Navel of the Moon
Mary Helen Lagasse
Curbstone - June, 2015

[from the publisher]
A freelance writer and journalist, Vicenta (“Vicky”) Lumière has moved beyond her upbringing in the diverse Irish Chan­nel neighborhood of New Orleans. But a visit to her childhood friend Lonnie Cavanaugh in the Louisiana Correctional Institute for Women brings back a flood of memories of shared dreams and a fateful summer long ago.

In Navel of the Moon, the follow-up to her acclaimed debut The Fifth Sun, Mary Helen Lagasse turns to the 1960s, where a young Vicky learns that the complicated people that we become as adults and the complicated world that adults create are shaped by events in childhood. The adults around her, beginning with her Mexican grandmother, Mimy, the family storyteller—who says she is from the “navel of the moon”—often confound and sometimes trouble Vicky. Yet Vicky’s strength of character is pro­foundly affected by the complexity of life, and in particular that of her troubled childhood friend Lonnie.



About the Author

Mary Helen Lagasse’s debut novel, The Fifth Sun (Curbstone, 2004), won the Miguel Mármol Prize, the Premio Aztlán Literary Prize, Independent Publisher Best Multicultural Fiction Award (2005), and ForeWord Magazine’s Book of the Year Award (2005). Her stories and articles have appeared in numerous publications, including the New Orleans Times-Picayune and New Orleans Magazine. She lives in her native New Orleans.

And here's my short review of Navel of the Moon:

In her second novel, Navel of the Moon, Mary Helen Lagasse triumphantly surpasses the amazing promise of her debut, The Fifth Sun. This earthy and moving coming-of-age tale is set in 1960s New Orleans but resides, as all good literature does, deep within the passionate mysteries of the human heart. Vicenta (“Vicky”) Lumière, the young protagonist, guides the reader on an extraordinary trip into the world of the diverse people of the Irish Channel, from her Mexican grandmother Mimy to her rebellious best friend, Lonnie, to many others created by the skillful hand of Lagasse. In the grand tradition of the finest Southern writing, Navel of the Moon is filled with luminous characters, crisp, lyrical prose, and powerful human drama.



 Monsters, Zombies, and Addicts:  Poems
Gwendolyn Zepeda
Arte Público Press - March 31, 2015

[from the publisher]
“I was scared of a thing that might have happened. In daytime I’m sure it / never did. At night, I don’t trust daylit memories or instincts. In nightmares, like / filmstrips, the feared thing occurs.” In her second poetry collection, monsters–real and imagined–chase Houston Poet Laureate Gwendolyn Zepeda through late nights when she can’t sleep. Ghosts routinely visit in the early morning hours, but in spite of her fears, she dares to believe that she has escaped the devils that once followed her.

This collection of 62 narrative poems contains witty observations about the rituals of contemporary life. In “Cocktail Hours,” she wonders, “What if all my nights were Christmas lights on patios with tinkling drinks / and fun conversations.” And in “Recipe for Fun,” Zepeda offers a ten-point guide to soothing away life’s frustrations, including a suggestion to get some peace by giving “everyone in your house pizza, cat food or video games.”

Musings on family, remembrances of childhood games and encounters with strangers (and ants!) fill this clever, thought-provoking collection in which Zepeda dares to express her individuality. She doesn’t follow others blindly, or do what society expects of her. Readers will appreciate this second poetry collection, which is deeply personal yet universal in its hopes and fears.



About the Author

Gwendolyn Zepeda was born in Houston, Texas, in 1971, and attended the University of Texas at Austin. Her works has appeared on numerous websites, and she has written and illustrated her award-winning website, gwendolynzepeda.com, since 1997. In 2004, Zepeda was awarded the Cultural Arts Council of Houston/Harris County’s Individual Artist Grant for literature. Her writing was hailed by EFE newswire as having the “potential to transform Latino literature of recent years and rid it of its bad habits and clichés.” She is currently serving a two-year term as Houston’s first Poet Laureate and her new poetry collection, Monsters, Zombies, and Addicts (Arte Público Press), will be available in early 2015. Her works include her debut book of poetry, Falling in Love with Fellow Prisoners(Arte Público Press, 2013),Level Up / Paso de nivel(Piñata Books, 2012),Better with You Here (Grand Central Publishing, 2012),I Kick the Ball / Pateo el balón (Piñata Books, 2011), Lone Star Legend(Grand Central Publishing, 2010), Sunflowers / Girasoles (Piñata Books, 2009), Houston, We Have a Problema (Grand Central Publishing, 2009), Growing Up with Tamales / Los tamales de Ana(Piñata Books, 2008), and To the Last Man I Slept with and All the Jerks Just Like Him (Arte Público Press, 2004). She continues to live and work in Houston.



The Water Museum
Luis Alberto Urrea
Little, Brown and Co. - April, 2015

[from the author's website]
 Suffused with wanderlust, compassion, and no small amount of rock and roll, this is a story collection that confirms Luis Alberto Urrea as an American master. Examining the borders between one nation and another, between one person and another, Urrea reveals his mastery of the short form: two boys steal a canoe and head out on a voyage from which one will not return; a dead soldier bequeaths his dog and a mystery to his comrade; a graffiti artist leaves behind an unfathomable message. Also here are the Edgar Award-winning Amapola and his now-classic Bid Farewell to Her Many Horses, which has twice been chosen for NPR's Selected Shorts





About the author:

A finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, Luis Alberto Urrea is the bestselling author of The Devil's Highway, The Hummingbird's Daughter, Into the Beautiful North, and Queen of America, among others. He has won the Lannan Literary Award, the Pacific Rim Kiriyama Prize, an American Book Award, the Christopher Award, and an Edgar Award, among other honors. Born in Tijuana to a Mexican father and American mother, he lives outside of Chicago and is a distinguished professor of creative writing at the University of Illinois-Chicago.






Selected Poems of Angela de Hoyos
Angela de Hoyos
Arte Público Press - April, 2015

[from the publisher]
Tension between people–men and women, Chicanos and Anglos–is a frequent theme in de Hoyo’s work. In How to Eat Crow on a Cold Sunday Morning, renowned Mexican-American poet Angela de Hoyos suggests “you start on the wings / nibbling / apologetic-like” before moving to the dry, tough giblets and on to the “gall bladder / –that green bag of biliousness– / wants to gag your throat / in righteous retribution” making you wish that you had “learned how to eat / a pound of prudence / instead.”

This collection showcases the work of a beloved literary activist who gave voice to marginalized communities. Born in Mexico, de Hoyos spent most of her life in San Antonio, Texas, where she saw firsthand Chicanos’ loss of language, identity and traditions. The discrimination endured by Mexican Americans runs through her work, and in one of her most well-known poems, arise, Chicano!, the poet exhorts her people to free themselves from poverty and oppression. “There is no one to succor you. You must be your own messiah.”

Mostly self-educated, de Hoyos was equally adept at writing in Spanish or English, and many of her poems are written in a skillful combination of the two. Containing 80 previously published poems and several that have never been published, this volume highlights a vibrant voice that calls for equality and respect for all people, regardless of gender or ethnicity.

About the author:

Angela de Hoyos (1940-2009), a native of Coahuila, Mexico, spent most of her life in San Antonio, Texas. She authored several poetry collections and, with her husband, ran a small publishing house, M&A Editions, which published other Chicano authors. Her poetry was translated into more than 15 languages and won awards in Argentina, India, Italy and Germany.


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La Bloga's friend Reyna Grande sent us this important announcement about the missing Ayotzinapa students:

I am very excited to announce that the families of the Ayotzinapa students, who disappeared in my hometown on September 26, 2014, will be coming to the US on tour. The Caravana43 will be in the Pacific coast region, the central region, and the East coast. Please keep an eye out for their visit and stand in solidarity with the families as they tour the country. Next week they will be in Los Angeles. I have created a fundraiser to help them out with basic expenses for the time they spend touring. I hope you can donate to the fundraiser. Unfortunately, it will only last one week!  The tour was just confirmed last week when the visas for the families were finally approved; hence, the short notice. To donate, click here. I will hand-deliver the money I raise when the families arrive next week, so rest assure that your donation WILL get to them! On behalf of the families, I thank you. 

The deadline for the fundraising project will have passed by the time this is posted on La Bloga, but please support the families' tour in any way you can.  You can find the schedule for the tour on René Colato Laínez's post earlier this week at this link.

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Raul Pacheco (Ozomatli)and Shawn King (Devotchka) have produced a new musical project that should interest La Bloga's readers.  Here's the announcement from Shawn about Los Dreamers:

Raul and I have been on a journey... it began almost two years ago when Ozomatli was in Denver to play the Fillmore. We talked about writing/ producing together. It's turned into this, a bilingual mixtape record that focuses on stories of immigration and American identity. Pre-order on iTunes will be next week, and official release is March 25th. 

thanks friends,
Shawn

I've listened to a few of the songs -- excellent.  You should check this out.

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Need a bookmark?  How about this one?  We will be giving these out with my new book, scheduled for the end of March.  Credit to Mercedes Hernández, a very special layout designer.





































Later.

Last fall I posted A taste of 3 Chicano spec stories, withthe openings to three of my unpublished spec-fiction works, including, "How Five-Gashes-Tumbling Chaneco Earned the Nickname." Last week it was announced that WolfSinger Publications will include it in their Diverse Weird Western anthology (title, TBA), edited by Cynthia Ward. It will be about my tenth traditionally published piece of fiction.

