Sherman Alexie

Author Guadalupe Garcia-McCall

Olga García Echeverría




When I asked Reyes if she has a regular writing schedule, she answered bluntly, "Someone who has a regular writing schedule has money. I don't have money. I have to be creative. When I lived and worked in Toronto, teaching on a semester system, for example, I would look at my schedule and say, okay, I can spend the first 6 weeks pulling some time from here to write. After those six weeks, I knew I was going to lose that time and that I would be grading, grading, grading. I also use winter or spring breaks as time to write, but for me, poetry doesn't really have a schedule. Poetry is always happening. It's happening in my head when I'm walking. Everything I see is a potential poem. But you have to be in tune to notice that that was a poem that just walked by. Some people look at it more intellectually, but for me there's something else there. There's a spiritual element."

ronnie steps outside in the backyard
sits on the big red lawn chair
faces the skirt of the white house
dreams of names floating in spanish
the peach tree blossoms in pink
and the apple tree hovers behind her
Socorro   the name flies away in the air
as if a chuparrosa carries it back home
into the depths of the thick blue sky
somewhere in the heart of el valle
the valparaíso of her mamá's name

And although writing regularly is important, Reyes stresses that as writers we can't always force the birth of a poem. "For years I wanted to write this piece called 'Alamo Motel,' based on a hotel in El Paso," she shares. "I only had the title and the first line and I knew I really wanted to write it, but every time I sat down, I couldn't. That poem took a decade. One day, I just sat down and I started to hear a voice telling me a story. I'm a firm believer that sometimes you're not going to be ready for certain pieces. These pieces will know when you're ready and they'll tell you. Of course, there's other times when you really have to force yourself to write because that's who you are. You're a writer and you can't exist without writing. Even if you get a rejection letter one day. The next day, you move on, you have to do something, you keep writing because the writing--that desire--is in you now. It is a part of you."

And in the Alamo Motel, Modesta waits in the plastered lobby. On the carpet, paint flecks like
sprinkled sea salt absorbs the air. It reeks of American Spirits from gaudy tourists who layover
for the night:
            Sometimes they get stuck from Austin heading to Tuscon, sleep the night
            Sometimes virgins come to lose themselves in the motel and be free
            Sometimes newcomers from el otro lado stay to hide from la migra
And Modesta in her bleached apron cleans their messes, learns their lives.

When I asked Reyes who she is currently reading, she laughed and didn't want to divulge. Of course, I probed until she gave in, "Okay, okay, I'm reading Mark Twain. For a long time I wouldn't read certain things. I refused. If White writers don't read us, why should we read them? You know what I mean? But I'm somewhere else now and I'm going back and reading some of these classics. And yeah, Mark Twain's pretty good."

He ties a cuchillo to an old pole, reaches up
            and saws at the new cacti tendrils. They fall
            on pebbled ground, hang on lower ramas. He
            stabs them. Pulls them in like the viejito
            and the sea, estilo Zacatecano; he brings in
            his fresh catch: nopal.

Like many of us, Reyes has her own classic authors that she reads and re-reads. Among them are Joy Harjo, Leslie Marmon Silko, Louise Erdrich, Audre Lorde, Ivan E. Coyote. During our interview, Reyes mentioned another East L.A. poet who has been riding buses in Los Angeles and performing her poesia for decades, Marisela Norte. "It's amazing how Marisela Norte can carry a 17 minute poem when she reads. Her poems are like symphonic poems where she goes from one thing to another, to another, to another, and you're not lost. She takes you somewhere and then brings you right back and you're like wow, I just went on this amazing journey with her."

Despite all the years that have passed since that first notebook, Reyes still prefers old-school writing tools--a pen and a journal where she can sketch out her poems. "There's been a couple of pieces I've written entirely on the computer, but that's rare." Although not a big fan of social media, she confesses that she has been using Facebook a lot more these days to share news related to her book and readings. I asked her if she had anything she would like to share with any aspiring writers out there. She spoke a lot during our interview of the need for us as Chicanas and writers of color to get informed about grants, writing residencies, conferences, etc. "When I got out of grad school, I didn't know anything about submitting to presses or how to go about applying for literary opportunities. That's something I think we need to really access and it's information we need to share with one another so that it's not a mystery or a secret. I also think we need to recognize that our stories matter. To get our work out there we don't necessarily need major presses, although it is always good to have the support of a press, but there are other options these days, like self-publishing. Most importantly have faith in your words and work on your craft."

Gracias Verónica for your poetry and your writing insights. Best of luck with your book and with all your upcoming events.

List of upcoming events where Verónica Reyes will be reading her poetry:

February 27th & 28th: Book signing at AWP in Seattle, WA. Red Hen Press (booths 1802, 1804, 1806)

Sunday March 9th from 2-4 PM at Beyond Baroque

March 16th from 2-4 PM at Espacio 1839: Reading with Myriam Gurba and Olga Garcia Echeverria

April 5th at 5 PM at Book Soup

April 6th from 2-6 PM at The Last Bookstore

To purchase Chopper! Chopper! Poetry From Bordered Lives: 
http://redhen.org/book/?uuid=8C0851F9-C7B3-FEF4-3A63-DB9F0ABF445A
http://www.amazon.com/Chopper-Poetry-Bordered-Lives/dp/0989036103

To read a previous bloga on this book by Daniel Olivas:
http://labloga.blogspot.com/2013/09/spotlight-on-veronica-reyes-and-her-new.html

To read more about Verónica Reyes: 
http://www.pw.org/content/veronica_reyes

Each year, AWP holds its Annual Conference & Bookfair in a different region of the United States in order to celebrate the outstanding authors, teachers, writing programs, literary centers, and small press publishers of that region. The Annual Conference typically features hundreds of presentations: readings, lectures, panel discussions, and forums plus hundreds of book signings, receptions, dances, and informal gatherings. The conference attracts more than 10,000 attendees and hundreds of publishers. It’s one of the biggest and liveliest literary gatherings in the country.

Review: Daniel Chacón. Hotel Juarez : stories, rooms and loops. Houston, TX : Arte Publico Press, 2013. ISBN: 9781558857681  1558857680

Michael Sedano

If Daniel Chacon ever decides to quit his day job to go into radio, Benjamin Alire Saenz will have to do the same because they make a fabulous duo on the internet radio program Words on a Wire from KTEP. Their recent effort airing on February 23, their poetry show, is an example that deserves a listen, a beautiful on-air floricanto.

Chacon, of course, already has a day job to go with his day job, writer. Take Chacon’s 2013 collection, Hotel Juarez: stories, rooms and loops. Please do. You’ll be happy about it with a tempered joy.

