Center Stage
 
Maybe it’s better the fickle wind rearranges the view. Who hasn’t thought How fake to look at such an artificially manicured landscape. The leaves ride the current as if mimicking the hands of a colorful conductor and the symphony is an ode to a fallen tree. Raking the lawn in A minor is synonymous with mourning the dead. We convince ourselves we have nothing left to give and call it plausible. We do the best with what we can and label it passable. To notice ones’ surroundings is to live as testament to Heaven. A Hells Angel pulls into the parking lot and his Harley is blasting a pop song about stealing sunshine. A ray is a set of straight lines passing through a single point. There is no way to deny the spotlight when we are caught blushing, and red-handed.

Down Here on the Ground
after Wes Montgomery
 
Cue the static that rubs like nerves against the desired grain. Note how the vinyl crackles like feeding notes to the fire, though each authentic sacrifice can be told solely from the gravity of its own ashes. Every sound is wrapped in a plea and prayer, regardless of the plight. The 11th commandment in essence states That which isn’t audible must be regarded as pliable to the touch. If rhythm were to replicate itself, it would be to the tune of improvisational hopscotch on loop. So many anxious toes, so little time for tapping. There is not enough jazz to capture the rhapsody of summer, to frame the fragrance of wilting lilies, to fade out like a grieving sunset in search of the next mourning. 

Follow along as Rebecca Granado performs "Tres Millas a mi Libertad"

​Por/By Sylvia Eugenia

Meintren tegas a las botayas something something (we will live with the bottle until we die with the bottle.)
My mom had whiskey for the first time at nine; "tu flaca,” a Catholic martyr in the making in Managua. We had more in common that skin would tell.
“aww, who’s this cabvrona?!”
So, the conversation happens and my brain starts.
I could try to talk about my fathers’ fathers’ father in Syria, offer up some patriarchal evidence of who this body is made up of. I would be telling a blood truth; but, nothing in me exists attached to that country or custom or people. I could talk about kibby, silt-coffee, un-filtered cigarettes; what is to be a man. My primary leaned lesson from that truth was not talking about “it.” By “it,” I mean, anything, like, ever.
But, let's set aside a part of that part of skin steeped in side-stepping emotions and focus on the Pisces. By that, I mean, the woman. The female, the femme. The bruja of us. The emotional from us. I’ll conjour the grit of the saintly body that takes up the most space in me. My mother.
I will tell you about mi mama, deliver my cred. Mira, I am the “simberguensa” crying crocodile tears that will never, could never suffer enough or know what real suffering was like.
I’ll tell you about this potty mouth “chavala” that would cause my mother to gasp dramatically (inhale)
“Que vulgarite, que vulgar”
This is a story from the outside of an insider. Pero, an assimilated gordita. Por supuesto blanco, that is.
Que?!
I haven’t a clue
I speak Spanish poorly, comprehend it fairly and understand it from the warm rain coming through pores. I agonize over this, I abide by this, I lose myself. I instinctually, move forward with the cross.
My cross is only second hand but still holds like brand new. Thorns and nails are upkept to fashion my own contemporary guilt.
Self-torture and my ability to say words that I didn’t even know existed on my tongue.
“Aye dios” without a second thought” has turned into “aye dios; fuhckkkk”
A Central American mujer walks away to suffer in silence as the Middle Eastern man stays to have the final say.
Look at me, my everything “all nalgas peladas”
This is my body, mi corazon, for all to see.
Es mi vida.

​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.