The setting that inspired 5-Gashes

Xánath Caraza’s stories in Lo que trae la marea/What the Tide Brings are formed of poetry, music, and the logic of dreams. Characters encounter an intermediary between mortals and gods. The line between life and death is breached. Stories emerge from the earth’s ocean and lakes or the rain that falls from the sky, and they remind us that water is the primordial fluid from which all life emerges, yet also the source of catastrophe, destruction, and death.

Caraza credits María Miranda Maloney, the founder of El Paso’s Mouthfeel Press, for encouraging her to write this collection, a change from her earlier prize-winning poetry collections. Since 2009 Mouthfeel has published twenty-five books by writers from Mexico, Uruguay, and throughout the United States, garnering recognition and accolades for itself and its writers.

 

Originally from Mexico, Caraza lives in Kansas City and teaches at the University of Missouri. On an international level, she teaches, serves as editor of literary and academic journals, performs, and publishes work in both English and Spanish. She has won honors in Central America, Europe, and the US. In this bi-lingual collection, she wrote each piece in Spanish, and then she, Sandra Kingery, and Stephen Holland-Wempe translated them into English. Spanish is a superb language for literature, with an innate rhythm and rhyme which can translate awkwardly, losing the natural poetry. I read the English translations which are beautiful in their own right, each line fluid and graceful.

 

Caraza’s stories vibrate with the sensuality of the female body as it moves through heat, reacts to a man’s gaze, responds to the rhythms of jazz, or fills the memory of a man being subjected to torture. Her writing is redolent of jungle, copal and flesh, the pungent taste and feel of food and drink, the gratification of tactile details. Color permeates her stories -- the flora and fauna of tropical Veracruz and the valley of Anahuac, the sea and sky in their various moods, the colors of cups, drinks, food, clothes, shades of skin. In “Scofield 207,” for example, everything that populates the story possesses a specific color. “Lunch Break” contains twelve references to color in its six brief paragraphs. The writer’s eyes are a prism that breaks the world into every vibrant hue, dazzling the reader, yet along with other sensuous details the myriad colors anchor us in an earthly world even while characters move back and forth between temporal planes, between reality and dreams, fantasy, and myth, between sanity and delusion. Sensuousness is not the only point to this book, however, which addresses refugees from political oppression and other topics of seriousness and depth.

Estimada Poeta Caraza in La Bloga House

The limits of time and space do not apply to Caraza’s characters. In “Nezahualcoyotl,” a pre-Columbian king and poet of the Alcolhua culture of Mexico appears in Barcelona, Spain. As he walks with the other character, called Venus, Nezahualcoyotl recites his poetry. The apprehension of language becomes a sense impression. Venus “felt poetry exude from [his] body. That was his aroma . . . that intoxicating essence . . . .” She is filled with emotion as “verses of his poetry were assaulting her.” The poetry becomes visible on her arms, then her entire body is “tattooed in poems.” Finally, her body disappears, leaving only words.

 

Caraza provides a dazzling lesson in synesthesia, the evocation of one sort of sense impression when a different sense is stimulated. In her stories, odors are colors, poetry a tactile experience. In “The One Behind,” Caraza describes a person as being able to see not only with his eyes “but also his skin, his ears and nose.” In “Water Passes Through my House, It comes to my House to Dream,” the narrator feels “musical notes soak into her being through the pores of her skin” and memory “hits her in the chest.” A breeze is described as pearly in “First Friday in Kansas City.”

Caraza stated in an interview that her “vision concentrates on female voices, their dreams, their struggles, life in general.” A woman’s voice relates all but one of these brief. These women make their own choices. They travel to foreign countries, as has Caraza. They recognize and embrace the mythic power of Man as King, Poet, and Seer. They encounter an intermediary between mortals and gods, between life and death, and demonstrate the gap between the writer’s existence and the fictions she creates. 

In some stories, characters are found reading or writing books with titles of Caraza’s own creations, underscoring the gap between the writer’s existence and the fictions she creates. The use of such metafictive devices forces upon the reader an awareness that the writer is really a writer, creating a separate, unreal reality that is fiction. In Caraza’s case, that fictional reality is both marvelous and terrifying. Caraza’s deft use of language immerses the reader in a swirl where disbelief is willingly suspended. Characters use seashells as a tool of divination, experience the supernatural, “dissolve from this dimension to reappear on the printed page.”

 

The great Spanish writer, Federico García Lorca, first explained the aesthetics of duende, inspiration born in darkness and anguish. The power of duende, a fascination with both death and great erotic desire, suffuses Xánath Caraza’s writing. Her duende, her eroticism and repeated invocation of death, terror, and cataclysm, and the power and authenticity of her language -- all dizzy the reader, precipitating a momentary experience of the sublime. Lo que trae la marea/What the Tide Brings liberates the reader from the sorrow or mere banality of existence.

Buy it from distributor

 

Buy it on Amazon

Mouthfeel Press website

La Bloga interview

Xánath Caraza website

Review in El Paso Times

 

 

La Guest Blogger Donna J Snyder

 

Believing that to give voice is an inherently political act, Donna Snyder offers free, weekly writing workshops through the Tumblewords Project which she founded in 1995. Until recently, she worked as an activist attorney on behalf of indigenous people, immigrant workers, and people with disabilities. Snyder has read her work in Alaska, Boston, New York City, Colorado, Los Angeles, and throughout Texas and New Mexico. In 2014, Chimbarazu Press released her collection Poemas ante el Catafalco: Grief and Renewal and Virgogray Press reissued her 2010 chapbook, I Am South, as a paperback book. Three Sides of the Same Moon is due from NeoPoiesis Press in 2015. She is a contributing poetry editor for Return to Mago.

　

Michael Sedano


QEPD Tony Mares

Margaret Randall writes:
Please join us on Saturday, March 28th at 2 p.m. at the Journal Theater, National Hispanic Cultural Center, for a tribute of poetry and music honoring our beloved fellow poet Tony Mares who left us much too soon.
Click here to view Tony Mares reading at the 1973 Festival de Flor y Canto held at the University of Southern California. Here below is Tony's reading at the 2010 reunion floricanto, Festival de Flor y Canto. Yesterday • Today • Tomorrow.




Medal of Honor Day in L.A. (Tomorrow) March 25

Readers of La Bloga know that I am a Veteran of the United States Army, 1969-1970. Few know that my great uncle, Joseph Rodriguez, earned a Congressional Medal of Honor during the Korean conflict.

My mother's Uncle Joe is one of forty Chicano and other raza soldiers to go "above and beyond the call of duty," and one of only a handful who lived to wear the Medal and die of natural causes. Below, find a video interview with Joseph Rodriguez, qepd.


Interview with Joseph Rodriguez, Congressional Medal of Honor Recipient


I met Joseph Rodriguez only once, during elementary school. Naturally, I asked him about the Medal. He told me having lost his boots he'd wrapped his bloody blistered feet in rags. After walking for days like that, getting pinned down was the last straw for him. He got mad as hell, so he rushed up that hill and killed all those men. That was his story to a 5th grader. He also laughed that the Medal earned him a $25.00 a month pension. It's over $1200 now.

Here's what his Citation reads, in part:
Fully aware of the odds against him, Sgt. Rodriguez leaped to his feet, dashed 60 yards up the fire-swept slope, and, after lobbing grenades into the first foxhole with deadly accuracy, ran around the left flank, silenced an automatic weapon with 2 grenades and continued his whirlwind assault to the top of the peak, wiping out 2 more foxholes and then, reaching the right flank, he tossed grenades into the remaining emplacement, destroying the gun and annihilating its crew.

QEPD, my mom's Uncle Joe.

For additional details on Joseph Rodriguez and all the raza Congressional Medal of Honor holders, visit the Eugene Obregon CMH Foundation website. I am an advisory member of the Obregon committee.



LéaLA Returns to L.A. Convention Center

Great news from Los Angeles. Plans to demolish the center to replace it with a professional football stadium have fallen through. Who needs pro football, or an expensive gift to an NFL team owner, when you can have a Spanish Language book fair and other genuinely valuable events?



Special Invitation to Library and Other School Professionals From the event organizers:
For the first time, LéaLA will open its doors to librarians and representatives of educational institutions who are eager to renew and expand their book catalogues. Friday, May 15 will be a special day for individuals from these sectors to establish business contacts with publishers attending the fair.

This will be a great opportunity to gain first-hand knowledge of new developments in the publishing industry and create networks that will help expand the distribution of Spanish-language books in the state of California and throughout the rest of the US and also enrich the collections of libraries, schools, universities and other institutions. 

All librarians, teachers, students and others interested in acquiring books for their institutions are cordially invited. We look forward to seeing you there!

More information: Carolina Gutiérrez Perini / Exhibitor and Professionals Coordinator
carolina.gutierrez@lea-la.com


Spring's First On-line Floricanto 
Roberto D. Hernández, Liz Durand Goytia, Marcelo Hernandez Castillo, Sonia Gutiérrez, 
Pedro Enriquez, Paul Portugés, Mario Angel Escobar

The Moderators of the Facebook community Poetry of Resistance:Poets Responding to SB 1070, led this month by Iris de Anda and Sonia Gutíerrez, nominate seven poets who bring nine poems for today's La Bloga On-line Floricanto.


Every World Must First Be Dreamed
By Roberto D. Hernández

I met an old friend today
That Inner child
I had long last seen...
So long I met a new me
At once child
And twinkling eye
I smiled
I cried

To be a kid again
Carefree innocence
Singing soul
Dancing feet
Drumming heart
Endless games
Cartoon fame

Imagination without bounds
Magic incarnate
Love lived with every breath
For such is the how
And of what we are made
Confirmed in every parent's
Protective gaze
Each warm embrace
Creator's way
Pesa tanto la noche
Por Liz Durand Goytia 

Aquí
en medio de la primera noche fría
con este corazón picado por avispas
me miro arder las manos y los ojos
me desconozco la voz este aullido
me desconozco en el dolor más negro.