That’s the estimation of a recent assembly of the Stanford Latina Latino Alumni Book Group, whose February selection spotlights Hotel Juarez. Stanford alums in the Los Angeles area who want to join the regular meetings click here.

Stanford Latina Latino Chicana Chicano Book Group Roberto Garcia, Margie Hernandez, M. Urrutia, Concepción Valadez, Angelique Flores,  Michael Sedano, Dierdre Reyes, Mario Vasquez

As a collection of stories, readers find connections between characters and incidents threaded, or looped, in and out of disparate stories. Chacon has a subtle touch and some readers delight when another reader points out unseen connections, a character reappears, a consequence of some inconspicuous act strikes.

Because the book proffers a collection of stories, some readers allow themselves to temper their joy wishing for what they don’t have. Hotel Juárez is a collection, not a novel. Those loops and connections, however, narrow the gaps between the short and long forms of fiction, increasing some readers’ impatience with the start-stop-next of short fiction.

Chacon divides Hotel Juárez into five rooms. Within each room the author sublets space for series of stories developing a character or incident. Part I, The Purple Crayon, is a sketch book. Like the basket of goodies found in the hotel bathroom, each serves its own end but it belongs in the basket.

The title section, the fifth, most whets one’s appetite to see what Chacon can do with the longer form.  Before that is Mujeres Matadas, an intoxicatingly unnerving journey into underground clubs on the Juárez side, intimations of danger always lurking, knowledge of “death metal” music semi-essential. Close readers will wonder why she needed the ride in the first place, since her guitar and bandmates were already set up in the old maquiladora, and what were those red pills?

Chacon anticipates the television-influenced continuity doubters on the copyright page where he places his dedication, “For those who still believe.” The author next provides two instructions on how to read his book. On the dedication page, “The Order of Things”, and a Borges quotation, “esas visiones son minuciosas”. In other words, the author advises, read the book front to back, don’t skip around. The Borges echoes the dedicatory phrase, reality is what you make it.

Those words of advice, however, may be a magnificent author’s joke. The final section, Hotel Juárez, features a character, the professor, who attracts dogs and street kids. Maybe. The dogs are real enough—feed them tacos and they’ll follow you anywhere—but the kids and the implied danger may be hallucinations of a brain-fried pendejo.

Chacon has us on the professor’s side through the ten stories of this title section. “Believe” he’s told us. We believe, in The Best Tortas , Ever!, the professor is duped by the rock cocaine dealer. We believe the boys pick him up, trail him, box him in. We smile at his futility in buying an inkpen to use as a sword against an attack. We believe, maybe would welcome a fight scene. But when he pulls out of his sock a glass pipe we didn’t know was there and fires up those rocks, one's vision of the professor's world crumbles into the unreliability of a drugged-out narrator who really had us fooled. This is what you get for believing.

The Stanford women object that Chacon’s women are flat and deserve stronger, longer, more minuciosas visiones. La mujer matada is a fascinating character in her eponymous piece, but she’s ultimately only window dressing on the narrator’s set. In Tasty Chicken the narrator is a woman with a quirky fear that glittery makeup on her cleavage will infiltrate her bloodstream, grow and multiply to explode her body like a critter from an outer space movie. Pobrecita, and las mujeres have a point there.

The beauties of using books, especially one as rich in detail, loops, connections, predicaments as Hotel Juárez, include the ability to take your time, set the book down then come back to it, repeat and reread, and see the same words every time. That’s also a beauty of internet radio. Click on this link to Words on a Wire Poetry Show and listen to a beautiful example of aural floricanto. Like a book and other interposed media, you can return to time and again and repeat the experience, just as some of Hotel Juárez' stories, loops and rooms merit several visits before noticing you finally feel comfortable in that world.


The Gluten-free Chicano Cooks
Papas con Chorizo y Blanquillos

"Boys have huevos," my Grandmother explained, "gallinas hacen blanquillos." I was acquiring speech and language and that lesson stays with me since I was four years old.

Gramma probably taught me that as we gathered blanquillos from the jaula the gallinas shared with the goats and rabbits, at the back of the yard, past the excusado, by the nopales.

I imagine we went inside where she stoked the wood-burning stove and made me a breakfast of papas con chorizo y blanquillos. The dish has been a staple of The Gluten-free Chicano's diet for as long as he remembers.


My grandmother would roll out a perfect tortilla de harina, toast it on the stovetop, and drop it steaming onto my plate. We didn't use forks.

Nowadays I have to be gluten free, and, served with tortillas de maíz, here is a gluten-free breakfast of champions.

Dice the papas into uniform cubes and drop into a thin layer of cooking oil in a hot sartén. Stir the papas and turn so they begin to brown on all sides.

Add ⅓ of an onion, chopped, and a couple of sliced dientes de ajo and continue cooking until you can pierce the papas with a fork. Set the papas aside.


I buy a chub of pork chorizo and slice off a third of it to serve two. Spray the pan with nonstick coating and over medium flame, soften the chorizo five minutes, stirring and scraping.


Add the cooked papas to the chorizo and stir together.


I plan on one blanquillo per person, though this dish is almost infinitely expandable with more of everything.


Stir the eggs into the mixture and cook until the eggs have the texture you enjoy, wet and shiny or dry and hard. Serve with sliced fresh tomatoes from the garden when available, tortillas de maíz, and a hot salsa chile.

This is a fifteen minute refrigerator to plate gluten-free meal. Be sure to read all ingredients on the chorizo and tortillas to ensure absence of wheat, barley, or rye products.

A Foto Minus a Thousand Curses Plus a Million Tears


Charnega Chicana Poeta Publishes

La Bloga friend Raquel Delgado, poet and performance artist la Pocha Catalana, debuts her collection, El centro de la llama from Barcelona’s Excodra Editorial.

Charnegas Charnegos are Catalunya’s chicanada. Beset by social exigencies, charnegas charnegos employ code-switching dialects, a sense of Peoplehood, and poetry to claim their place among their peers.

Here's Raquel Delgado's bio from her publisher's website:

Charnega, nació en Barcelona en 1979. Es licenciada en Filología Hispánica. En 2001 inició un estudio lingüístico sobre Spanglish que le llevó a centrar su investigación sobre el pueblo chicano. En 2006 colaboró en la organización de las primeras Jornadas Chicanas en Casa Amèrica de Catalunya en las que presentó su lectura En Busca de un Aztlán, donde realiza un análisis tanto lingüístico como cultural del pueblo chicano comparándolo con los catalanes de primera generación. Dos años después se celebraron las segundas Jornadas Chicanas donde presentó la lectura La conciencia fronteriza en el nuevo arte chicano. Allí conoció a los artistas Guillermo Gómez-Peña y Roberto Sifuentes, miembros fundadores del colectivo La Pocha Nostra. El mismo año realizó un taller de performance con ellos en Evora, Portugal.

En 2009 presentó su performance Post-Colonial Malinches: Tongues of Fire en El Mundo Zurdo: The First International Conference on Gloria Anzaldúa en la University of Texas at San Antonio, y en La Milwaukee Avenue Arts Festival en Chicago.

En 2010 presentó su trabajo Entrails' Wail en La Cova de les Cultures, en Barcelona y en el Milwaukee Avenue Arts Festival en Chicago. También ha participado como poeta en el Festival de Flor y Canto en San Francisco, en el Festival de Flor y Canto. Yesterday • Today • Tomorrow en Los Angeles, siendo la primera española que participa en este festival chicano desde que se inició en 1973. También participó en Mujerismo en la Avenue 50th Studio.

Es conocida como La Pocha Catalana, que es una reinvención del término charnega, y que expresa el gran paralelismo que existe entre charnegos y chicanos.


Community College Writers Anthology Call

La Bloga friend Chella Courington, faculty adviser of Santa Barbara City College's literary publication, Painted Cave sends the following.

Painted Cave Literary Magazine is accepting submissions from community college student writers nationwide for its inaugural issue May 2014.  Submissions are accepted on a rolling basis.

Painted Cave is the online student-run, faculty-guided literary journal of Santa Barbara City College. We publish the work of community college student writers in fiction, poetry and creative nonfiction.

Painted Cave reserves First North American Serial Rights. We accept simultaneous submissions, but please notify us immediately if your work is accepted elsewhere.

Paste your submission in the body of the email to paintedcavesubmissions@gmail.com.

Include the genre of the submission, title(s) and your name in the subject line (Fiction, “Born Too Late,” Mary Mullins).

We accept the following genres:
Flash Fiction: 1-3 pieces, no more than 750 words each.
Fiction: 1 piece, no more than 5000 words.
Poetry: 3-5 poems, no more then 50 lines each.
Creative Nonfiction: 1 piece, no more than 5000 words.
Flash Creative Nonfiction: 1-3 pieces, no more than 750 words each.

by Ernest Hogan

Take Me Low Riding In Your Car, Car

Women’s International Day is around the corner, and the best way to commemorate this day is by reading the book ¡Azúcar! written and illustrated by Ivar Da Coll. This stupendous book is the biography of the incomparable Guarachera de Cuba. With amazing illustrations, the written text becomes alive.

During her successful musical career, Celia Cruz received more than 100 awards. Among the most important ones are a star on Hollywood Walk of Fame, five Grammy Awards, and three Honoris Causa degrees by three different universities in the United States.  She was a successful woman in all scopes of life, a warrior and a worthy ambassador of her country’s and Latin America’s culture. Celia’s artistic legacy invites us to face life’s challenges with optimism while dancing to her contagious tune.

Celia’s motto was ‘Mi bandera es la alegría, mi causa cantar’. Although, she is no longer with us, her voice and her charisma will remain in our hearts forever. She died on July 16, 2003 at the age of 78 in New Jersey due to brain stem cancer. Celia Cruz was definitely a clear example of perseverance, tenacity, and humility for the newer generations.  

Congratulations to all women around the world for your dedication and commitment. Remember that reading gives you wings. ¡Azúcaaar!

Pasado Perfecto / The perfect past by Leonardo Padura The first weekend of 1989, a persistent phone call pulls Lt. Mario Conde, a skeptical and hopeless police officer, out from his hangover. It's his boss calling to assign him a mysterious and urgent case: Rafael Morín, chief of the Import and Export Company of the Ministry of Industries, has been missing since New Year's Day. Chance has it that the missing chief is a former schoolmate of Conde, a man that since then stood out for his intelligence and self-discipline. On the side, the case confronts the lieutenant with the memory of his long lost love, Tamara, now married to Morín. Conde will discover that the apparently perfect past on which Morín has built his brilliant career hides many obscure passages. Editorial Tusquets ISBN: 9788483835586 Tradepaper 240 pp. Price: $10.95  Lecture in NYC: Hirschman and Latin America Development, Reform and Possibilism

Jeremy Adelman  Professor of History  Princeton University Moderator  Mauricio Font  Bildner Center for Western Hemisphere Studies Thursday, March 13, 2014, 4PM  The Graduate Center, Room 9205/06  365 Fifth Avenue (@ 34th Street)

Albert Hirschman was truly a major voice in framing the modern discussion of development and social change in the second part of the twentieth century. Several of his most influential works drew from primary research on Latin America, including The Strategy of Economic Development and Journeys Toward Progress. Often traveling with his wife, Sarah Hirschman, he visited most countries in the region, including a few years in Colombia in the early 1950's, and developed deep and lasting friendships with Latin American intellectuals and policy-makers. Born in Berlin in 1915, Albert O. Hirschman grew up during the Weimar era and fled Germany when the Nazis seized power in 1933. Amid hardship and personal tragedy, he volunteered to fight against the fascists in Spain and helped many of Europe's leading artists and intellectuals escape to America after France fell to Hitler. His intellectual career led him to Paris, London, and Trieste, and to academic appointments at Columbia, Harvard, and the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. He was an influential adviser to governments in the United States, Latin America, and Europe, as well as major foundations and the World Bank. He studied Latin America and addressed fundamental issues about development and social change in the region. Along the way, he wrote some of the most innovative and imoprtant books in economics, the social sciences, and the history of ideas. Throughout, he remained committed to his belief that reform is possible, even in the darkest of times. See below for list of publications.

Jeremy Adelman studies the history of Latin America in comparative and world contexts. Worldly Philosopher is the first major account of Hirschman's remarkable life, and a tale of the twentieth century and Latin America as seen through the story of an astute and passionate observer. After graduating from the University of Toronto, he earned a master’s degree in economic history at the London School of Economics (1985) and completed a doctorate in modern history at Oxford University (1989). He has been teaching at Princeton since 1992. The recipient of the Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship and the ACLS Frederick Burkhardt Fellowship, he was the chair of the History Department for four years and occupies the Walter Samuel Carpenter III Professor in Spanish Civilization and Culture. At present, he is the Director of the Council for International Teaching and Research at Princeton University. See below for publications.

Publications by Albert Hirschman: National Power and the Structure of Foreign Trade (1945), Colombia; Highlights of a Developing Economy (1955), The Strategy of Economic Development (1958), Latin American Issues; Essays and Comments (1961), Journeys Toward Progress: Studies of Economic Policy-Making in Latin America (1963), Development Projects Observed (1967), Exit, Voice, and Loyalty: Responses to Decline in Firms, Organizations, and States (1970), A Bias for Hope: Essays on Development and Latin America (1971), The Passions and the Interests: Political Arguments for Capitalism Before Its Triumph (1977), National Power and the Structure of Foreign Trade (1980), Essays in Trespassing: Economics to Politics and Beyond (1981), Shifting Involvements: Private Interest and Public Action (1982), Getting Ahead Collectively: Grassroots Experiences in Latin America (1984), Rival Views of Market Society and Other Recent Essays(1986), The Rhetoric of Reaction: Perversity, Futility, Jeopardy (1991), A Propensity to Self-Subversion (1985), Crossing Boundaries: Selected Writings(1998). Publications by Jeremy Adelman: Worldly Philosopher: The Odyssey of Albert O. Hirschman (2013), Frontier Development: Land, Labour, and Capital on the Wheatlands of Argentina and Canada (1994), Republic of Capital: Buenos Aires and the Legal Transformation of the New World (1999), and Sovereignty and Revolution in the Iberian Atlantic (2006). Professor Adelman is the editor of The Essential Hirschman (2013) and coauthor of Worlds Together, Worlds Apart(2008), a history of the world from the beginning of humankind. He is currently working on two books. The first studies the history of Latin America since 1492, analyzing the ways in which the region was a human laboratory for global change from the moment of European-American contact to the present. The second explores how intellectuals grappled with social crises over the past century.

TO RESERVE please send an email to bildner@gc.cuny.edu

American Short Fiction - At AWP I talked with Rebecca Markovits, one of the Editors at American Short Fiction. She let me know that they are actively looking for fiction from any and all writers, and they would love to have more Latino/a submissions. And they pay. Here's the blurb from their website, which is at this link.

"American Short Fiction has published, and continues to seek, short fiction by some of the finest writers working in contemporary literature, whether they are established, or new or lesser-known authors. In addition to its triannual print magazine, American Short Fiction also publishes stories (under 2000 words) online. Submit here."




University of Hell Press - Also from AWP: "Seeks and promotes artists who are creating irreverent and thought provoking works in quiet corners of their worlds. ... We pride ourselves on being different and irreverent, and we expect your work will embody the same." Open submissions will start in "early spring." Go here for more.







What Books Press - "An imprint of the Glass Table Collective since 2009, What Books Press publishes innovative poetry, fiction, and non-fiction, books that defy categories, genres, and established marketing parameters. What Books covers feature the art of Gronk,a Glass Table member, and reflect the high standards of the books we publish."  What Books normally considers submissions by nomination only. However, it announced an Open Submission period for the month of July 2014. Contact the press for info.






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Guest Opinion from Clark Lohr


Writing in The New Republic (January 1st, 2014: Is the U.S. the Last Country Still Fighting the Drug War? Uruguay’s new pot law is a big blow to Washington drug policy), Russell Crandall notes that a succinct pro-legalization argument can be found in The Economist:“Making drugs illegal encourages organized crime, clogs the prisons (especially in the Americas), increases corruption everywhere from Mexico to Afghanistan, and ignores the inexorable law of supply and demand.”

It’s not news  to Latin Americans or to many who read El País, or the Guardian, et cetera, that Latin American nations are bowing out of, or blowing off, the longest war in U.S. history, the drug war, declared in June, 1971, by U.S. President Richard Nixon, a war that is used today, in my opinion ( as an Anglo American observer), for the same  general purpose that Honduran and Guatemalan human rights workers and politicians complained about when I toured their countries with the Veterans for Peace (VFP) in the 1980’s: hegemony -- undue influence.

It was Nixon, Russell Crandall writes, who established counter-narcotics campaigns in Southeast Asia and Mexico.
On that same VFP study tour, the Sandinistas spoke  about U.S. hegemony as well, but focused on the Somoza regime and their overthrow of it, mindful, meanwhile, that voting for a Sandinista government was essentially a vote against the U.S. government. Rather a quaint historical footnote I’m making here in 2014 since bucking the U.S. resulted in the Sandinistas going down, either under the guns or the money of the Contras and the United States, which brings us to the Iran-Contra scandal, broken publicly by Senator John Kerry in 1986, wherein it was eventually proven that  U.S. covert operatives helped run cocaine into the U.S. to help fund the Contras -- drugs for guns. Meanwhile, in 1984 and 1986, the U.S. passed additional mandatory sentencing laws, aimed at crack cocaine users (read African-Americans), which were thrown out, in part, in 2010, by the Fair Sentencing Act. 

Although the history of U.S. drug legislation reaches farther back than the establishment of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics (FBN), created in 1930 -- headed, famously, by Harry Anslinger, who established the self-serving fiction that marijuana is a gateway drug -- it is the FBN that ushered the U.S. into the modern phase of a profitable war on drugs, wherein crooks, cops, banks, lawyers, politicians, and even some of the rest of us, can make money, not so much off drugs, but off the fact that drugs are illegal. The FBN produced films linking marijuana use to violent crime, but Reefer Madness, the propaganda film U.S. hipsters love best, was produced by a church group. The racial/ethnic prejudice aspect of U.S. drug legislation has been a thread in the weave since at least the 1850’s (read opium and Chinese immigrants). The Boggs Act, increasing mandatory sentencing, passed in 1951, and aimed principally at marijuana (read Mexicans), is said to have served as a convenient adjunct to the deportation of Mexicans from the U.S.

For nearly four decades, U.S. taxpayers have funded the exportation of the U.S. war on drugs into Latin America. The cost has run into the trillions and the meter is still running. In Mexico, in particular, U.S. funding and U.S. training have only made matters worse. Many examples exist, but the Zetas, founded by Mexican Special Forces troopers trained by the U.S. for the express purpose of busting Mexican drug operations, are perhaps the best example. These guys deserted the Mexican army and set up the most brutal, efficient (and probably the most profitable) drug cartel in Mexico.

In my view of present-day drug war politics, prejudiced, mendaciously ignorant U.S. citizens still cling to their self- righteousness, despising those in their own country for using any kind of drug, and despising Mexico for its tenacious tradition of corrupt and ineffective government.  In my view, federal government drug warriors are clinging to their prestige and their big salaries, rallying the ignorant and the right-wing religionists, and pressuring everyone, from the President on down, to keep funding and fighting the U.S. war on drugs.  To me, these drug war bureaucrats and their legal and law enforcement entourages resemble, collectively, a huge, violent covert operation that won’t be shut down by their nation’s popular will, or by its elected officials.

The truth is, the international illegal drug business is too big to fail and the U.S. demand for drugs has continued to grow. Many Mexicans and many Latinos living in the U.S., particularly the young, see, in narco cultura (see the documentary Narco Cultura, released in 2013, and directed by Shaul Schwartz), as the way up and out, a means of moving financially and socially up the ladder, out of the humiliation of poverty, and into positions of power and respect, just as the more fortunate and cunning U.S. bootleggers quietly diversified into legitimate businesses and came out of Prohibition to live their lives as respected citizens of mainstream society. U.S. citizens only have to look at themselves to see the logic of narco cultura.  Even if a self-styled narco fails to make the transition to the straight world, he can live on in legend. Every American knows about Al Capone, a vicious Prohibition-era gangster who was ultimately dealt with by law enforcement, not for his many murders but for income tax evasion. He did prison time, but was paroled. He died at his home in Palm Island, Florida.

Uruguay’s road to legalization of marijuana began, Russell Crandall notes, in 2009, when three former Latin American presidents came out against the U.S. war on drugs.  In 2011, Kofi Annan, the former UN Secretary General, also came out against the war on drugs, along with former U.S. Secretary of State George Schultz, and former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker. Crandall reports that President Barack Obama“received an unexpected earful from some of his Latin American counterparts” upon arriving at the Summit of the Americas in Cartagena in April, 2012. Obama responded by acknowledging that the drug war was “a legitimate topic for debate.”

Crandall concludes that “…we…need to think carefully before we condemn every aspect of the drug war, or choose to abandon it altogether...all eyes will be on Colorado, Washington, and Uruguay to see how the baby step of pot legalizations turns out.”

--Clark Lohr is a crime writer living in Tucson, Arizona, a drug war battleground where live ammo is in use. He has written two novels in which the drug wars play a decisive role in the lives of the characters: Devil’s Kitchen, first published in 2010, and The Devil on Eighty-five, published in 2013.


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[click on photos for larger image and slide show]

Immediately I noticed two things - the participants were of all ages but youth certainly prevailed (not surprising,) and it was nice to see so many faces of color in the crowd and on panels. As others have noted, the agenda included a good representation of panels and readings relevant to the Latina/o attendees and presenters. The ones I managed to catch were well-attended and I have to say that the speakers exhibited a high quality of expertise and passion for writing.

Checking In On The First Day

Certain highlights stick out, of course. Naturally I enjoyed the events where I was a participant. On Thursday I gave a reading celebrating Arte Público Press along with two other AP authors - Alicia Gaspar de Alba and J.L. Torres, who organized the reading. I felt honored to be in their company as they are excellent writers and their readings genuinely moved the audience. I forgot to take pictures of this panel but later I got a pic of J.L. staffing the booth for the Saranac Review.

J.L. Torres

I also sat on a panel entitled Chicana/o Noir: Murder, Mayhem and Mexican Americans. Must say, we had a good time with this one. My partners in crime were Daniel Olivas (facilitator who put the panel together), Lucha Corpi,Michael Nava, and Sarah Cortez. It had been years since I'd seen Lucha and Michael (Sarah and I did an event in Houston last year, I also saw Daniel last year), so this panel felt like a reunion of sorts. We propped up crime fiction and read short pieces from our work that showcased the diversity and uniqueness of our various books, striking a blow for genre writers everywhere.

Lucha and Carlos at the Con Tinta Reception

Daniel and Sarah Prep for the Panel

I managed to attend events that talked about unsympathetic characters in fiction, Chicano artist Gronk and the Glass Table Collective,William Burroughs, the 25th anniversary of Tia Chucha Press, and the short story collection ¡Arriba Baseball! I heard readings from Richard Blanco and Cristina Garcia as well as several poets representing Tia Chucha, What Books, and others. I thought the panelists tried too hard to deify Burroughs; it would have been great to have Gronk in person at the panel that showcased his work; Blanco is an excellent reader of his poetry; and there were several other panels I wanted to attend but just couldn't fit in.

Speaking of Gronk, one of the gems I discovered at AWP is a book of science fiction poetry illustrated by Gronk for What Books Press. The book, Tomorrow You'll Be One Of Us, written by Chuck Rosenthal and Gail Wronsky, is described as "a humorous tribute to sci-fi movies from the 1950s and early 60s. It is a book of poetry and an art book, with over 70 full-color drawings/paintings by Gronk. Written using surrealist techniques to arrange lines of actual dialogue from the films, the poems are experimental yet eminently readable, asking questions such as, Will anybody ever really know what happened here? The book is published in a limited edition of 300 copies." I have my copy and I'm hoping to get author and artist autographs.






A panel I enjoyed immensely was ¡Arriba Baseball! featuring Kathryn Lane, Thomas de la Cruz, Norma E. Cantú and Robert Moreira, the editor of the collection. The four selections I listened to were all superb. I recommend this collection to one and all, you don't have to be a baseball fan to appreciate the humanity of the characters and the resonance of the settings in these stories. Other writers in this collection include Dagoberto Gilb, René Saldaña, Jr., David Rice, and Christine Granados.

                                                                                                                                   

Xánath Caraza and Robert Moreira

Norma Cantú and Kathryn Lane

Thomas de la Cruz

And here are a couple of random photos of writers just hanging out.

Sergio Troncoso, Jose B. Gonzalez, Francisco Aragon

Juan Luis Guzman

Daniel Chacón

Manuel Ramos, Sarah Cortez, Daniel Olivas

Finally, Flo and the pig, and blue trees.







Later.

Sam Quiñones

New paths for a great journalist

During The Rick Garcia Band's performances on April 12 and 13 at Denver's Oriental Theater, you have a chance to own one of the framed posters and artwork that were displayed at Rick's Tavern!

  

Rick Garcia Band website: www.rickgarciaband.com

Oriental Theater website: www.theorientaltheater.com

Rick Garcia Band 24-hour line: (720) 855-8166

Olga Garcia Echeverria


Real, old-fashioned mail can brighten even the gloomiest of days. The parcel that arrives is the size of a record album, the weight of a sturdy book. It’s traveled all the way from Mexico City to Lincoln Heights. It’s littered with cool rows of orange Día de Muertos stamps and numerous black postal seals, faded and smeared. The envelope is made of brown paper bag, its edges beaten and gnawed. It's obviously been "manhandled" on both sides of the border. The calendars inside, though, are remarkably unscathed.






I open up the calendar to February. A black and white profile of an older woman stares back. There is some kind of fierceness in her face. No Botox. No airbrush. No commercial standards of youth and beauty. Yet, she’s beautiful, her skin weathered and sculptured by time--the same way wind and sun carve out the face of the earth.

Scholars Reaffirm Frida
Michael Sedano

The reading from the 2013 anthology Remembering Frida featuring editor Roberta Orona-Cordova, contributors Lara Medina, Maria Elena Fernandez, Sybil Venegas, Antonia Garcia-Orozco, and Marisa Garcia Rodriguez, moves along steadfastly in La Plaza de la Cultura y Artes  gift store. Seated at floor level with sunlight pouring in from a storefront window behind them, the scholars read from their chapters. One musician performs at the gathering on International Women's Day.

The pace is appropriate to prose, particularly the dry, lulling syntax of academia, so the audience is doubly delighted when Sybil Venegas semi-dryly propounds her theory that a Chicana from South-Central taught Frida her look. Venegas enjoys the irony that the wild popularity of cosas Frida Kahlo reflects not a discovery but a style come back home. It’s the conceptual highlight of an afternoon that at first seems conventional. It was fabulous.

Roberta Orona-Cordova. Cover foto licensed from Vogue Magazine.

Orona-Cordova frames the anthology as a personal manda honoring the professor’s mother, who, like Kahlo, lived in physical pain and marriage to a mujeriego. After the reading, Orona-Cordova distributes a copy of her text, a useful tactic academics might elect when reading in a popular setting.

The Editor's introduction challenges gente to think critically about the Kahlo ethos and iconography. Fans soured on Frida Kahlo owing to commercialization and image saturation, a painful injury in a still-evolving raza aesthetic. Orona reminds that during the movimiento Chicanas struggled to discover powerful mujer images to celebrate, to bestow widespread recognition and acceptance of a distinctive ethos. Why reject Frida, now that her image and the whole FK thing is the cat’s meow? The idea of Frida retains its inherent power, gente need to re-think.

Lara Medina

Lara Medina enlarges popular knowledge through historical research and criticism. Medina’s critic’s eye discerns issues of patriarchy, fashion, identity choice, and appropriateness in Kahlo’s style and its adoption by women over recent years. Medina points out that fashion, not indigeneity, motivates Kahlo’s favorite style, la Tehuana. Kahlo had little personal experience nor knowledge of the Tehuantepec region. It's a key point that reinforces the view that clothing speaks to identity choice in reaffirming an American culture in a pointed exclusion of Eurocentricity.

Medina observes how indigenous couture features soft, loose garments that hide a woman's body. The fashion lets color and style be the expression of her identity, the Look not her looks. It's an extension of the critic's focus upon women making strategic identity choices on their own terms.

Marisa Garcia Rodriguez

Marisa Garcia Rodriguez travels from New Mexico to share the stage with her colleagues. Garcia studies media and reads today from her Master’s thesis, a section on the movie, Frida. The critic finds the Frida of the movies one-dimensional. The portrayal of the artist as driven from outsiders, as needing validation by Diego Rivera and art critics, misserves the passionate artist by mischaracterizing Kahlo’s self-motivating creativity.

Orona-Cordova takes a moment to acknowledge Marisa’s position as a young scholar. The only non professor on the panel, Garcia Rodriguez represents an emerging generation of chicano studies scholars. Assessed on the basis of Garcia’s presentation—she summarizes and adapts to the situation superbly in a solidly argued analysis—the field will be in top hands. The next generation of C/S scholars will no longer remember the movimiento. Like Marisa, they'll develop their understanding and subject matter by reading the research, consuming and creating the arts, and sitting on panels with Veteranas like today's.

“Who knows who Miguel Covarrubias was?” Show of hands: zero. Sybil Venegas is indomitable. “Who knows Rosa Covarrubias?” No hands. “Who knows Frida Kahlo?” A few hands.

Sybil Venegas with foto of Rosa Covarrubias on Caramelo

It’s a tough house that melts in Venegas’ hands when she holds up Sandra Cisneros’ novel Caramelo. The face on the cover is not Cisneros, it’s Rosa Covarrubias, Venegas tells the mystified audience. Demystifying, Venegas explains Rosa Covarrubias grew up in South-Central Los Angeles before moving to Mexico City, where she marries Miguel.

A dancer and actor, Covarrubias favors indigenous clothing that make her a standout in the artistic world of Mexico City of the roaring twenties and thirties. Rosa may be the first primera clase woman to dress like her maid servants, but with sincerity. She’s the subject of a traje tipico photographic suite by notable U.S. photographer, Edward Weston.

Young Frida, a woman in her twenties like the college women emulating the look today, marries Diego Rivera, artist and mujeriego, and moves into his social circle of bohemian artists and patrons. Forty-something Rosa Covarrubias, a social maven of the clika,  who's been everywhere and done everything twice, befriends the blushing bride. The inexperienced woman looks up to this swashbuckling bohemian Veterana, maybe like a madrina, maybe like a favorite tia, maybe as the sine qua non of young Frida's aspirations.

I'll leave the speculation to Sybil Venegas. Venegas cannot connect with an historian’s accuracy her ratiocination that Frida picks up Covarrubias’ liberated actitud and fashion sense, but the argument has rich speculative ground to back it up.

Venegas presents the argument with a happy and understated Chicana nationalism, and the audience eagerly accepts the scholar’s position that Mexican American Rosa is a proto-Chicana. Thus, Venegas reasons, the style that birthed a Salma Hayek movie, an endless stream of artwork featuring Frida iconography, and a hagiography surrounding Kahlo’s beauty, is a Chicana Thing. No wonder it works. ¡Ajua!

Maria Elena Fernandez

Leave them laughing is a useful strategy when a reading is running long. A final reader doesn’t want to be “more of the same." Maria Elena Fernandez’ piece, FK Nopal en La Frente, is tailor-made for last position on a two-hour panel. It would be a good closer to the book, but it’s the third essay in the twelve chapter collection. Click here for Table of Contents of the $65 book, $52 ebook.

Fernandez crafts a funny, manic monolog that begins as a woman in the midst of a Frida Kahlo breakdown, streams through a consciousness of news, myth, fashion style, feminism, winding its way into a solid mujerismo that reconciles itself to various status quos. The monolog parallels Orona-Cordova’s introductory reminder that this popularized image is what you wanted. Use it. Don’t let it be exoticized nor trivialized out of your control.

Antonia Garcia-Orozco

Control is what one hears in a virtuoso musician’s fingers, especially when striking a superb instrument like Antonia Garcia-Orozco’s guitar. A musicologist, Garcia-Orozco’s rich mezzo articulates words and phrases with crystal precision, despite the hollow space that swallows her voice. She closes the reading playing and singing her composition for the anthology.

The LA Plaza space is not a presenter’s favorite spot. Only the first few rows get good views of readers. Folks beyond see bobbing heads accompanied by amplified voices. Yet, here is good/better/best news. The good news is the reading is an element of a new spoken word program in town, Platicas at LA Plaza. Better, this one’s on the eastside, east of Silver Lake even. Best, the crowd filling the space reflects the effective work of Ximena Martin, Curator of Public Programs, LA Plaza de Cultura y Artes. Institutions grow because they have capable people like Martin, who was eager to talk about her upcoming native ingredients cooking talks.

The gift shop space isn’t going to grow a platform, so in future, folks need to get to the museum early enough for favorable seating. Photographers are going to live with that bright window, the gallery needs that light.

Presenters are going to want to stand up and project to the groundlings. Remembering Frida readers worked collectively, one holds the microphone so her neighbor can read from her manuscript. Poets could work from memory, or Martin probably has a lavaliere mic; the sound cart is excellent. The absence of a lectern doesn't mean a reader shouldn't stand, and I hope there won't be one in future.

Academic presenters will want to remember it’s a public audience, not inured to the ritual of the academic conference. Relax, personalize, and keep it shorter.

A public reading of difficult prose in a gift shop should not exceed five pages to seven pages--think about two minutes a page. Listeners count pages so presenters benefit from a folder or notebook. Any reader will do well to remember a dictum for meeting planners: a person’s brain can absorb half what their nalgas can tolerate.

LA Plaza de Cultura y Artes. 501 North Main Street, Los Angeles, CA 90012 • 888 488-8083 • M,W & Th, 12–5 pm, Fri-Sun 12-6 pminfo@lapca.org
Remembering Frida. Roberta Orona-Cordova, Ed. Kendall-Hall, Dubuque IA, 2013.
ISBN: 978-1-4652-2911-3 print
ISBN: 978-1-4652-3573-2 ebook

Wednesday Prayers for Fukushima
by Iris De Anda

Something is happening
Something is happening in our ocean
Something is happening to our pachamama

we must come together and do something about it
I ask that we gather our intentions
wherever you find yourself on Wednesdays
I ask that you pray for our water
that you pray for our earth mother
that you pray

this prayer can be a simple word
a closing of your eyes
a wish
a thought
a song

you can meditate
visualize
dance
shout
listen

she is asking for us to hold a space
a healing space
a whole space
a tranquil space
a space within

at night or early morning
I send her my prayers
in the middle of the day
I send her my prayers
as I breathe air & drink water
I send her my prayers

alone I create a little ripple
together we can create a wave of love

Wednesday Prayers for Fukushima
Wherever you may find yourself

When birds fall from the sky and the animals are dying, a new tribe of people shall come unto the Earth from many colors, classes, creeds, who by their actions and deeds shall make the Earth green again. They will be known as the Warriors of the Rainbow.


Doom Tears
by Sharon Elliott

for Fukushima and the rest of the planet

doom cries
dragon tears
molten lava
drips from eaves
wet with
sorrow

leather wings
beat against
brutal
loss

claws wipe
hot
red
drops
sprinkling fire
against the mountain top

wailing grows
louder than the
breaking sea

9 years
90 decades
900 centuries
of unremittent
suffering
under a
carnelian sky

green growing things
crouch
beneath dirt
baked by
shameless
arrogance

waiting
for a blue sky
that does not
show itself

hidden by smoke
and fire
indelible
illegible

burning down
that
which should be prayed for


Born and raised in Seattle, Sharon Elliott has written since childhood. Four years in the Peace Corps in Nicaragua and Ecuador laid the foundation for her activism. As an initiated Lukumi priest, she has learned about her ancestral Scottish history, reinforcing her belief that borders are created by men, enforcing them is simply wrong.

She has featured twice in poetry readings in the San Francisco Bay area:  at Poetry Express, Berkeley, Ca.  in 2012 and La Palabra Musical in Berkeley, CA in 2013.

She was awarded the Best Poem of 2012, The Day of Little Comfort, Sharon Elliott, La Bloga Online Floricanto Best Poems of 2012, 11/2013, http://labloga.blogspot.com/2013/01/best-poems-of-2012.html

She has a book: Jaguar Unfinished, Sharon Elliott, Prickly Pear Publishing 2012, ISBN-13:  978-1-889568-03-4, ISBN-10:  1-889568-03-1 (26 pgs)



The Fearful Symmetry
by Red Slider



They say it didn't happen that way,

that some died quick and others not at all.

They say it was all in the sway of "necessity,
"
Called down from the sea to wash away our sins, 

yet even now burns brightly, beneath our skins.



They say it didn't happen that way.

It was worth the price, "necessity,"

They say. "The survivors heal in time.

Those that don't survive, quickly die.

Their silence said as much," they said,

"It was necessary to end the war,"

they didn't suffer.


Somewhere, deep in the skin of their ghosts,

hubris burned brightly, renewing the curse

of Prometheus, plucking our livers from

the ashes of Fukushima-Daiichi. Once again

they will say, "It didn't happen that way,

It is the price of success and necessity,"

burning brightly, beneath our skins.


They say, to end a war we must light up the day or,
to light a lamp, place a speck of sun upon a coastal ledge
where ashen ghosts are still at play among the ruins, 

their shadows lengthened into rays of paper, fan and broom.
By fire or by sea are the sins of ignorance swept clean 
they say, while a thousand folded paper cranes pass by 
in lingering review, they spin eternities in hubris gray; 
they calculate the half-life of a day burning brightly, 

beneath our skins.




Urgent Nuclear Prayer
by Francisco X. Alarcón

disarm these ticking
bombs called reactors, Mother Earth,
have mercy on us!

we foolish children
who recklessly play with fire
are getting all burned

Toci Tonantzin!
Citlacueye! Tlazateotl!
tla Tlatecuhtli!

© Francisco X. Alarcón
March 24, 2011


Urgente plegaria nuclear
por Francisco X. Alarcón

desarma las bombas
de reactores, Madre Tierra,
¡tennos piedad!

como niños tontos
jugamos con el fuego,
hasta quemar todo

Toci Tonantzin!
Citlacueye! Tlazateotl!
tla Tlatecuhtli!


Francisco X. Alarcón, award winning Chicano poet and educator, born in Los Angeles, in 1954, is the author of twelve volumes of poetry, including, From the Other Side of Night: Selected and New Poems (University of Arizona Press 2002), and Snake Poems: An Aztec Invocation (Chronicle Books 1992), Sonetos a la locura y otras penas / Sonnets to Madness and Other Misfortunes (Creative Arts Book Company 2001), De amor oscuro / Of Dark Love (Moving Parts Press 1991, and 2001).
His latest books are Ce•Uno•One: Poems for the New Sun / Poemas para el Nuevo Sol (Swan Scythe Press 2010), and for children, Animal Poems of the Iguazú/Animalario del Iguazú (Children’s Book Press 2008) which was selected as a Notable Book for a Global Society by the International Reading Association, and as an Américas Awards Commended Title by the Consortium of Latin American Studies Programs. His previous bilingual book titled Poems to Dream Together/Poemas para soñar juntos (Lee & Low Books 2005) was awarded the 2006 Jane Addams Honor Book Award. 
He teaches at the University of California, Davis, where he directs the Spanish for Native Speakers Program. The issue of eco-poetics and xenophobia are a the core of three upcoming collections of poems, Poetry of Resistance: A Multicultural Anthology in Response to SB 1070, Borderless Butterflies: Earth Haikus and Other Poems / Mariposas sin fronteras: Haikus terrenales y otros poemas. He is the creator of the Facebook page POETS RESPONDING TO SB 1070 where more than 3,000 poems by poets all over the world have been posted.




Japanese Earthquake Haiku
by Res JF Burman

I first heard of the Earthquake whilst listening to a Music Programme from Vancouver. A frequent listener posted from Tokyo that she could feel earthquake tremors. The following collection of haiku (isn) verses followed from that.

I hear from Vancouver
Of Tokyo quakes... small world
In peril

Sitting safe at home
My heart goes out to all at risk
In quaking Tokyo

Man is so small
When the Dragon shrugs it's shoulders
Playthings of the gods

Japan lies bleeding
Scattered across her farm land
My heart bleeds for her

Ships take to the land
And cars take to the water
Racing to destruction

After the quake… the waves
So many lives turned upside down
Reduced to mud and matchsticks

Our thoughts and prayers
Are with you all in Japan
Living in harms way

Every child I see
Rescued... saved from the wreckage
My heart swells.... tearful joy

I see the loving care
As a boat load of children
Are passed hand to hand

Save them all.. Dear God..
Or Goddess.. save all of them
They need your mercy now

How strange to fear the rain
Or the gentle breeze blowing
From Fukushima

Snow falls on the scene
Of Japan’s great disaster
Gently… like a kind touch
Bestowed too late

Shunbun no Hi
A day for admiration
Of nature… cruel jest

But despite it all
In a Tokyo park today
Cherry Blossom hope

Old Soldier, disabled Vet, War Pensioner, reformed, well mostly!

Ex-traveller, builder, carpenter, cabinet-maker, wood-turner, forester & silviculturist, herdsman and cow-lifter! Ex-donkey driver too! Lots of ex’s due mostly to age and disability but a bit of all of them still leaving their mark!

Now a long time practicing Taoist. (I’ll get it right some day!)

Into music, poetry, Oriental art, religion and philosophy. Photography. Beauty in all it’s forms; landscapes, seascapes, forests & mountains. And, of course, beautiful people, especially the ladies!
I am not a good walker nowadays but I still love wild places & the wild side. Love trees, bamboos, beautiful women and all with beautiful souls, animals and old dogs and children and watermelon wine!





After Shock~
by Suzy Huerta

Tonight, prayers the people of Fukushima
will escape the unnatural breath

of radiation. Four burning reactors and acid
rains hang overhead. Together, we walk this coastline

of nuclear meltdown. The living cry for having outlived
tsunami explosions, and I decide I won’t cry death

that can, at the whim of wind and
ocean currents, take over, seep slowly

into expectant lungs and belly. Before the final seizure,
cancer born of hyper-energy and fabricated sun, I declare

my right to battle. 50 plant technicians stay behind
when levels spike into dangerous territory, more dangerous

than centuries of plate tectonic tension, and surging waters.
Like them, I focus on the fixing. I will not spend energy

this night at my desk, eyes on screens, on newsreels
of broken spirits: mothers to new babies,

70 year old husbands who couldn’t hold on
to waterlogged, drifting wives. I take their gaping wounds

like a bullet in protest, demand something better
and walk with their torment like a lover, saying goodbye

in this balmy, California sunset. Loose steps glide on
downtown, potholed pavement. Returning home, I discover

purple and yellow bulbs, ripe and blasting brilliantly,
growing spring into dying, winter skies.

Suzy Huerta was born and raised in San Jose, California.

She currently teaches English composition and literature at Foothill Community College where she also coordinates the Puente Program.

Suzy Huerta's poems have been published in The Packinghouse Review, El Coraje, La Bloga and other journals.







✿

Five Senryū
~ an offering to Ocean
by Odilia Galván Rodríguez


on wings of ocean
water gives life or destroys ~
they were carried skyward


ocean endless
with no bottom to speak of
she cannot be blamed


for mysteries of life
painful as they are deep
clouds without answers


mighty ships sinking
as if gravity were no more
a chasm


earth-water fissures
a breach in reality
our safety lost


Author Odilia Galván Rodríguez, is of Chicano-Lipan Apache ancestry, born in Galveston, Texas and raised on the south side of Chicago. As a social justice activist for many years, Ms. Galván Rodríguez worked as a community and labor organizer, for the United Farm Workers of America AFL-CIO and other community based organizations, and served on various city/county boards and commissions. She is the author of three books of poetry, of which Red Earth Calling ~ Cantos for the 21st Century ~ is her latest publication.  Her creative writing has appeared in various literary journals and anthologies such as, The En'owkin Journal of First North American Peoples, New Chicana / Chicano Writing: 1& 2, Reinventing the Enemy's Language: Contemporary Native American Women's Writings of North America, Here is my kingdom: Hispanic-American literature and art for young people, Zyzzyva, The Beltway Poetry Quarterly, La Bloga as well as other online sites. She most recently worked as the English Edition Editor for Tricontinental Magazine, in Havana, Cuba under OSPAAAL, an NGO with consultative status to the United Nations.  She is one of the facilitators of Poets Responding to SB1070, a Facebook page dedicated to calling attention to the unjust laws recently passed in Arizona which target Latinos, and Love and Prayers for Fukushima.  She also teaches Empowering People Through Creative Writing Workshops nationally.

• http://www.piescansados.blogspot.com
• http://www.wix.com/assunta_tj/assunta