo, así que nos enseñó “a traducir”, entre comillas porque en realidad era puro vocabulario lo que nos enseñaba.
 
Cuando me casé, mi esposo decidió que debíamos visitar Portete. Tendría 23 años. En aquel tiempo sólo se podía ir en barco. Recientemente se construyó una carretera y dos sobrinos me han llevado las últimas veces que he ido a Ecuador.
 
Emigré porque estaba casada con “un gringo” que pertenecía al Cuerpo de Paz, “Peace Corps”. Lo conocí en el 2do año de universidad, cuando mi profesor de inglés tuvo que viajar a los EE.UU. y buscaba un remplazo por un mes. Encontró al que iba a ser mi esposo en la calle y él aceptó substituirlo. Así lo conocí. Mi hermano y yo nos sentábamos juntos en la clase de inglés y le hacíamos bromas de su pronunciación en español.
 
Todavía en Ecuador, nos casamos, y construimos una casa. Estudiábamos francés en la Alianza Francesa porque yo quería continuar mis estudios en la Sorbona. Mi profesor de francés, que también era el cónsul de Francia, me había seleccionado para que yo fuera la segunda estudiante de la Alianza que él mandaría. Mi profesora de literatura de la universidad había sido la primera becaria.
 
Pero tuvimos un terremoto muy fuerte que hizo que el edificio donde teníamos clases se derrumbara. Como mi esposo pertenecía al Cuerpo de Paz y por estar casado conmigo ya le habían renovado dos veces su estadía, le dijeron que tendría que regresar a los EE.UU. Teníamos los dos 30 años entonces.
 
Con el derrumbe del edificio terminó el sueño de ir a Francia. Y aquí estamos, en California.
 
                                                              
 
ENTREVISTA:  
EN PLATICA:   Lucha Corpi  (LC)   y   Zheyla Henriksen  (ZH)
 
LC:  Zheyla, tuve la suerte, por primera vez, de oírte declamar tus poemas en público durante un recital de poesía en Sacramento, California, patrocinado por Escritores del Nuevo Sol en conjunto con Círculo de Poetas. Dijiste algo muy interesante a modo de preámbulo a tu presentación, y es que casi exclusivamente escribes “poesía erótica”.
​

En general, cuando alguien, y en especial una mujer dice eso, creo que el público inmediatamente piensa en el sexo o acto sexual mismo. Aunque ya no tan a menudo, también consideran a la mujer amoral. No piensan en la sensualidad, la cual es producto de la imaginación. Es decir que el erotismo no es producto del cuerpo, enteramente, y puede no preceder o ser parte del acto sexual. Así mismo, consideran a los poetas (sexo masculino) como primordiales exponentes de la poesía erótica. Aquí mis preguntas con la idea de aproximarnos a tu propia definición de tu arte poético:
 
LC: A tu parecer, ¿Cuáles son los elementos primordiales que definen la poesía erótica en general?  ¿Y de qué manera se manifiestan estos en tu propia obra?

ZH: Bueno, mira, no es que yo escriba exclusivamente poesía erótica, pero me inclino bastante a ella. Lo que pasa es que por haber quedado como finalista en el concurso internacional de poesía erótica en las dos veces que participé, me han dado ese título y yo me lo he apoderado. En cuanto a lo erótico como campo masculino, no lo veo desde la visión histórica sino desde el punto mítico-religioso.
Me explico: Míticamente los ritos “orgásmicos” primordiales le corresponden a la mujer porque es ella la suprema dadora del placer.

Entre muchos estudios, voy a mencionar sólo tres: The Great Cosmic Mother: Rediscovering the Religion of the Earth de Monica Sjöö y Barbara Mor, y en Sacred Pleasure de Riane Eisler, explican que fisiológicamente es en la mujer donde, exclusivamente, existe una conexión similar al trance religioso en el cerebro frontal y el cerebellum lo que permite el enganche al “neocortex”. Por eso en el acto sexual, la mujer experimenta un cierto trance espiritual, el éxtasis. Si observas tú la estatua de Bernini, El éxtasis de Santa Teresa, la contorsión y el relajamiento del cuerpo de la estatua es similar gesto del éxtasis sexual, (tuve la dicha de verla en W. D.C.)
 