Aquí
en donde ya no encuentro nada
busco el otro sonido
el de sus pasos que no suenan aquí
donde cada rincón me desconoce
y no guarda los mínimos recuerdos
para velar los diminutos restos
de esta memoria cercenada.

No se tiene respeto
en este claustro sitiado
por las heridas viejas ni las nuevas.
No hay voces que prometan
que nunca más habrá dolor en vez de pan.

Tiger Wasp
By Marcelo Hernandez Castillo

My mother wakes up
in the morning
before my father
to make his lunch for work.
He leaves two large plums
where her eyes used to be.

I know I am supposed
to look
away from them,
and I do.

Their nectar must
have the sweetness
of plum skin
after wasps
bury their young
inside.

She smiles at me
and though I know
I am supposed to look
away, I don't—
her eyelids
open long enough
for me to see
the purple
and ripeness
my father’s hands
are capable of
tying in a knot.

I unbutton her eyes
and tuck them in my pocket
and put her to sleep
and I bury them
somewhere far,
so she will never find them,
so they will never turn into plums,
so that the young will have no choice
but to eat their way out of their mother

until all that is left
of the wasp is a brittle piece
of string with legs.

I think of how
I too wasn’t pulled out
of her body
too soon,
too angular—
squirming,
and demanding food
from her wringed and
limp body flapping with air.

Puertas
By Sonia Gutiérrez

Hay puertas
que solitas se abren.
Pero hay otras
que aunque
estén desmoronándose
están atrancadas
con tres chapas
invisibles; sus llaves
están oxidándose
en el fondo del océano
rodeadas
de tiburones blancos.
Esas puertas
no intentes abrirlas
a caprichos o a golpes.
Mejor arremángate
la camisa
y ponte a construir
puertas con brochas
y pinturas,
clavos y un martillo, o
con la barita mágica
de tu imaginación.
Y verás que de pronto
aparecerán fundamentos
con puertas
amables a saludarte
porque te habían estado
esperando. Entrarás,
te darás vuelta, y verás
a lo lejos que las puertas
antiguas sólo tienen
los siglos contados.

Doors 
By Sonia Gutiérrez

There are doors
that open on their own.
But there are others
that even though
they are crumbling
they are locked
under invisible
triple locks; their keys
are at the bottom
of the ocean floor
surrounded
by white sharks.
Those doors
do not attempt
to open
on whims or with blows.
Instead, role up
your sleeves; build
doors with paints
and brushes,
nails and a hammer, or
with the magic wand
of your imagination.
And one day
you will suddenly see
foundations with friendly
doors greet you.
You will enter,
turn back, and see
from afar those ancient
doors only have a few
borrowed centuries left.

Sonia Gutiérrez’s work promotes social and human dignity.  She teaches English Composition and Critical Thinking and Writing at Palomar College and Chicana and Chicano Prose: Creative Writing at San Diego State University.

Her poems have appeared in the San Diego Poetry Annual, La Jornada Semanal, Tres en Suma: Espacio de Arte, and Tijuana Poética, among other publications. La Bloga’s “On-line Floricanto” is home to her Poets Responding to SB 1070 bilingual poems, including “Best Poems 2011” and “Best Poems 2012.” Her vignettes have appeared in AlternaCtive PublicaCtions, Mujeres de Maíz, Huizache, and forthcoming in Sunshine Noir II fall 2015.

Sonia’s bilingual poetry collection, Spider Woman / La Mujer Araña (2013), is her debut publication.  Kissing Dreams from a Distance, a novel, is under editorial review. She is completing her second poetry collection, Legacy / Herencia. Sonia is a moderator for Facebook’s Poets Responding to SB 1070. To learn more about Sonia, visit SoniaGutierrez.com.
La palabra
Por Pedro Enríquez

Cuando la luz de la distancia no tiene voces para el olvido,
cuando se acribillan los sueños de los símbolos huecos,
cuando se duerme con un fulgor de espera en letrina de
nubes oscuras.
Soledad de sables en el humo de los labios, dulzura amarga
de palabra escondida, escalera de sonrisas cuando no
hay salida y el mundo gira sobre la sal de una lágrima centinela.
Cuando la piel es alma y duele una espina de ternura,
cuando la noche es silencio que devora los segundos de un
misterio irresoluble, cuando en el alba duele ser hombre y
mirarse es atravesar la distancia del miedo.
Cuando el espacio se engrandece con el impulso del yo libre,
cuando se mira el horizonte manchado con la miseria
urbana de las bocas pequeñas, cuando se inunda el espíritu
con un viento hermano y se convive con el impulso de
la alegría.
Cuando naufraga la frente en los besos, cuando se quiebra
la distancia de las manos en una batalla de lenguas enlazadas,
cuando se hunde la vida entera en los suburbios
donde sueñan los no nacidos.
                 Entonces la poesía.


Pedro Enríquez. Poeta, narrador y editor español, académico con la letra Z de la Academia de Buenas Letras de Granada. De su obra se han publicado 15 títulos y poemas suyos han sido traducidos al francés, hebreo, árabe, inglés, italiano, portugués, turco, ruso, quechua, catalán y japonés. Director y organizador de múltiples actos culturales como Festival de “Poesía en el Laurel”. Codirector del Festival de Otoño de Poesía y del Libro de Granada. Director del programa de radio emitido por Internet: La voz a ti debida. Tardes de radio y literatura. Asesor Cultural del Centro UNESCO de Andalucía (España). Presidente de la Filial España del Consejo Americano de Todas las Sangres (Lima, Perú). Presidente de la Asociación Cultural “Granada13artes”. Propuesto para el Premio “María Zambrano” a la mejor contribución a la cultura andaluza. Condecoración con la Orden José María Arguedas en el Grado de Maestro, por el Consejo Nacional e Internacional Todas las Sangres, en Cusco, Perú. Gran Premio Internacional en la decimocuarta edición de la Feria Internacional del Libro de Puerto Rico, por su importante aportación al mundo literario a través de su obra poética. Escritor perteneciente a los intelectuales miembros fundadores de la Maison de la Sagesse de Grenade. Miembro del Consejo de Consulta de la Fundación Club del Libro en Marruecos. Parte de su obra ha sido musicada por cantautores de Argentina, España y Marruecos. Ha impartido conferencias y talleres de poesía en Universidades y Festivales de Panamá, Colombia, Puerto Rico, México, Estados Unidos, Marruecos, Argentina y Uruguay. Como antólogo ha publicado: Desde la otra orilla. Poetas de Rosario, y Antología poética de las dos Granadas (edición en España y Nicaragua).
César Vallejo 
By Paul Portuges

César Vallejo my mystic velvet poet
whoring confessions from an ethereal gutter
you trace with word shadow an immense mime of Western guilt
you still winged lean Christ my beat compadre dance me naked
beyond revolutionary dark oh sublunar genius
skirting emotional hopes of boyish scholar priests

César I am your cowboy of death
a hateshod fugitive driven by headline destruction
where humans are eating the rivers and trees
César I sing them your political songs of pure white narcissus
mouth barbaric yawp and unbury your man-eyes
blazing a trail through pandemonium with your hairy brain

César my dove-tame fugitive teacher I am breathing
your future as you take me like Dante through night flowers
festered in barrio dreams masturbating the absurd
what is the militant secret behind your exiled eyes
can we help uncover the media's lips
glide beyond the wave of a wave-driving wind

César my desolate angel let’s wing past eons
of backbreaking words shoving the no longer take it
into badges of dignified work and border crossing poems
César my Amazon bird we’ll fly fire-blooded
singing thigh deep in the phantasmagoric self
working sounds woven on the sweat loom of la raza’s cry

César buried in sister-brotherhood we'll catch myths
from a net of stars inebriate of night born in our mouths
loving the bluest planet we'll wring her stolen air
and arise with words of freedom arise with prisoners of the soul
in a better world birthing ourselves green and more than we are
not the wretched they have made us but one for all and all for one


Paul Lobo Portugés is a contemporary American poet, film maker, and essayist who teaches film and creative writing in the Department of Film and Media Studies and in the College of Creative Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara.




Indocumentada confesión
Por Mario Escobar

Y uno aprende
a volar sin alas,
a dar el paso preciso...
ante la sed y el hambre
y a descuidar el ego.

Entre largas horas de jornada
uno aprende
a quitarle el polvo a la pasión
a planchar los suspiros
aunque el día tenga cara de noche.

Y también uno aprende
la diferencia
entre un camino
de asfalto
y un camino de desprecios
y que vale más sonreír
aunque más tarde
el llanto te cobre
el doble.

Undocumented Confession 
By Mario Escobar

And you learn
to fly without wings
to take the necessary step
to neglect the ego
amidst thirst and hunger

And you learn
during long working hours
to dust off the passion
even when the day
has a face of night

And you learn
the difference between
an asphalt road
and a road of disdains
and you learn
to smile
to suppress
the salty pearls
of your eyes
   

Mario A. Escobar (January 19, 1978-) is a US-Salvadoran writer and poet born in 1978. Although he considers himself first and foremost a poet, he is known as the founder and editor of Izote Press. Escobar is a faculty member in the Department of Foreign Languages at LA Mission College. Some of Escobar’s works include Al correr de la horas (Editorial Patria Perdida, 1999) Gritos Interiores (Cuzcatlan Press, 2005), La Nueva Tendencia (Cuzcatlan Press, 2005), Paciente 1980 (Orbis Press, 2012). His bilingual poetry appears in Theatre Under My Skin: Contemporary Salvadoran Poetry by Kalina Press.

•             Hardcover: 32 pages
•             Publisher: Lectorum Publications, September 1, 2014
•             Language: Bilingual- English/Spanish
•             ISBN-10: 193303291X
•             ISBN-13:978-1933032917

Olga García Echeverría



It's that time of the year again, March. Mes de La Mujer. The moving forward of the clock. The coming of spring. Here in the Eastside of LA, the month is teeming with corn. Corn women that is.

Every March, for the past 18 years, Mujeres de Maiz (MdM) has honored International Women's Day and Women's History Month con arte, music, film, theater, spoken word, and workshops. And every year the MdM celebration seems to grow, currently sprouting women-centered events throughout March, April, and May. It isn't a one day or one month celebration, you all; it's a season!

In 2010, I had the opportunity to interview the core organizing committee of MdM and blog about the community-based work these women had long been doing. To visit that previous blog: http://labloga.blogspot.com/2010/02/corn-women-of-east-la-13-years-of-art.html

This week, I caught up with one of the co-founders and core members, Felicia Montes. Here's a transcript of our online conversation.

Welcome to La Bloga, Fe. Thank you for taking some time from your busy schedule to join us today. What can you share about this year's MdM events?

This year we have put together the LOS ANGELES WOMYN's CALENDAR Spring 2015.  It highlights the programming in collaboration with Womyn's Organizations and Circles across Los Angeles. To check out the calendar, visit: http://mujeresdemaiz.com/calendar.html

How would you describe the 2015 MdM season?

It is a season of Intercultural, Interdisciplinary, Transformational and Holistic Artivist Happenings to honor Womyn in Mind, Body and Spirit and commemorate International Womyn’s Day, Womyn’s Herstory Month, Spring Equinox and Mexica New Year. It includes everything from artivist concerts and festivals to workshops on indigenous veganism and alterNative birthing. We are really excited about the programming!




Is there a theme for this year?

This year’s theme is Madre/Mother and much of the programming connects with that topic and we are honored to collaborate with local collectives like Ticicalli Yahualli who will be offering monthly workshops for our Spring Season.

How has the event grown or changed in the past 18 years?

The event has grown from just one event on International Womyn’s Day to a whole season and a wombynt! It is now a series of events, workshops, performances, and more connected to womyn’s empowerment and politicization.

In 2010 when I interviewed the core organizing group, you all were working pro bono, sin outside funding? Is this still the case? What are the pros and cons of this?

Yes, we are still all volunteer run, 100% love, ganas and passion for our people, community and artivism. We are run by for and about the community and mainly supported by other womyn of color. We are in the midst of transitioning into a non-profit where we can begin to receive grants, donations etc. We are excited for this new phase because it will allow us to support our own love and passion as well as bringing that important knowledge and experience to hundreds of youth.

Would you like to share anything about the Mujeres de Maiz Zine and how that too has grown?

The Zine started in the very grassroots and punk tradition of alterNative media. Then it was done in black and white copies. Today it is a full color art and poetry publication featuring over 30 artists and writers every year. To check out the upcoming MdM Zine and those dating back to 1997: http://mujeresdemaiz.com/zines.html

What is the most rewarding part of this annual Mujeres de Maiz celebration? Why do you and other organizers keep at it?

Really I think it is about sisterhood, coming together, and the base in artivism, culture and spirituality. It is a total labor of love that we all receive a great deal of energy and spirit from. It is really like a ceremony or challenge—it’s a lot of hard work, sometimes long hours, and physical and mental strength—but the results and the fruits of our labors are immense and we get to see them in our lifetime, sometimes almost immediately when someone comes up to you after a show or workshop and expresses how this has changed their life, or how they are now living more balanced and connected to their culture, etc. This for us is not about an event nor is it about us as a collective. It’s much bigger that that—it’s about our community, our culture, and the 7 generations before and after us.

Gracias, Felicia! For those of you in Los Angeles, here's the Mujeres de Maiz Programming for today, Sunday, March 8th, 2015.

International Womyn's Day March 2015
by AF3IRM and Ovarian Psyco-Cycles
Downtown Los Angeles
11:00 a.m.

www.AF3IRM.org https://www.facebook.com/ovarian.psycos
Facebook Event Page: https://www.facebook.com/events/538207992988172

On Sunday, March 8th, 2015, AF3IRM and Ovarian Psyco-Cycle Brigade mark International Womyn’s Day (also known as International Working Womyn’s Day) by leading a historic march and rally in downtown Los Angeles that will call attention to the diverse issues and oppressions facing womyn today. These two feminist, womyn-of-color organizations have organized this march and invite all to join and speak out against the attacks on womyn and our communities, voice support for womyn’s struggles, and remember the legacies and herstories of womyn who have come before us.

18th Anniversary Live Art Show

Mujeres de Maiz Having a Blast

Michael Sedano




The museum’s space shuttle and giant IMAX screen set high expectations for a Dead Sea Scrolls exhibition equal to the site. Not today. The show offers an endurance test and compromises its scientific pursuit with a political agenda and a shotgun approach to its titular subject.

Out in the courtyard, friendly staff count off 40 heads, herding the group into a second queue. In a few minutes we jostle shoulder-to-shoulder into a darkened antechamber where we stand. The octagonal space features giant screens on six walls projecting travelogue movies of arid landscapes and intent archaeologists. The floor space is empty save for three ancient vessels spotted about. The crowd mills near them but only those in front can inspect the artifact.

Out of the darkness a voice begins a fast-paced narrative written and delivered with theme park enthusiasm. At first I think Dolby soundtrack then I notice a uniformed guide has appeared beside me standing on a banquette. She’s speaking into a headset microphone so I hear her in stereo over the loudspeakers, too. She works effectively from puro memory, delivering a slick script loaded with information. Ticket-buyers shift their weight in the dark, wondering if we’ve fallen into a carny sideshow and these three vessels and this lecture comprise the entire show.

I lose track of the narration in the disorienting churn of bodies. Eventually the woman invites us to “The Timeline” where we will begin our visit to the exhibition, and pulls open a curtain. Ahead, spotlighted artifacts and back illuminated text glow from the wall. Words, maps, shards and vessels, shiny stuff awaits in climate-controlled Lucite cases.

Perhaps the designers imagined entering a Nag Hammadi cave but today we are more like marbles dropped into a narrow-necked amphora.

Forty bodies traipse forward and quickly stop with no place to go. I had recently enjoyed Deep Down Dark and this space mirrors the trapped miners’ ambiente. There’s no going back. Here, to the left where time begins, people pile up four deep. Blocked-out guests at the crowd’s periphery manage to sidle away between a structural column and the people bunching up in the tight bottleneck before stepping toward space that opens onto three massive Greek pithoi.


The wall’s hundreds of tiny artifacts like coins and arrowheads merit lots of text that folks take their time reading. The darkness induces patience waiting for slow readers and tolerance for opportunists who jump in and out of line with a quick glance at an unbroken 2000 year old ceramic mold people used in mass production.

Exhibit staff issued us electronic devices with dim glowing screens that play a narration at numbered places along the lineup. I never figured out its use so I’m not sure what data the smooth male voice intoned.

In this darkened place, the murmuring of reading aloud and sotto voce conversation joins the ubiquitous tinny whisper of those devices making speech noise but not quite audible. I’m put in mind of a Bruce Nauman sculpture where you walk through tightly confined spaces listening to a mind-blowing soundtrack.

The Curators elected quantity over quality, broad context over focus. I was hoping for only jars and scrolls, and Gnosticism's lesser-known ideas and texts.

Making sense of thousands of artifacts stumped the designers. They laid out a zig zag one-way course in the dark, purposely creating bunched-up lines. Along with taking away a visitor's directional control, the design ensures visitors will all experience the exhibition the same way.

The one-way line with thousands of small things to see and read has people moving slowly, often not at all for extended periods. They deserve to take their time to gain as much as they want from the detailed interpretive material so there’s little choice but to go with the flow. Plan on two and a half hours.

The heart of the exhibit, Dead Sea Scrolls, gets the treatment the ancient bible pages deserve. A gleaming oval ring featuring white and transparent plastic domes displays photographic blow-ups of parchment fragments. Next to the images, the parchments themselves rest in recessed coves to stare into.


Interpretive translations glow next to the images. The fragments lie arrayed jigsaw puzzle-style. The interpretive photograph illustrates a single piece in extreme magnification and image enhancement for rich sharp writing. The viewer identifies the outline of the photograph, matches it to the found pieces, then stands marveling at the history represented in what one sees, and the human continuity established by the long-ago scribe and today's tourist.

What you don’t read is anything about Claremont’s Nag Hammadi Library of Dead Sea Scrolls, nor an account of Gnostic scrolls—which have been the focus of earlier exhibitions--nor a hint of today’s Israel and the government-led oppression of Palestinians whose ancestors produced many of these artifacts. A focus on B.C.E. time can justify that.

Instead, the curation attempts to sanitize connections between ancient people and today's by calling everyone from ancient times “Israelites,” individual geographical and ethnic identities go into the curatorial text, a detail for the attentive reader.

The political agenda leads to lost avenues of exploration. For instance, there’s a rare piece of curatorical contrast in a pair of contemporaneous shards. A finely decorated piece of Philistine pottery hangs above a roughewn shard from Judeans with the curator’s candid remark Philistines were more elegant than Judeans.

That rare comparison aside, science takes a backseat to politics and this sanitizing strategy. Curation otherwise does little to connect the visitor to historical continuity, treats pieces in isolation like a thousand Ozymandiases, “Nothing beside remains.”

Dead Sea Scrolls: The Exhibition isn’t going to be a family experience and not for the faint of heart. You know you’re captive the moment the guide draws open that curtain. Reading along, an uneasy feeling grows panel after panel, both in what is written and gaps in what isn’t addressed, in questions that jump out at you. You’re in the middle of an act of propaganda, being massaged by the medium. Trucha.

If you’ve seen one of the earlier Dead Sea Scroll exhibitions that have travelled the nation over the years, skipping the glitz and long lines of this LA experience won’t deprive you. If you've never connected with this important element of Western history, never seen a fragment of these foundation texts, the visit provides immense value.



Floricanto For Fukushima
Francisco X. Alarcón, Betty Sánchez, Sharon Doubiago, Iluminado Maldonado, Malke Singer, Paul Aponte, Iris De Anda, J. A. Mitchell, Jolaoso Pretty Thunder, Odilia Galván Rodríguez

Today’s La Bloga On-line Floricanto compiles work responding to aCall for Submissions from organizer Odilia Galván Rodríguez to Facebook communities Love and Prayers for Fukushima and Poets Responding to SB 1070 Poetry of Resistance. Odilia writes:

Now, four years later, the nuclear crisis continues to threaten and while we are told that the cleanup at Fukushima Daiichi is ongoing, and that we have nothing to fear with regard to the radioactive water that daily spews into the Pacific ocean, everyday we hear of more people becoming ill and dying of cancer. Other odd environmental phenomena are reported such as marine life perishing en masse and mutations. We know something is amiss even though we are told otherwise.

Ten poets share their conviction that the gente of Fukshima are not alone, not in soul, spirit, expression.

"Fukushima – Tanka" by Francisco X. Alarcón
"Secuelas" por Betty Sánchez
"Islands Hidden in the Blood" by Sharon Doubiago
"The leaf" By Iluminado Maldonado
“For Fukushima” by Malke Singer
"Wind Chimes - Tanka / Carrillones de viento" by Paul Aponte
“Survive Soil Repeat” By Iris De Anda
"Dystopian Pollution" By J. A. Mitchell
"Fervent Aperture" By Jolaoso Pretty Thunder
"Seven Morning Senryū" By Odilia Galván Rodríguez


FUKUSHIMA – TANKA
By Francisco X. Alarcón

cherry blossoming
at the edge of this nuclear
blasting volcano —
may each falling petal
soothe, heal Mother Earth!

cerezo en flor
al filo de este volcán
nuclear en erupción —
¡que cada pétalo al caer
cure a la Madre Tierra!

Francisco X. Alarcón, award-winning Chicano poet and educator, was born in Los Angeles, grew up in Guadalajara, Mexico, and now lives in Davis, where he teaches at the University of California. He is the author of thirteen volumes of poetry, including Canto hondo / Deep Song (University of Arizona Press 2015), Borderless Butterflies / Mariposas sin fronteras (Poetic Matrix Press 2014), Ce • Uno • One: Poems for the New Sun (Swan Scythe Press, 2010), From the Other Side of Night / Del otro lado de la noche: New and Selected Poems (University of Arizona Press, 2002), Sonnets to Madness and Other Misfortunes (Creative Arts Book Company, 2001), and Snake Poems: An Aztec Invocation (Chronicle Books, 1992). He is the author of six acclaimed books of bilingual poems for children on the seasons of the year originally published by Children’s Book Press, now an imprint of Lee & Low Books. He is the creator of the Facebook page “Poets Responding to SB 1070.”



SECUELAS
Por Betty Sánchez

El gruñido de la tierra
Y el estallido furioso del océano
Arrastraron en su furia
Casas, cultivos y vidas

El error humano
Provocó un desastre
De proporciones
Mas catastróficas
Que el maremoto

A causa del cataclismo nuclear
De Fukushima
Los niños juegan entre muros
Y desarrollan cáncer de tiroides

La palabra radiación
Es su realidad
Se traduce en treinta minutos
De esparcimiento exterior

Tras la mascarilla que cubre
Su pequeño rostro
Se adivina el miedo
Al enemigo etéreo

Tal monstruo intangible
Se ha infiltrado en sus poros
Traspasa las paredes de su hogar
Y los aniquila lentamente

Los elementos naturales
Esparcen dosis letales
De yodo estroncio y celsio
A frutos y animales
Y por extensión
A los que los consumen

Las partículas radioactivas
Que aún circulan
En agua, aire y suelo
Cual garras invisibles
Atrapan sin piedad
Lo que cruza en su paso

Los cerezos están de duelo
Sus ramas grisáceas
Albergan mariposas
mutantes de alas rotas

El mar resguarda
En sus entrañas
Peces moribundos



Madre, abuela, maestra, poeta…en ese orden. Residente del condado de Sutter; trabajo como Directora de Centro del programa Migrante de Head Start.
Soy miembro activo del grupo literario, Escritores del Nuevo Sol desde  Marzo del 2003.  He colaborado en eventos poéticos tales como el Festival Flor y Canto, Colectivo Verso Activo, Noche de Voces Xicanas, Honrando a Facundo Cabral, y Poesía Revuelta; así  como en lecturas organizadas por los Escritores del Nuevo Sol. Ha sido un privilegio contribuir en la página Poetas Respondiendo al SB 1070, Zine 10  y 13 de Mujeres de Maíz y en La Bloga.





Islands Hidden in the Blood
By Sharon Doubiago

“What transpired off the coast of Honshu Island, Japan on March 11, 2011, has forever altered the planet and irremediably affected the global environment. …A magnitude 9.0 earthquake and tsunami killed at least 15,000 people and caused three nuclear reactor melt downs.” (October 18, 2012, San Francisco Chronicle)

“There is no wall left to this village.
Bones white with a thousand frosts
High heaps covered with trees and grass;
Who brought this to pass?
…..

Barbarous kings
A gracious spring, turned to blood-ravenous autumn.
A turmoil of wars - men, spread over the middle kingdom,
Three hundred and sixty thousand,
And sorrow, sorrow like rain.
Sorrow to go, and sorrow, sorrow returning.”
Lament of the Frontier Guard, Li Po,(b 701) tr Ezra Pound

“Forever and forever and forever.” The River-Merchant’s Wife, A Letter, Li Po, tr Ezra Pound

                    1. The World
In January when you departed I hung my first map, The World
over my bed and followed you, day by night, writing the dates
on the Pacific Ocean, latitudes and longitudes. I lay beneath
the USS Hornet, the planes on her deck, you, Aviation Electrician Mate
enabling them to fly. From phytoplankton
to whales, from seabirds and islands, the Tropic of Cancer I found myself
with unseen creatures in the deep dark
learning the direction of Earth’s Rotation. Tide
means time. You crossed the International Dateline
and Sunday became Monday. I hid your yellow truck
in the boulders on our hill for your return. Vehicle
to your soul, eternity in the yellow metal, I counted off
each day.

Valentine’s Day, my father’s 41st birthday, orchids arrived from Hawaii
corsage so pungent they were a miracle
that far into San Diego’s dry mountains, the sweet perfume filling the whole house
till it drove my father crazy and me with the belief you loved me.
You wrote me every numbered day from your bunk in the cramped steel hole
on your seven month tour, carrying me
into the dance your fingers made
the shape of each turquoise-inked letter, the long loops
of your ys, the fat rounds of your Is like flowers painted on the airmail sheets. Dear
Song of Songs, Dear Rose of Sharon, My Lily of the Valley.
I copied your signature, hours, the slanted backwards joy
on the envelope, unconscious prayer for my future name. I swam
into the rhythm of your whole body
making the characters for Japan
“The Land of the Rising Sun.” I fell in love
with Earth, the land of Nippon, the largest body
of water, coastlines more than all the others put together.
The Pacific, like you so large. I so large
in love

In July when the Hornet came in I met you
wearing the red dress I designed and made for you.
We climbed back up the mountain and you told me
of your prostitutes in Yokohoma. I didn’t understand
the Manhattan Project, the Atom Bomb and those girls
just that you were from Manhattan, island
of many hills, you said. Mannahatta
before white man leveled them, but the pain
was unlike any I’d known. I stood in the front window
watched you down below dig with my father
the hole for the swimming pool. “Forced
like a slave!” you hissed, “your Dad’s
like my officers,” until I vowed my love to you
as I’d vowed it to him, the stupid authoritarian anger
dismissible, just lowly misunderstanding. When at last we married
my mother threw out your letters
filed by date in the corsage box which never lost its perfume
in the cupboard at the foot of my bed. My mother
censurer of my story, afraid even then of writing.
And you, my bridegroom, my husband, my
Lord, were relieved.

                    2. March 11, 2011
In San Francisco my current love and I hurried down to the beach
to watch the tsunami come in. The police
blocked our ways. The newspaper map
showed the radioactive waves
coming over. As Fukushima goes
so goes Japan, the tide
going out and you going out
in Manhattan Beach.

A friend drove by 610 Rosecrans. Your yellow truck
ticketed, not moved for Friday’s street cleaning. The months you struggled
with MB’s City Hall to get your handicap parking permit.
He rushed in, called the paramedics. When I was fifteen on this day
your ship docked in Japan.

                    3.”A gracious spring, turned to blood-ravenous autumn”
In the journey to your bedside I sleep in the rest stop
in Gaviota Pass, fall asleep
reading the Creation Myth
about land that erupts, twists and turns so abruptly
it turns into Southern California. Bigger than life my first love Ramon
comes over the high granite cliff
and down on me, Love
even before you, singing Kumeyaay, the songs
of his ancient tongue. Rolling ys and us and ss. Sensuous
love of this place. Oh, sensuous boy
I first loved before we could speak, the sweet perfume

lingers as the tide comes in
goes out, all these years, eons, the short time
of our journey, creation and love
that is life, time and seawater, the creatures
writing in the dark

In the morning when I arrive you lie white, tied down.
As with Ramon long dead of our Agent Orange, they are carving you up
for your insurance. At fifteen I pledged myself to you
for life. Now our children, islands
in our blood, your DNA and mine, the two of us
forever as one in them.

                   4. Karma
And when I fly back in October the last time
to stand by you the news breaks
in LAX, Khadafy’s body
like yours still alive passed from a culvert, a baby’s face
in shock, disbelief, above our heads. Muammar Khadafy moves through all of us
waiting in the afternoon airport bar, resignation
and TV beyond shock, his three year old daughter, Hanna
we bombed in his tent, and two thousand other Libyans. In May we assassinated
Osama bin Laden. Before that we hung Saddam Hussein.
Now radioactive water crashes on our shores, the Pacific Ocean
dying. But as always I know my lovers

to forgive, my enemies to love, my crucified Savior,
my father, my country, my husband. Who

brought this to pass? I see you as I first saw you
that January you were nineteen. Now I see them rape you, barbarous kings
by medical rod, by multiple rifle butts,
then carry you out of the drain hole
to the imperial cameras, over and over
their insurance to the World. You look
so innocent, our three year old Hanna
pulled apart, my love for better or worse
no matter what, I vowed forever

though sorrow. Sorrow like rain
sorrow to go, and sorrow, sorrow returning

At fifteen I desired my dust
to be mingled with yours forever.
You dragged your feet when you went out

to the land of Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Yokohama,
The Pacific Ring of Fire. As Japan goes
so goes the planet. Now there is no wall left to the village
only high heaps of white bones.

But if you are coming down through the narrows of Gaviota
in your yellow truck
even if leveled
I will come out to meet you
                                             

____________________________________________
1 “Off shore, by islands hidden in the blood
jewels and miracles, I….
tell you…” Charles Olson

2 Sacred Sites, The Secret History of Southern California, Susan Suntree, University of Nebraska, 2010.

3 I sit here in Valentine, the storm goes on

grey relentless
the white capped rollers

churn

Two people, silhouettes out there
at the long tidal line and a gull
Now there’s only one
and a flock
(Feb 14, 2011, Ocean Beach, SF—inscribed in Sacred Sites)





The leaf
By Iluminado Maldonado

The night of thundering heart and sleeplessness
Takes me back to where the leaf began
Crunching on pavement
Anticipating a gathering ahead of me
With the drums roaring amid a patch of sanity
Encircled by brick stone and tar
The leaf intrudes
Making its presence known
Dominating in the face of ignorance
The will to live in such an inhospitable place
Speaks of her strength
She knows she will inherit what's left



Iluminado was born in Arecibo Puerto Rico in 1948, was raised in Brooklyn New York. A Vietnam Era vet, he studied Journalism at Long Island University. He's a multi talented artist with a passion for music, primarily folkloric and jazz. He hosted an Afro Cuban Rumba/Jam Session in Berkeley for 15 years which continues today. Iluminado is a priest in the Ifa/Orisa tradition. Before suffering a stroke that took his vision in 2011 he was an avid photographer and cyclist, he still trains today and presently lives on the Russian River in Northern California with his family and two dogs Rosie And Mina.





For Fukushima
By Malke Singer

this spring blossoms early
when pink flowers drop away
to reveal tiny fruits
Fukishima you will be on my mind
My prayers for your people
and our tiny shared planet
are only small spring blossoms
sheltering the tiny fruit
promises of a new year






Wind Chimes - Tanka / Carrillones De Viento
By Paul Aponte

Fukushima love
Shattered by nature, by man
Wet, Wailing Walls cry
Erasure of human temples
The wind-chime friends that once loved

Amor de Fukushima
Desgarrado por la naturaleza, por el hombre
Mojados, Muros de Lamentación lloran
Erradicación de templos humanos
Amigos que amaron, ahora carrillones de viento


Paul Aponte is a Chicano poet from Sacramento, California.   Paul, is a prolific writer and member of "Escritores del Nuevo Sol", and can be seen reading at various venues throughout the SF Bay and Sacramento areas. He is the author of the book of poetry "Expression Obsession" , and has been published in "La Bloga" and in other publications. Many of his poems can be found on his Facebook "Notes" under the pseudonym Wolf Fox.




Survive Soil Repeat
By Iris De Anda

the days are long gone
for cutting daises
putting one in your hair
as you strut down the street
with nowhere to be but the coffee shop
reading a book or eating day old pizza
now you must turn the dirt in your garden
plant deep dreamseeds
ideally, the planting would have happened long ago
so now you just water the soil
talk to the leaves
repeat
everyday after sundown
you see now it's about
survival
finding nourishing people and places
drink tea instead of tequila
travel more worry less
repeat
travel inward listen more
survival
the things one should do to make it through
this labyrinth of city blues
go, go, go
where to?
stay put
tampoco
it's a dance
this putting one foot
in front of the other
it's okay to dance alone
do things alone
adventure in your own backyard
if there is no garden begin
pick out the land
stand barefoot on its wet mud
imprint love
this will feed you
in the years ahead






Dystopian Pollution
By J. A. Mitchell

Don’t step in
the burst bubbles of
engineered memes
acid rain dots
chemical tears
collectively  shed
by mankind

Take
this pill, it will
make you
smaller
calmer
younger
whatever you
desire to be

Buy
high priced
hi tech  gadgets
magic pixel screens
digital cameras that
capture and flip
images

Ignore
Dropped
drone bombs
leaving in their wake
homeless
maimed populations and
luminous yellow
cake crumbs

Sounds from
underground
cyclotronic machines
are strange screams
deep inside the planet
that enter our dreams

Scientists
have yet to admit the
cumulative effects of
satellite rotation or
wireless communication on
human cognition
“Let it rain information”
say they, squealing with glee



J.A. Mitchell was born in the urban outposts of Hoodoo culture in a suburb of New York City in the early 1950’s.  Writing as Mama Whodun, she pens the Neohoodoo blog. She has been published in Scarlet Imprint’s Mandragora  poetry anthology, in Kalyani Women’s magazine premier  issue and is included in Seeds of Resistance "E4rth is my Flesh" Flor y Canto 2015 Zine.
https://www.tumblr.com/blog/realdarkart




Fervent Aperture
By Jolaoso Pretty Thunder

This
Where the Redtail and Kite feed well
And the Owl’s* cough is intricate and varied
We step around it quietly       still seeing
Still hearing the field mice scurry within       ghost.

Grasses burn ripe in this moon
Locusts are on the grain

Antlers lock somewhere in the night close by
Causing a great ruckus on the earth
The stronger of the two pushed the other
Across the scrub brush to the base of Fist Mountain
                        Which took a long time     seemingly

We grow still inside; quiet listening and find peace in the disorder-
The rattling and grind the push and shove. They leave their tracks for those
Who honor such battles

A small stone shows itself there in the dusty furrows, inside it a bear, thunder
We pause, listening again; perhaps we keep it or let it go to another
Who may need it more

We ourselves are only the smallest green in malachite
Our faces fading on the bark and rocks of deep orange lichen
Marrow of sustenance, cool pine needles beneath bare feet
See us in the feather, strike of the flame
       The pine seed winged      strange butterflies

Cupped hands
We are river
Reaching salt
Buffalo against
Alien wire- Goodbye.

We are the Black Salmon sucking    we defy
Often dying close to each other

Pit our breastbone to the moons
Lightning has struck water and rock; The Great Wind has swept it
                                                                                                             We are ready


Iya Jolaoso Pretty Thunder is an initiated Apetebi, Osainista and Orisa priestess of Oya. She lives in the woods of Northern California with her family and two dogs Rosie Farstar and Ilumina Holy Dog. She is a practitioner and student of herbal medicine (Western, Vedic, TCM and Lukumi medicine). She is also an ordained minister of the First Nations Church and the founder of Straight Arrow Women's Lodge. She is a well-traveled poet who loves southern rock, porch swings, pickup trucks, cooking, campfires, lightning, steak, long drives, hot cups of coffee, gathering and making medicine and singing with friends and family.






Seven Morning Senryū
By Odilia Galván Rodríguez

morning aftermath
almost complete clean slate
broken and split bones

building shambles
foundations guts protrude
metal seaweed

called paranoid
re: radiation worries
for knowing what they feel

at night street’s silent
the world walks on cat’s paws
no one wants to wake
to the nightmare of meltdowns
to what is no longer

radiation haze
blooms new butterflies
steadfast in their survival

measuring death
the collateral damage
of nuclear power

we dream Japan
waking free of all poison
a blossom unfurled



Odilia Galván Rodríguez, eco-poet, writer, editor, and activist, is the author of four volumes of poetry, her latest, Red Earth Calling: ~cantos for the 21st Century~. She’s worked as an editor for Matrix Women's News Magazine, Community Mural's Magazine, and most recently at Tricontinental Magazine in Havana, Cuba. She facilitates creative writing workshops nationally and is a moderator of Poets Responding to SB 1070, and Love and Prayers for Fukushima, both Facebook pages dedicated to bringing attention to social justice issues that affect the lives and wellbeing of many people. Her poetry has appeared in numerous anthologies, and literary journals on and offline.

Más que acumular imprecisiones en un anecdotario, procuro apuntar a la desproporción entre lo poco que se sabe de la vida y obra de Burgos, y el lugar fijo que ocupa en el imaginario popular puertorriqueño. Las conversaciones con Consuelo sin duda desestabilizarán un poco esas coordenadas invariables que marcan todo lo tocante a la poeta. -Lena Burgos-Lafuente
"Las cartas de Julia de Burgos a su Hermana Consuelo abren surcos, siembran vacios que invitan al lector a agregar, especular e investigar aquello que sin decirse se dice".





«Pronto a cumplir mis primeros 82 años asumo que, definitivamente, estos primeros años de mi infancia han sido o son, los más difíciles y que, por lo tanto, es muy posible que nada de estas malas memorias sea incierto.»

Parafraseando a Jean Cocteau, soy un mentiroso que siempre dice la verdad.

Quizá toda mi vida sea una mentira. En 1992 Leo Carrob Editor editó la primera versión de Los pájaros perdidos que hoy un cuarto de siglo después, intento actualizar mis pasos por sueños y realidades, asumiendo que no soy el mismo que una mañana a las 5:10 AM en La Antigua Guatemala mientras se preparaba un jugo de naranja, buscaba las medialunas de su vida.

Tengo 81 años, pronto 82 (espero) y confieso que estos pájaros que nacieron, crecieron y habitaron en mis cuadernos nunca más volverán, seguramente porque jamás tuve más que esos días que se me escaparon velozmente.

Soy y me repito una y otra vez, por partes iguales, un cobarde y un soñador de tiempo completo.

También un cascarrabias, no mal tipo, a medio camino entre un olvido y otro olvido.

Nadie puede liberarme de mis recuerdos; soy presa de mi memoria.

Jorge Carrol. Nació como Jorge Carro L., en Buenos Aires en 1933. Es autor de una prolífica obra literaria que incluye poesía, ensayo y narrativa. En narrativa ha publicado: Cuaderno sin fronteras. RefleXiones sobre la soledad, las ausencias y otras intoxicaciones (F&G Editores, Guatemala, 2012); Tenía razón Vicente Huidobro: hay que plantar miradas como árboles o cuando tenía todas las respuestas me cambiaron las preguntas (Historiabierta, Artemis Edinter, Guatemala, 2002); Bernal (Ayesha Libros, Buenos Aires, 2004; Artemis Edinter, Guatemala, 2006; Google Books 2008); El gliptodonte (Artemis Edinter, Guatemala, 2007; Google Books, 2008).

Guest Post by Reyna Grande

Reyna Grande and Cruz Bautista Salvador

Reyna Grande and Blanca Luz Nava Velez

Olga García Echeverría



It's that time of the year again, March. Mes de La Mujer. The moving forward of the clock. The coming of spring. Here in the Eastside of LA, the month is teeming with corn. Corn women that is.

Every March, for the past 18 years, Mujeres de Maiz (MdM) has honored International Women's Day and Women's History Month con arte, music, film, theater, spoken word, and workshops. And every year the MdM celebration seems to grow, currently sprouting women-centered events throughout March, April, and May. It isn't a one day or one month celebration, you all; it's a season!

In 2010, I had the opportunity to interview the core organizing committee of MdM and blog about the community-based work these women had long been doing. To visit that previous blog: http://labloga.blogspot.com/2010/02/corn-women-of-east-la-13-years-of-art.html

This week, I caught up with one of the co-founders and core members, Felicia Montes. Here's a transcript of our online conversation.

Welcome to La Bloga, Fe. Thank you for taking some time from your busy schedule to join us today. What can you share about this year's MdM events?

This year we have put together the LOS ANGELES WOMYN's CALENDAR Spring 2015.  It highlights the programming in collaboration with Womyn's Organizations and Circles across Los Angeles. To check out the calendar, visit: http://mujeresdemaiz.com/calendar.html

How would you describe the 2015 MdM season?

It is a season of Intercultural, Interdisciplinary, Transformational and Holistic Artivist Happenings to honor Womyn in Mind, Body and Spirit and commemorate International Womyn’s Day, Womyn’s Herstory Month, Spring Equinox and Mexica New Year. It includes everything from artivist concerts and festivals to workshops on indigenous veganism and alterNative birthing. We are really excited about the programming!




Is there a theme for this year?

This year’s theme is Madre/Mother and much of the programming connects with that topic and we are honored to collaborate with local collectives like Ticicalli Yahualli who will be offering monthly workshops for our Spring Season.

How has the event grown or changed in the past 18 years?

The event has grown from just one event on International Womyn’s Day to a whole season and a wombynt! It is now a series of events, workshops, performances, and more connected to womyn’s empowerment and politicization.

In 2010 when I interviewed the core organizing group, you all were working pro bono, sin outside funding? Is this still the case? What are the pros and cons of this?

Yes, we are still all volunteer run, 100% love, ganas and passion for our people, community and artivism. We are run by for and about the community and mainly supported by other womyn of color. We are in the midst of transitioning into a non-profit where we can begin to receive grants, donations etc. We are excited for this new phase because it will allow us to support our own love and passion as well as bringing that important knowledge and experience to hundreds of youth.

Would you like to share anything about the Mujeres de Maiz Zine and how that too has grown?

The Zine started in the very grassroots and punk tradition of alterNative media. Then it was done in black and white copies. Today it is a full color art and poetry publication featuring over 30 artists and writers every year. To check out the upcoming MdM Zine and those dating back to 1997: http://mujeresdemaiz.com/zines.html

What is the most rewarding part of this annual Mujeres de Maiz celebration? Why do you and other organizers keep at it?

Really I think it is about sisterhood, coming together, and the base in artivism, culture and spirituality. It is a total labor of love that we all receive a great deal of energy and spirit from. It is really like a ceremony or challenge—it’s a lot of hard work, sometimes long hours, and physical and mental strength—but the results and the fruits of our labors are immense and we get to see them in our lifetime, sometimes almost immediately when someone comes up to you after a show or workshop and expresses how this has changed their life, or how they are now living more balanced and connected to their culture, etc. This for us is not about an event nor is it about us as a collective. It’s much bigger that that—it’s about our community, our culture, and the 7 generations before and after us.

Gracias, Felicia! For those of you in Los Angeles, here's the Mujeres de Maiz Programming for today, Sunday, March 8th, 2015.

International Womyn's Day March 2015
by AF3IRM and Ovarian Psyco-Cycles
Downtown Los Angeles
11:00 a.m.

www.AF3IRM.org https://www.facebook.com/ovarian.psycos
Facebook Event Page: https://www.facebook.com/events/538207992988172

On Sunday, March 8th, 2015, AF3IRM and Ovarian Psyco-Cycle Brigade mark International Womyn’s Day (also known as International Working Womyn’s Day) by leading a historic march and rally in downtown Los Angeles that will call attention to the diverse issues and oppressions facing womyn today. These two feminist, womyn-of-color organizations have organized this march and invite all to join and speak out against the attacks on womyn and our communities, voice support for womyn’s struggles, and remember the legacies and herstories of womyn who have come before us.

18th Anniversary Live Art Show

Mujeres de Maiz Having a Blast

Michael Sedano




The museum’s space shuttle and giant IMAX screen set high expectations for a Dead Sea Scrolls exhibition equal to the site. Not today. The show offers an endurance test and compromises its scientific pursuit with a political agenda and a shotgun approach to its titular subject.

Out in the courtyard, friendly staff count off 40 heads, herding the group into a second queue. In a few minutes we jostle shoulder-to-shoulder into a darkened antechamber where we stand. The octagonal space features giant screens on six walls projecting travelogue movies of arid landscapes and intent archaeologists. The floor space is empty save for three ancient vessels spotted about. The crowd mills near them but only those in front can inspect the artifact.

Out of the darkness a voice begins a fast-paced narrative written and delivered with theme park enthusiasm. At first I think Dolby soundtrack then I notice a uniformed guide has appeared beside me standing on a banquette. She’s speaking into a headset microphone so I hear her in stereo over the loudspeakers, too. She works effectively from puro memory, delivering a slick script loaded with information. Ticket-buyers shift their weight in the dark, wondering if we’ve fallen into a carny sideshow and these three vessels and this lecture comprise the entire show.

I lose track of the narration in the disorienting churn of bodies. Eventually the woman invites us to “The Timeline” where we will begin our visit to the exhibition, and pulls open a curtain. Ahead, spotlighted artifacts and back illuminated text glow from the wall. Words, maps, shards and vessels, shiny stuff awaits in climate-controlled Lucite cases.

Perhaps the designers imagined entering a Nag Hammadi cave but today we are more like marbles dropped into a narrow-necked amphora.

Forty bodies traipse forward and quickly stop with no place to go. I had recently enjoyed Deep Down Dark and this space mirrors the trapped miners’ ambiente. There’s no going back. Here, to the left where time begins, people pile up four deep. Blocked-out guests at the crowd’s periphery manage to sidle away between a structural column and the people bunching up in the tight bottleneck before stepping toward space that opens onto three massive Greek pithoi.


The wall’s hundreds of tiny artifacts like coins and arrowheads merit lots of text that folks take their time reading. The darkness induces patience waiting for slow readers and tolerance for opportunists who jump in and out of line with a quick glance at an unbroken 2000 year old ceramic mold people used in mass production.

Exhibit staff issued us electronic devices with dim glowing screens that play a narration at numbered places along the lineup. I never figured out its use so I’m not sure what data the smooth male voice intoned.

In this darkened place, the murmuring of reading aloud and sotto voce conversation joins the ubiquitous tinny whisper of those devices making speech noise but not quite audible. I’m put in mind of a Bruce Nauman sculpture where you walk through tightly confined spaces listening to a mind-blowing soundtrack.

The Curators elected quantity over quality, broad context over focus. I was hoping for only jars and scrolls, and Gnosticism's lesser-known ideas and texts.

Making sense of thousands of artifacts stumped the designers. They laid out a zig zag one-way course in the dark, purposely creating bunched-up lines. Along with taking away a visitor's directional control, the design ensures visitors will all experience the exhibition the same way.

The one-way line with thousands of small things to see and read has people moving slowly, often not at all for extended periods. They deserve to take their time to gain as much as they want from the detailed interpretive material so there’s little choice but to go with the flow. Plan on two and a half hours.

The heart of the exhibit, Dead Sea Scrolls, gets the treatment the ancient bible pages deserve. A gleaming oval ring featuring white and transparent plastic domes displays photographic blow-ups of parchment fragments. Next to the images, the parchments themselves rest in recessed coves to stare into.


Interpretive translations glow next to the images. The fragments lie arrayed jigsaw puzzle-style. The interpretive photograph illustrates a single piece in extreme magnification and image enhancement for rich sharp writing. The viewer identifies the outline of the photograph, matches it to the found pieces, then stands marveling at the history represented in what one sees, and the human continuity established by the long-ago scribe and today's tourist.

What you don’t read is anything about Claremont’s Nag Hammadi Library of Dead Sea Scrolls, nor an account of Gnostic scrolls—which have been the focus of earlier exhibitions--nor a hint of today’s Israel and the government-led oppression of Palestinians whose ancestors produced many of these artifacts. A focus on B.C.E. time can justify that.

Instead, the curation attempts to sanitize connections between ancient people and today's by calling everyone from ancient times “Israelites,” individual geographical and ethnic identities go into the curatorial text, a detail for the attentive reader.

The political agenda leads to lost avenues of exploration. For instance, there’s a rare piece of curatorical contrast in a pair of contemporaneous shards. A finely decorated piece of Philistine pottery hangs above a roughewn shard from Judeans with the curator’s candid remark Philistines were more elegant than Judeans.

That rare comparison aside, science takes a backseat to politics and this sanitizing strategy. Curation otherwise does little to connect the visitor to historical continuity, treats pieces in isolation like a thousand Ozymandiases, “Nothing beside remains.”

Dead Sea Scrolls: The Exhibition isn’t going to be a family experience and not for the faint of heart. You know you’re captive the moment the guide draws open that curtain. Reading along, an uneasy feeling grows panel after panel, both in what is written and gaps in what isn’t addressed, in questions that jump out at you. You’re in the middle of an act of propaganda, being massaged by the medium. Trucha.

If you’ve seen one of the earlier Dead Sea Scroll exhibitions that have travelled the nation over the years, skipping the glitz and long lines of this LA experience won’t deprive you. If you've never connected with this important element of Western history, never seen a fragment of these foundation texts, the visit provides immense value.



Floricanto For Fukushima
Francisco X. Alarcón, Betty Sánchez, Sharon Doubiago, Iluminado Maldonado, Malke Singer, Paul Aponte, Iris De Anda, J. A. Mitchell, Jolaoso Pretty Thunder, Odilia Galván Rodríguez

Today’s La Bloga On-line Floricanto compiles work responding to aCall for Submissions from organizer Odilia Galván Rodríguez to Facebook communities Love and Prayers for Fukushima and Poets Responding to SB 1070 Poetry of Resistance. Odilia writes:

Now, four years later, the nuclear crisis continues to threaten and while we are told that the cleanup at Fukushima Daiichi is ongoing, and that we have nothing to fear with regard to the radioactive water that daily spews into the Pacific ocean, everyday we hear of more people becoming ill and dying of cancer. Other odd environmental phenomena are reported such as marine life perishing en masse and mutations. We know something is amiss even though we are told otherwise.

Ten poets share their conviction that the gente of Fukshima are not alone, not in soul, spirit, expression.

"Fukushima – Tanka" by Francisco X. Alarcón
"Secuelas" por Betty Sánchez
"Islands Hidden in the Blood" by Sharon Doubiago
"The leaf" By Iluminado Maldonado
“For Fukushima” by Malke Singer
"Wind Chimes - Tanka / Carrillones de viento" by Paul Aponte
“Survive Soil Repeat” By Iris De Anda
"Dystopian Pollution" By J. A. Mitchell
"Fervent Aperture" By Jolaoso Pretty Thunder
"Seven Morning Senryū" By Odilia Galván Rodríguez


FUKUSHIMA – TANKA
By Francisco X. Alarcón

cherry blossoming
at the edge of this nuclear
blasting volcano —
may each falling petal
soothe, heal Mother Earth!

cerezo en flor
al filo de este volcán
nuclear en erupción —
¡que cada pétalo al caer
cure a la Madre Tierra!

Francisco X. Alarcón, award-winning Chicano poet and educator, was born in Los Angeles, grew up in Guadalajara, Mexico, and now lives in Davis, where he teaches at the University of California. He is the author of thirteen volumes of poetry, including Canto hondo / Deep Song (University of Arizona Press 2015), Borderless Butterflies / Mariposas sin fronteras (Poetic Matrix Press 2014), Ce • Uno • One: Poems for the New Sun (Swan Scythe Press, 2010), From the Other Side of Night / Del otro lado de la noche: New and Selected Poems (University of Arizona Press, 2002), Sonnets to Madness and Other Misfortunes (Creative Arts Book Company, 2001), and Snake Poems: An Aztec Invocation (Chronicle Books, 1992). He is the author of six acclaimed books of bilingual poems for children on the seasons of the year originally published by Children’s Book Press, now an imprint of Lee & Low Books. He is the creator of the Facebook page “Poets Responding to SB 1070.”



SECUELAS
Por Betty Sánchez

El gruñido de la tierra
Y el estallido furioso del océano
Arrastraron en su furia
Casas, cultivos y vidas

El error humano
Provocó un desastre
De proporciones
Mas catastróficas
Que el maremoto

A causa del cataclismo nuclear
De Fukushima
Los niños juegan entre muros
Y desarrollan cáncer de tiroides

La palabra radiación
Es su realidad
Se traduce en treinta minutos
De esparcimiento exterior

Tras la mascarilla que cubre
Su pequeño rostro
Se adivina el miedo
Al enemigo etéreo

Tal monstruo intangible
Se ha infiltrado en sus poros
Traspasa las paredes de su hogar
Y los aniquila lentamente

Los elementos naturales
Esparcen dosis letales
De yodo estroncio y celsio
A frutos y animales
Y por extensión
A los que los consumen

Las partículas radioactivas
Que aún circulan
En agua, aire y suelo
Cual garras invisibles
Atrapan sin piedad
Lo que cruza en su paso

Los cerezos están de duelo
Sus ramas grisáceas
Albergan mariposas
mutantes de alas rotas

El mar resguarda
En sus entrañas
Peces moribundos



Madre, abuela, maestra, poeta…en ese orden. Residente del condado de Sutter; trabajo como Directora de Centro del programa Migrante de Head Start.
Soy miembro activo del grupo literario, Escritores del Nuevo Sol desde  Marzo del 2003.  He colaborado en eventos poéticos tales como el Festival Flor y Canto, Colectivo Verso Activo, Noche de Voces Xicanas, Honrando a Facundo Cabral, y Poesía Revuelta; así  como en lecturas organizadas por los Escritores del Nuevo Sol. Ha sido un privilegio contribuir en la página Poetas Respondiendo al SB 1070, Zine 10  y 13 de Mujeres de Maíz y en La Bloga.





Islands Hidden in the Blood
By Sharon Doubiago

“What transpired off the coast of Honshu Island, Japan on March 11, 2011, has forever altered the planet and irremediably affected the global environment. …A magnitude 9.0 earthquake and tsunami killed at least 15,000 people and caused three nuclear reactor melt downs.” (October 18, 2012, San Francisco Chronicle)

“There is no wall left to this village.
Bones white with a thousand frosts
High heaps covered with trees and grass;
Who brought this to pass?
…..

Barbarous kings
A gracious spring, turned to blood-ravenous autumn.
A turmoil of wars - men, spread over the middle kingdom,
Three hundred and sixty thousand,
And sorrow, sorrow like rain.
Sorrow to go, and sorrow, sorrow returning.”
Lament of the Frontier Guard, Li Po,(b 701) tr Ezra Pound

“Forever and forever and forever.” The River-Merchant’s Wife, A Letter, Li Po, tr Ezra Pound

                    1. The World
In January when you departed I hung my first map, The World
over my bed and followed you, day by night, writing the dates
on the Pacific Ocean, latitudes and longitudes. I lay beneath
the USS Hornet, the planes on her deck, you, Aviation Electrician Mate
enabling them to fly. From phytoplankton
to whales, from seabirds and islands, the Tropic of Cancer I found myself
with unseen creatures in the deep dark
learning the direction of Earth’s Rotation. Tide
means time. You crossed the International Dateline
and Sunday became Monday. I hid your yellow truck
in the boulders on our hill for your return. Vehicle
to your soul, eternity in the yellow metal, I counted off
each day.

Valentine’s Day, my father’s 41st birthday, orchids arrived from Hawaii
corsage so pungent they were a miracle
that far into San Diego’s dry mountains, the sweet perfume filling the whole house
till it drove my father crazy and me with the belief you loved me.
You wrote me every numbered day from your bunk in the cramped steel hole
on your seven month tour, carrying me
into the dance your fingers made
the shape of each turquoise-inked letter, the long loops
of your ys, the fat rounds of your Is like flowers painted on the airmail sheets. Dear
Song of Songs, