by Kristy Ward

I lay here in my pitch-black room with my eyes open wide.
Tears dripping down my face as I wipe them aside.
The sound of my dangling bracelet as I wipe away the tears.
I've cried in silence like this for so many years.
The sound of his snores as he fell fast asleep.
No worries for him as I lay beside him and weep.
I stare into the darkness with my mind in deep, deep thought.
The demons returning, even the old ones that I fought. 
I fought those demons and won, or at least I thought I did. 
The boiling war in my brain and they removed the lid. 
That stench of darkness that never left, it was hiding deep inside. 
I tucked them away to forget, or at least I tried. 
A woman in my 40s yet I'm still that little girl, dancing in my homemade dress and gave a little twirl.
Dancing took my mind off things and writing helps release.
And just for those short moments, I brought myself some peace. 
As I lie here in this pitch-black room, I see a tiny light.
The smoke detector floating from the ceiling, and then I get that feeling.
That little light is my hope, amidst the battle in my head, the light gets a little brighter.
One day at a time she said. 

Kristy (Molina) Ward is 42, is of Mexican American descent and was born and raised in Corpus Christi, TX. She graduated from Moody High School in 1998 where she played multiple sports, but Cheerleading was her favorite. She achieved her Associates degree from San Antonio College in 2016 after being a stay-at-home mother for some years. Kristy is a licensed insurance agent that now resides in San Antonio, Texas, loves to TikTok, and represents her culture in many ways. She has two kids who are currently in college. Alyssa is studying to be a Physical Therapist Assistant and Aaron is going into Business. Kristy's husband Ricky is also a college student studying to be in Sports Management. When she is not working Kristy loves to dance, discover new restaurants, hit the trails and spend quality time with her family. Kristy has never been published and has been writing her poetry since her teen years.

by David Estringel

Después de la estela
 
Yellow wallpaper
peels
behind faded pictures
in dusty frames,
falling to the floor
in ashen drifts—ephemeral--
of births and wakes,
stabbing
to the heart
like first kisses
or cold sips
of Mexican Coke
but dulled
from memory
(and time)
like giftless Christmases
and old housedresses,
drying on the line.
What ghosts roam these halls,
Haunting bowls
of waxed fruit
and glass doorknobs,
lingering ‘round saints’ alters,
dust bunnies,
and jelly jar glasses
like palls
or the bitter of burnt almonds.
As a pale pink echo
of rose
peeks through the air’s must,
a voice whispers, “Recuerdas esto, ahora,”
leaving me to chuckle and smile.
 
How silly it is to mourn life as we live it.

Caja de memoria
 
Fingers,
gingerly sifting
through ecos de lavanda,
praise spirits
of modest treasures
in silent prayer.
Ribbon-tied letters.
A lock of hair tied with blue ribbon.
Viejos dólares de plata.
Tarjetas de oración a los santos (two for St. Jude).
Pressed flowers in wax paper.
A faded scapular.
Old report cards (Never was any good at Math).
Broken reading glasses.
Una camelia encerada
and
the smell of her.
Amén.

David Estringel is a Xicanx writer/poet with works published in literary publications, such as The Opiate, Azahares, Cephalorpress, Lahar, Poetry Ni, DREICH, Rigorous, Somos En escrito, Hispanecdotes, Ethel, The Milk House, Beir Bua Journal, and The Blue Nib. David received his BA in English at the University of Texas at Brownsville and his MFA in Creative Writing at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley. Currently, he is a working on his PhD in English (World Literature) and a Graduate Instructor of Composition at Texas A&M-Commerce. His first collection of poetry and short fiction Indelible Fingerprints was published in April 2019, followed his second and third poetry collections Blood Honey and Cold Comfort House in 2022. David has written four poetry chapbooks, Punctures (2019), PeripherieS (2020), Eating Pears on the Rooftop (2022), and Golden Calves (coming March 2023). His new book of micro poetry little punctures, a collaboration with UK illustrator, Luca Bowles, will be released in December 2022. Connect with David on Twitter @The_Booky_Man and his website www.davidaestringel.com.

by Reynaldo George Hinojosa Jr.

Tejanos
 
the breadth of my blood spans the rio grande, tunneling
every root into earth laid track, veins of cartesian slanted
monasteries praying for safe keeping and return. all love’s
angles need me dry as a bridge across centuries drifting,
drifting along tributaries, my eyes lifting border weight sunk
into lines like dams. god dammed me turn and bound sand
coffin lullabies shrinking miles bordering my measured body.
i crenellate, i bridge too far, moated, i solemnly melt harbors
into ice. brandished masks, graphite flares, long-speared songs
slit cascading tracks i can no longer see. beneath coffins, i river
along drifting castles, monuments laid against footprints and
obelisks turned fountains. too many feet leave dirt to consume
my blood, longing to be a mother for every lost child stuck in
the mouth of my soiled lands, softened under moonlight perils.
                                   
                                    &
 
my silver edged swards gulp air, grip for supple bodies in side
shore flotillas, clambering shoulders for another damp-
pressed lodged throat stuck from the same people split down
centuries long edges; umbra against moonlight, shaded dark
graphite bursts of genetic lacuna. arbitrary lacunae bodies
speak silence, a generation of silence, no longer listening
to wardens warranting god damned word-spills flooding me,
my river, my heart soaked in tragedy, soaked in sores weeping
my river, my name, my sense of belonging. my body is split in
imaginary sequence, sequins of words cleared out by spectacle
harvesters and mage icons. harvest my image, my name, my soil
forgotten to cowboys, forget vaqueros, lassoed my last memory
buried in the sand, in the clay, in oil stuck in the throat of nations.
 
                                    &
 
image iconoclasts barrel for barrel, priced, stocked, laminated to
touch, touch towered drill rigs silting my soil, my violent soil sold
and sunk beneath static statues and markers covered with moss, for-
gotten and left to wonder. i was born here hundreds of years ago,
but can’t remember why. when can i reduce the root to a seed? of all
the memories i carry across my body, i recall mesquite bean pods
indifferently, discarding yellow-tanned honey as nothing more
than a forgotten name. cabeza de pozo is only a myth to my hands,
to my lungs, my hands no longer carry generations of silence, my body
is already filled. i’ve eaten my share, drank the rio grande, subsumed
what is left, whispers still fill my cup—branch from the river, branch
from my throat, branch the sky, branched in solitude separate stilled
and stolen loose soil saved for savagery. i am witness to its reflection still
standing in tides grown from my blood. my blood is a memory i sift through,
speaking its name along the camino real. upwards, norteño, ever upwards
to heaven’s song: sol, my sol, my soil, my name buried deep within the soil.

Jalapeño Smoke
 
my mother burns jalapeños on the comal
choking me with centuries long memories
 
its sharp-sticks saturate the air like a mist
body full, expanding corners in my lips and nostrils
 
the piercing plates lap up my tongue
feeding me memorials of earth
 
verde encerrado en una coma
hooked, lined like mexico
jealous of my mouth
            that still speaks
 
its blister berry song lulls fire
torched-heart and fireworked
 
i remember the dreary fumes
steeling my name
cutting through my throat
 
capturing my voice alive
carving out the well’s swollen gland
speaking, speaking the spanish name
 
el lamento, razed buds steamed in effigy
torched-bust hammer-filled balloons
 
pyrrhic tastes, burn-swelled sweat
the arch of its name sinks like a submarine
rises like a whale
splashes long rivers we call home
 
el lamento, for loose soil
it levels me in ancient serenity
fusing its long root in my veins
 
mi raza es contigo, cuaresmeño, fat with liquid blister
circular spirit in the house that never leaves me
troubadour of the flamed-tongued vineyard
 
dragging me to the root
hardened es posible con suave
 
la muerte es tu clave
to the scorched light
burn-scarred across the shipless sail
heart-driven and anchored in me
 
mirrored to the centuries long current
buried in the light of my mother’s cooking
smoke-washed dream of my north star
 
searing every word for home
the earth still recognizes me
 
its fruits still hold my name

Reynaldo George Hinojosa Jr. is a Tejano-born writer and musician. He acquired his MFA in Creative Writing and Bachelor’s in Liberal Arts from the University of Texas at El Paso, and an Associate’s in Music from San Antonio College. Since arriving in Michigan, Reynaldo helped build, and currently helps run, the bookstore cooperative Book Suey. He is a 2022-2024 Lead Teaching Artist Fellow with Inside Out Literary Arts. He lives with his son, partner, and two cats in Hamtramck.

by Ricardo José González-Rothi

An academic physician and scientific writer, Ricardo José González-Rothi has had his fiction, creative non-fiction and poetry featured in the U.S. and in the U.K., in Acentos Review, Hispanic Culture Review, Biostories, Foliate Oak, Lunch Ticket, The Bellingham Review, Molotov Cocktail, Star 82 Review, Wingless Dreamer, Litro and others. Born and raised in Cuba, he came to the United States as a refugee in his teens and now resides in North Florida.

Twitter: @Ricardo2Almas
website: gonzalezrothiauthor.com

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.

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.

​​ by Sylvia Eugenia

the mother in your memory movie reminds me. my own mother in real life.
palpably uncomfortable. polite. Puetoricenio en tu vida. instead
pero…skin tone…voice tone…thats them (thats us) same but different
I want to hear your friend speak in Spanish. Will you tell him? …the street makes
us a threesome…I'm Poly for the art scene.
When it was once then for a life time, they remember. I see the halo glow of a martyr to a mind. Your brain shares that
similar smile to mine and no one knows what resides inside. Between us. Asimilar.
dissimilar. unsimilar. to the outside. Someone tugged you out under this sun and
brought that bloodline out with it. Pushed out another one constantly cradling
their own demons.
 
Now stuck with the only them, the only I. I dreamt I had your swagger. Alone in a
city park at night imagining the world, I'd be terrified. I can't run. The fear comes
up fast. Predicted from in between my legs. My night sky is a retired ceiling fan
casting shadows like a flower with only half its petals remaining.
 
This is how I learned to bring a deadish body down the stairs.
 
Slipping to the trip, my shins would be scraped shreds. Lead legs.
Head over heels my arrogance of the assumed ease brings me to the slip and slide
plastic of a gurney ride
I'm over the concrete edge. gums dangling meat threads ...curbstomp of
consequence
Sputtering up snake eyes in teeth. rolling against the roof
 
I've seen parts of this movie, watched gravity pull her to concrete like a
desperate, disheveled…lover? beloved? hard-up darling? Flat down hard fuck.
Only they share that collision despite those who watch and think they feel the
crash. Bone to brick, rail against cheek. A mouth first tastes copper-lemon from
the side. An unfinished european kiss

​​Sylvia Eugenia combines elements of fiction and memoir into a prose poetry.
Her poems have no structure except, the pauses in her breath and metronome of her heartbeat.
​
She graduated from Mills College, Oakland, California, with a BA in English, with an emphasis in Creative Writing. She has presented her work at many small readings in Southern California and the San Francisco Bay Area. In 2013, she performed at Beast Crawl in Oakland and Lit. Crawl in San Francisco. She lives in Santa Cruz, Cali.​

Z is for Zapatazo 
 
I started learning my ABC’s before I could even read. The first lesson involved a woman collapsed in the back lot of the Bronx tenement where we lived. Something had scared her nearly to death. There in the pouring rain she lay writhing and screaming out her wits while neighbors watched from the covered balconies and fire escapes. R is for Rat.
 
Another lesson was connected to chickens in that time when “children should be seen and not heard.” The Spanish version had, as usual, more syllables as well as color: “Los niños hablan cuando las gallinas mean.” “Children talk when the chickens pee.” Those who relate to chicken only in conveniently dismembered extra crispy form may ask when or how often do chickens pee? Never. We Nuyoricans, Spanglish-speaking Gothamites, who had never seen a chicken except when it arrived steaming aromatically on a plate with rice and beans, nevertheless knew well that chickens don’t relieve themselves like little boys and girls. C is for Chickens.
 
We moved to California, that hub of social contradictions. There I was raised on breezy primetime shows, punctuated by interruptions about some protest march, police suppression, riot, space-race launch, cold war threat, assassination, or other scary event. For a while it seemed like “We Interrupt This Program” was part of the regular TV line up. Maybe that’s why there were so many sitcoms and family shows – diversions from the worry and sheer terror. The shows conveyed placid American suburbs lined with houses that never needed painting, populated by families like the Andersons, the Nelsons, and the Cleavers, lovingly and rationally ruled by parents that never yelled or hit or even had sex.
 
Meanwhile, on this side of the fourth wall, verbal and physical discipline was natural. So natural in fact that it was conveyed in a Spanish-language ABC book for children. The benign English version that the Cleavers read had, “A is for Apple, B is for Ball, C is for Cat” and so on, to the last letter, “Z is for Zoo.” A logical entry for the Spanish Zeta (Z) would have been Zapato (Shoe), something every Latino child would know. But instead it read, “Z es por Zapatazo” (paraphrased: Z is for Shoe Missile). The expounded letter was accompanied by a drawing of a dark-haired child with its wincing face cocked to the side from the impact of a flying shoe. A friend recalled the book to me years later and we responded with equal parts laughter and loathing at the kind of mentality that would include such a casually violent lesson in what is perhaps the most basic childhood introduction to an intelligible world.
 
History reminds me, however, that Anglo American ways of child rearing were not so idyllic as the TV shows portrayed. In colonial New England, a child’s education went hand in hand with physical discipline. The 1691 edition of The New England Primer for children had ABC lessons that included: “F: The idle FOOL is whipt at school,” and “J: JOB feels the rod, yet blesses God.” And even as the belt-free world of “Father Knows Best” and “Leave It To Beaver” was being beamed into televisions across North America, teachers in schools who looked just like Robert Young and Barbara Billingsley blistered our tender behinds with every device imaginable, from ping pong paddles to a cricket bat perforated in wood shop by one particularly sadistic misanthrope to cut wind resistance.
 
I can at least affirm that I advanced in my ABC’s fairly early in the game – my older brother, not so much. If I say that too frequently I followed a crowd of kids to an afterschool fight only to discover that my brother was one of the young gladiators, you’ll understand what I mean. The same feckless pugnacity repeatedly got him into needless trouble at home, where there was no immunity of non-combatants. K is for Knucklehead.
 
Years later, my mom and stepdad divorced. (My birth father I knew only through an old wedding photograph and mom’s spectacularly imaginative comparisons to our misbehavior.) By then I was married, living at the other end of the country and going to seminary. I did not know the degree to which their split had affected me. Then one evening, after my wife had gone to bed and I stayed up studying, I sank into an abyss of grief, crying and shaking uncontrollably.
 
Gone were the family parties when we kids listened to music and played while our parents did…whatever parents did at parties, until the sensuous Puerto Rican food appeared miraculously on the table to be gobbled up by gangly calorie-burning urchins, leaving the mess to be cleaned up by elves while we slept soundly wherever our bodies happened to land. Gone was the Monorail, and the Matterhorn, It’s A Small World, and the Adventure Thru Inner Space courtesy of Monsanto. Gone Knott’s berry pie. Gone the excursions to Pacific Ocean Park, Redondo Beach, and Newport Dunes, the broiling burgers, the quenching watermelon.
 
Gone the chilly early hours of Christmas when we’d sneak out of our beds to peek at the gift-wrapped silhouettes under the tree and imagine they were what we wanted. Gone a mother’s tender ministrations when any of us kids were sick. Gone her tears when she saw mine after a broken wrist ended high school gymnastics. Gone the rosary prayer circles and sleepless nights when my brother was in hospital with brain tumors. Gone the frantic calling for my sister lost in a Tijuana bazaar. Gone the tears of joy when she was found. Gone the dreaded daily tablespoon of cod liver oil and the sting of Mercurochrome on scraped knees and elbows.
 
Gone dad’s brutal six-day workweek that underwrote our lives. Gone when the family sat around the only television in the house after eating dinner at the same table, at the same time, and the wild symphony of everyone talking at once. Gone the laughter, I’m talking Puerto Rican laughter, the world series of laughter, now only faint bells in the distant steeple of my memory. Z is for Zapatazo.

The Fall of Middle Earth 
 
One day, I went to that land
between home and school, shocked
to find it invaded. The scene
looked like a horde of dragons,
their plated skin clattering,
their movement stuttering
like some Harryhausean nightmare,
and generals commanding troops
in white helmets from blue paper
battle plans. The noise
cracked the sky’s thin blue shell
and soot from organ pipe nostrils
nearly blocked out the running yolk
of the sun. Mandibles dropped open
dripping an earthy stew
then clammed shut with the metallic
squeal of lightning, like colossal
hinges on the gates of Mordor,
maws of these steel-veined horrors
engorging and disgorging
dirt, rocks, grasses, trees,
nests, warrens, dens and cloisters,
secret gardens, fens and shires.
Fangorn, Moria, Rivendell...

How I started hating
   conspiracy theories

                                                                     How often the truth is just not sexy enough.
                                                                     But the lie? Now that’s an orgy.
​
In the fifth grade I caught the flu so bad I missed two weeks of school. When I returned my teacher got down on one knee to look me in the eyes and said: “Ruben, are you OK? I heard you got in trouble with the law and went to juvenile detention.” “Home with the flu,” I said. “Nearly died. Didn’t you get mom’s letter?” “I heard you were really in juvie.” “Nope. Home sick. Nearly died.” He walked away disappointed, in the same way dogs find catching cars disappointing. That year I was “Juvie Rubie,” hang all my protestations for truth. Even today, I’m Juvie Rubie.

I Don’t Mean 
 
I don’t mean to doubt your faith but
             why doesn’t it make you good to me?
 
I don’t mean to question your scriptures
but why are the sweet parts applied to you
and the harsh parts to me?
 
I don’t mean to be aloof but why does god love you
unconditionally but me conditionally?
 
I don’t mean to sound unpatriotic
but why does the god of the universe bless
America over other nations, and before that Rome,
or France, or Germany, or Spain, then England?
 
I don’t mean to risk your wrath but why does god
look and act like the latest rulers?
 
I don’t mean to appear radical but why does god favor
your race over mine?
 
I don’t mean to feel cheated, but why does god answer
your prayers and not mine – when you got the job I didn’t,
and the traffic lights you believe worked for you
made me miss my friend’s last moments?
 
I don’t mean to impugn your justice but why does god love
sinners like you more than sinners like me?
 
I don’t mean to question your motives but why does accepting
your religion put me and mine under you and yours?
 
I don’t mean to sound bitter but why is there no room for me
in the land, the neighborhood, your family, your heart?
 
I don’t mean to dislike your god of grace but why gift
the one truth to you and leave others in damning ignorance?
 
I don’t mean to be impertinent but how come god welcomes
prayer in any language but only English can be spoken here?
 
I don’t mean to be skeptical about the universality
of your religion but why do I have to amputate my culture
but you get to keep yours?
 
I don’t mean to be in your face but why can’t you see me?

I don’t mean to speak so loudly but why can’t you hear me?

I don’t mean to doubt your faith but
            why doesn’t it make you good to me?

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​Ruben Rivera is Emeritus VP for DE&I and Associate Professor of History at Bethel University in Saint Paul, MN. He lives in Minneapolis with his wife Anita. Although his poetry has won awards in various contests, Z is for Zapatazo is Ruben’s first published collection.