LC: De acuerdo. Entonces en todo esto, la mujer es la dadora del placer en la pareja!  Y si es así, ¿Qué papel juega el hombre?
 
ZH: Así es. Las investigadoras observan que en los ritos sumerios, el hombre es el objeto del placer. En los himnos a la diosa Inana, que hoy se consideran más antiguos de lo que se creía; a la mujer se la presenta como la dadora y conductora de la energía divina a través del sexo. Por tanto es también la creadora de la escritura sagrada llamada el Kundalini. Estos versos son los más bellos cánticos a la sexualidad.
 
Sin ir más lejos, en el libro histórico como que es la Biblia, el Cantar de los Cantares contiene versos de tremendo contenido erótico. En ellos es la amada, la hablante, la que seduce y canta a su amado.
 
LC: Hace muchos años que leí algunos de ellos, pero a escondidas. Ya sabes, la religión católica le prohíbe a la mujer leerlos. Y crecí en México, donde la iglesia católica manda.
 
ZH: En realidad se piensa que estos versos pertenecían a libros míticos, pero con la imposición más tarde del patriarcado no pudieron eliminarlos, y más bien fue un caso de “co-option” política. La religión moderna los interpreta como un canto de amor entre el creyente y la iglesia.
 
LC: Claro. La iglesia. La que a veces ve solamente por sus propios intereses y enriquecimiento, y la liberación sexual de la mujer no le conviene.
 
ZH: Al imponerse el patriarcado lo erótico y la escritura erótica pasó a ser dominio del hombre y desde entonces él es el que puede cantar a la sexualidad, al amor, al erotismo no sólo de él sino de la mujer. ¿Te parece esto justo?
 
LC: Claro que no. Pero en estos casos nunca se trata de justicia, ni siquiera de caridad, sino de conveniencia y poder.
 
ZH: En lo que respecta a la mujer latina. El hombre le ha impuesto la modestia y el silencio, según las editoras del libro Pleasure in the Word: Erotic Writing by Latin American Women, e indican que la política del patriarcado cercenó el derecho que desde tiempos prehistóricos le correspondía a la mujer como dadora del placer y de la escritura.
 
LC: Es decir que la mujer, al escribir cualquier tema que se le tilde de “erótico,” está aceptando que es la mejor exponente del erotismo.  Pero el varón no puede aceptar la competencia, aunque hay muchos que lo ponen en términos de hacerle un bien a la mujer al reprimirla,  Por el bien de la raza humana. Pero eso ya va cambiando debido a movimiento feminista.  ¿Cuál es tu parecer?  
 
ZH: Lo que las poetas, y me incluyo yo entre ellas, están haciendo es recuperar su sexualidad, al crear su propio lenguaje para expresar lo erótico, deshaciéndose de la palabra-masculina. Y como me inclino mucho a lo mítico, incluso en mis investigaciones, tengo la tendencia de buscar y encontrar fácilmente símbolos míticos.
 
Considero que en nuestro inconsciente colectivo se conservan esos mitos que son actualizados por el rito de la escritura erótica. Según Cassirer y Jung, la escritura, y especialmente la poesía, es el rito por el cual se actualizan los mitos.
 
Ahora te voy a contar una anécdota personal. La primera vez que fui a una conferencia a la universidad de Louisville, Kentucky donde me aceptaron tanto en ponencia como en poesía, me encontré por primera vez en el panel de poesía a dos poetas eróticas, Nela Rio e Ivonne Gordon, compatriota esta última. Por primera vez leía mi poesía erótica y con tanta vergüenza que agachaba la cabeza. Luego me dice Nela, Zheyla, no debes de avergonzarte de leer tus poemas eróticos y de allí me invitó a otra lectura en Washington D.C para poemas del cuerpo y más tarde, a otras conferencias y poco a poco fui perdiendo la vergüenza que ahora me siento una “sin vergüenza”. Nela ha sido una de las poetas más generosas con la que me he encontrado en el camino de las letras, ella fue la que me dio información sobre el Concurso Internacional de Poesía Erótica en la que le habían otorgado una mención honorífica especial.
 
LC: ¡Qué linda y generosa Nela! No tuve el placer de conocerla, pero tuve el gusto de conocer y compartir con Ivonne Gordon en San Antonio. No recuerdo bien el nombre de la conferencia, pero si el tema: Mujeres Poetas del Mundo Latino. Había otras grandes poetas de América Latina, al igual que Norma Cantú.

ZH:   Poema a Nela
Nela  contigo puedo  jugar a las rayuelas
 cantar una ronda infantil 
"qué quería mi señorío 
matun-tiru-tiru-lán"
-queremos ser poetas  y cocineras,
 matum-tirun-tiru-lán  
 Nela  contigo vuelvo
a la infancia  con una canción de cuna 
"duérmete mi niño  que tengo que hacer"
 lavar estos versos  ponerme a comer 
 Nela  de niñas  
yo te enseñaría
el "tun, tun ¿quién es? 
el diablo con los siete mil cachos 
o el ángel con la bola de oro" 
que quiere una fruta o cinta
para ponerle colores
colocarla en un moño 
Nela  Correríamos nuevamente 
una calle cualquiera 
pero tomadas de la mano 
para robar una estrella.

LC: Es como si se hubieran conocido tú y Nela desde la niñez, jugado juntas —desde siempre. Bello.

Cambiando un poco el tema. Veo que has publicado tu poesía en un sinnúmero de antologías y revistas, y en ediciones de tus libros. El único de tus poemarios que tengo es el último, Confesiones de un cuerpo/Confessions of a Body, editado por la Editorial Académica española en el 2019.  ¿Cuáles son los títulos de tus otros poemarios?  

ZH: 1) Pedazos, los recuerdos/Shattered Memories 2) Caleidoscopio del Recuerdo/Kaleidoscope of Memories 3) Confesiones de un cuerpo: Estaciones de Pasión/Confessions of a Body, Seasons of Passion.
 
LC: Me has dicho que conociste a Phan Thi Kim muchos años después de que terminó la guerra en Viet Nam. Pero escribiste este poema muchos años antes. ¿Qué te hizo escribirlo?

ZH: Otro ejemplo de la violencia contra la mujer ya desde niña, está fotografía icónica, en especial de una niña vietnamita desnuda, huyendo, de la guerra en Viet Nam.  El poema que yo le escribí:

​“PHAN THI KIM”, fue publicado en 2003 en la exposición de poesía Outspoken Art/Arte Claro,
dedicado a la eliminación de toda forma de violencia contra la mujer.
 
PHAN THI KIM
You have forgiven us.
Your fragile body running naked
stuck in my mind.
 
For years the picture
has been encrusted in my retina,
behind the infernal dust
that burned your body half.
 
Nic Ut save your image
for the world to see his crime.
 
I still don’t understand
why man has created war.
 
Tiny body, open mouth
arms flapping horizontally,
Behind, in front, in the center you,
the Christ, the city.
 
And still the world goes on
the same crime for ever and ever.
 
Phan Thi you are thirty three now
and you came to forgive us.

 
                                                            **********
LC: Ha sido un placer platicar contigo, Zheyla. Mil gracias por tus versos. Un cálido abrazo.

© Poetry by Zheyla Henriksen
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to splash color over an unwrapped thought

4/29/2020

0 Comments

 
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OLVIDOS DE MI PADRE
​by 
Ivan Argüelles

Follow along as Ivan Argüelles performs the poem
​                            para mi hermana
I fell asleep in my father’s arms
though dead he’s been more than 20 years
I nestled in his reek of disguised alcohol
shaving lotion old spice tropic fantasy
it’s easy to forget just how hard it was 
to earn his love and companionship
exile that he was with Guadalajara hair
a faint curse was ever on his lips
for the routines of Lutheran synecdoche
and sarcasm dripped constantly 
in the twinkle of his cinematic eyes
still I burrowed in his post meridian clasp
a whole afternoon with his lemon drops
and Mexican newspaper headlines
in and out of oils and acrylics on canvas
street names for unknown saints and
incense burning dense as beeswax in the air
distance was his propriety and music
with Saint John of the Cross at 3 AM
blear-eyed from bar-hopping bouts
and mornings wrapped in tortilla dough
he hustled remote as a pyramid of oil
through days of anathema and dialect
how could I in his embrace ever fall
curtail my living self in his promised death
full hours of plight and anguish smoking
decks of pall mall cigarettes his hand
unwavering holding the subtle brush
to splash color over an unwrapped thought
a cathedral a half-dead donkey colonial
houses muffled in Aztec silver-work
filigree of bluish haze his archaic skies
riddled with recollections of a mountain
and the immense purple mysteries
of a Tenochtitlan buried in Toltec grief
winding sheets and Amarillo sweat dying
the ruffled edges of his floating bed
his caravanserai of forbidden paramours
a theater of nickel soaps and pulque
the brash despair of his uprooted life
going in circles long Sunday afternoons 
when ennui put on a German mask
deriding the colloquy of his solitude
but to nuzzle up to his bristling breath
and die a hundred times just for once
before his own soul took to flight
five thousand miles from his birth
that crazy Mexican of elegance and ire
how far however far from the painted rocks
and shifting gravel of his planned walk-away
only the broken vowels of his idiom
the consonants of cactus and parakeet
cajole my drowsing ear this ancient day
when the whole world tilts drowning
in a gold-fish bowl and darkness overtakes
drowns in a gold-fish bowl
and darkness overtakes 
 
03-19-20
​
Picture
​Ivan Argüelles is an American innovative poet whose work moves from early Beat and surrealist-influenced forms to later epic-length poems. He received the Poetry Society of America’s William Carlos Williams Award in 1989 as well as the Before Columbus Foundation’s American Book Award in 2010.  In 2013, Argüelles received the Before Columbus Foundation’s Lifetime Achievement Award. For Argüelles the turning point came with his discovery of the poetry of Philip Lamantia. Argüelles writes, “Lamantia’s mad, Beat-tinged American idiom surrealism had a very strong impact on me. Both intellectual and uninhibited, this was the dose for me.” While Argüelles’s early writings were rooted in neo-Beat bohemianism, surrealism, and Chicano culture, in the nineties he developed longer, epic-length forms rooted in Pound’s Cantos and Joyce’s Finnegans Wake. He eventually returned, after the first decade of the new millennium, to shorter, often elegiac works exemplary of Romantic Modernism. Ars Poetica is a sequence of exquisitely-honed short poems that range widely, though many mourn the death of the poet’s celebrated brother, José.

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"twilight sacrifices of grass and fingers"

1/20/2020

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Picture

Un par de poemas
​P
or/by Ivan Argüelles

devuélveme la vida !
Poema para Hector Zamudio

Hector son of Hector ! myth and hieroglyph
and drizzling sun of Teotihuacan the many vowels
it takes to make a rope that climbs to the heavens
rock over rock masonry of the gods chiseled out of
basalt and quartz doorways and portals to infinity
blood-stone and flint and the myriads of hearts
tossed against the angry walls of eternity
Corazón ! if nothing is sacred then everything is Holy !
up and down the ghostly ramps and suddenly
the horse is invented and ruddy beards and white masks
and gun-powder reeking clouds all in Spanish
boats that sail the eternal skies above Texcoco
Madre de Dios ! sunslant and orient of the New World
megalopolis of serapes and Calaveras de azúcar
sleepless hydras and footless vendors of chili verde
rites of the necklaces of the dead and talking mummies
stalking the Zócalo and Paseo de la Reforma
remunerations of saints who have never seen the Cordillera
or the Carretera Panamerican and who have never slept
in the roofless motels of Yucatan’s insomniac peninsula
or deciphered thought-patterns of the Mayan prophets
twenty eight perfect days on a wheel that never turns !
Hector son of Hector ! you travel back and forth
on an invisible thread of saliva talking backwards
to priests of Coatlicue and dredging liquid infernos
that slumber beneath Avenida Insurgentes
when you wake up it’s in Los Angeles wearing
Boyle Heights mambo zoot suit but
when you pull night over your embroidered skull
it’s in Coyoacán and you are Cuauhtémoc on your knees
before a shrine to Frieda Kahlo and the histories
of five hundred years unravel on the destroyed syllables
of Quetzalcoatl and the wind is great with abortions
and embryos wrapped up like tamales and loud
sirens of mediodia in the midst of Zapatistas and
Cristeros who are packing a movie theater and shooting
stars on the painted ceiling putting civilization to an end
there is no frontera no nocturnal bus ride to a urinal
just south of Ciudad Juárez where the uncounted
assassinations of women keep being ignored
there is only the imperfect literature of papel higiénico
and the eyeless stumps of beggars pidiendo limosna
stoned on illegal vats of pulque or mezcal
and the enormous illegible map of Distrito Federal
crumpled shat upon and ripped into uneven hemispheres
where mindlessly jaywalking the mad poet Santiago Papasquiaro
meets death for maybe the second time
devuélveme la vida !

Picture
Photo by Scott Duncan-Fernandez

​APUNTES PARA LA MEMORIA

am I the equivalent of my father ?
how can we be who we are ?
his was the gift of music
66 years ago drove through Oklahoma 
and Texas into Mexico on
the Carretera Panamericana all the way
to Teotihuacan which was a revelation
like a Sanskrit dictionary full of sun syllables
both pyramids to be climbed and conquered
the heights ! everything happened then 
when he died it was the 3rd movement 
of Beethoven’s Ninth // waves of sound
Aztecs transformed into shirts of light
transparencies of back and forth up and down
fireflies woven through the string section
followed by the lonely and brief horn solo
motels adobe stucco sleep heat oblivion
pan mohoso joyezuelas cazabe cues
the world is defined by the vowel it lacks
                                               nevertheless
twilight sacrifices of grass and fingers
blood : the planet Mars !
it’s in the dictionary and like music
must be mysterious shapeless drum and drifting
into the rust of the cosmos
the ear in the rust of the cosmos 
corn fields and motels motor oil seeping
through clouds higher than Tenochtitlan
siesta on stone pillows dreaming ancient
// scarab and Toltec heat ceremony 
black sun in the center of the lizard’s eye
yellow grain reaping tears
modulated skies in the key of Delta
home in a refrigerator !
what are words for ?
wearing corn skirts the serpent goddess
flint knife obsidian blade , mi corazón !
the book of canonical divides
photocopies of a language possibly
Anatolian in origin , rogations 
and a fierce god imitating human sorrow
descending above the milky cordillera
when it will be dawn again and forever
his breath always masked by sweets
to hide the alcohol hands deftly on the Wheel
moving through topographies of rock
vastness of pre-history and sandstone
up to the wrist in water the flowers
dazed corollaries of thought
migration of names like birds
in the depths of dreams rings inks
mosquito coast with canoes
ambush ! Aiyeee flechas y rodelas 
tell me with what you write
and I’ll tell you who you are 
pésimas cartas ! a fling with memory
each photograph precisely measured for
shade the way the bedrooms slant the oval
where they keep vanished cigarettes
prayer wheels and monographs about ant-hostilities
stylistics and devouring human cause
the greater gods on their tight-rope
drove several thousand miles across the Rio Grande
hurts the eyes the desert light 
how did we become who we thought we were ?
in front of the Palacio de Bellas Artes
posing for a portrait in cinematic sepia
hair glazed brow smoothed by flat conjecture 
guitars splashing nostalgic fountains
la hija de Don Juan Alba
dice que quiere ser monja !
it was in high school on the fortieth floor
a señorita with bougainvillea for hair
grammar lessons annexed to a single verb
to dispel dust and twilight
listening to the broken dream-speech
recover from memory the outline 
of distance 
//  transformed by the march up-country
returned to photographic chiaroscuro
as if scouring the sun for wounds
the cicatrix of identity 
66 years in a thumbnail sketch
childhood’s dead actors
who once lit up the summer stages
performing cigarettes and shoe-wax
the lifetime it took to get this far
Spanish and its suburban pools
dereliction of the Path
righteousness and fireflies
in which porch did one era end
and another begin ? 
the world’s toxic dance !
in the finish each gets his role
and sooner forget than drive
into the Sierra Maestra 
calling out Oh Diego ! Oh Diego !
escribir más es una locura !

set sail in eleven ghost ships
a crew of three hundred and fifty
hidalgos all indebted to the king
promised more gold than it was worth
a life a breath a ransomed leaf
mountains shivered into hemispheres
and questioned the half a dozen
who were at the bar that night
no one remembered seeing
María de la Luz //
the biography of Enrique Sabino
concludes here its tonal architecture
of neo-baroque fugue and spit
the land goes down dark
and hear no more the cadence
of footfall and lung
death the señorita shaking
her life-length hair
and guitars splashing endless inks 
la hija de Don Juan Alba
dice que quiere ser monja !
am I the equivalent of my father ?
 
September 15, 2019

Ivan Argüelles
​ Editor's note: Hector Zamudio is a young poet who lives in the San Francisco Bay Area. A poem of his about Tenochtitlan inspired Arguelles to write this piece.
Picture
​Ivan Argüelles is an American innovative poet whose work moves from early Beat and surrealist-influenced forms to later epic-length poems. He received the Poetry Society of America’s William Carlos Williams Award in 1989 as well as the Before Columbus Foundation’s American Book Award in 2010.  In 2013, Argüelles received the Before Columbus Foundation’s Lifetime Achievement Award. For Argüelles the turning point came with his discovery of the poetry of Philip Lamantia. Argüelles writes, “Lamantia’s mad, Beat-tinged American idiom surrealism had a very strong impact on me. Both intellectual and uninhibited, this was the dose for me.” While Argüelles’s early writings were rooted in neo-Beat bohemianism, surrealism, and Chicano culture, in the nineties he developed longer, epic-length forms rooted in Pound’s Cantos and Joyce’s Finnegans Wake. He eventually returned, after the first decade of the new millennium, to shorter, often elegiac works exemplary of Romantic Modernism. Ars Poetica is a sequence of exquisitely-honed short poems that range widely, though many mourn the death of the poet’s celebrated brother, José.

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“we drove half in silence half in Spanish”

10/30/2019

0 Comments

 
Picture
Photo by Scott Duncan-Fernandez

​TWO POEMS BY IVÁN ARGÜELLES
​10-29-2019

OLVIDOS


By Iván Argüelles
 
as far as Oklahoma
where the stars start tumbling down
we drove half in silence half in Spanish
it was the year of dust and ocher dreams
of dancing like fireflies against screens
that divide night from itself
where the stars keep tumbling down
and from Oklahoma hummingbird dawn
we drove more in silence than in Spanish
to the imagination of a border
trickling rivulet with dizzy coils like vowels
prepared to dry in an unremembered sentence
and skies that hovered like clothes on the line
and voices of the ancients engraved in stone
and followed further south lands of the dead
whose flintstone litanies embroidered the clouds
and from the place where inert stars turn to ash
and the heavens have their farthest reach
before the motels color of fading gold
and the fake torrents where horses drown
and histories of planets driving ships
across the magenta flaring waves of time
unto the hill-slopes where photography
has its origin and the thousand seeds of darkness
cover like an abstract oil painting the clockwork
beds lined up with dying relatives and
seers whose rapid language turns swiftly bright
consonants of hammered silver and masks
that climb down from blood-spattered walls
names and sounds more like silence than Spanish
as we kept following the zig-zag carretera Panamericana
and gunshot and saber strokes bristling
like lightning in our sleep ditched in arroyos
where the moon reflects her pallid other half
backside of tormented adolescence shoulder
and grief and the mounting suspicions of 1953
the year art-history became a discipline
and orchestras of jade papaya and quetzal
resounded in the ear’s oval amphitheaters
kept driving in a rundown General Motors vehicle
once owned by gods with two eyes to the left
and three others deep within a frowning brow
and leaping like azure feathers in the sunset
ah such as these divinities we were to become
bouncing the atavistic rubber sphere
against the principles of Cartesian philosophy
OLVIDOS ! who was wearing whose shirt ?
who had the lower hand in the transept
where stars are re-born and night turns to glitter
who was the one on the other side whose shadow
was cast in rock and became a pyramid
whose was the voice that sang hoarsely into the dark
which was indeed the other prismatic and unknown ?
mysteries of memory !
in remote Tenochtitlan where the water-ways
design anterior languages of maguey and pulque
found the archaic fossil-bed and lay each other
down and dreamed there was no future
only OLVIDOS of lives that might have been
who was who between the two :
hummingbird and serpent !
para mi hermano perdido en los olvidos
​
10-20-2019

Picture

TENOCHTITLÁN

the day we discovered the Aztecs
the sky was a torment of insects
refugees of grass and flint clotted
members of a hallucinatory device
meant to call up stone fragments by
name and tone the macron and circumflex
were greater than the gods they represented
hearts torn out of pure basalt and nerve
a long thin wire that followed dust
to a conclusion of light much like sunset
when winter has no place to retreat
hills of ocher and Levantine sandstone
porous digits of heat that circling
closer and closer revealed enormous plumes
quetzal emblems screeching in dialect
totem-feet hopping up and down on a        
spring of water an eye decorated with
ships and candles all speaking Holy Mary
victuals of chopped lung dog-fish erect
as pyramids and the holy hush of leaves
lamenting their discolor a whole and not
its halves the figment of memory known as
red-rock situated high on the left above
the cranny and nook where the town
lost perspective lines running together
and the girls for the first time in their hair
and aprons and making salsa and the radio
imparting songs and quartets for the girls
barefoot and climbing a needle of salt
to sing in their ululatory Spanish a refrain
of pimento and mesa everything running
downhill to an arroyo where the Great Ancestor
stood with his club of nails and ocelot pelt
shoulders a-quiver with a menacing thought
to codify the maguey in a series of dots
bright crimson and a planetary system
visible only by day haunted by enormous
books made of sand the print dissolving
by sleep-time behind murals blacker
than noon and those two of us who
lacking identity could only summon to lamp
the once and not the never the articulation
by fire of the Noun whence all time
is distributed like sheaves of corn to the dead
and not know the highway not deliver
the motor to its whining and the rumor
of mechanized combs and the rumba
spattered against the wall inchoate
without license as dragging their cannon
and donkey fodder up the cordillera
the followers of Quetzalcoatl in their rust
and flivvers of archaic language using
not only the Usted of majesty but the cornea
and reticent beam that screws the pupil
to its visceral destiny seeing what is merely
the interior of a dark dispelling sound
and the aggravation of a moonless space
twenty-eight notions of dying slowly
even as the street wound up its motor
a ninety distance from the calavera known
as Trotzky and the immense and dense
insanity of an afternoon in Xochimilco
two tons of cloud-water and flowers
enough to last a Toltec infinity
an inch in a second of lightning
Picture
Picture

​Ivan Argüelles is an American innovative poet whose work moves from early Beat and surrealist-influenced forms to later epic-length poems. He received the Poetry Society of America’s William Carlos Williams Award in 1989 as well as the Before Columbus Foundation’s American Book Award in 2010.  In 2013, Argüelles received the Before Columbus Foundation’s Lifetime Achievement Award. For Argüelles the turning point came with his discovery of the poetry of Philip Lamantia. Argüelles writes, “Lamantia’s mad, Beat-tinged American idiom surrealism had a very strong impact on me. Both intellectual and uninhibited, this was the dose for me.” While Argüelles’s early writings were rooted in neo-Beat bohemianism, surrealism, and Chicano culture, in the nineties he developed longer, epic-length forms rooted in Pound’s Cantos and Joyce’s Finnegans Wake. He eventually returned, after the first decade of the new millennium, to shorter, often elegiac works exemplary of Romantic Modernism. Ars Poetica is a sequence of exquisitely-honed short poems that range widely, though many mourn the death of the poet’s celebrated brother, José.

​10-29-2019​

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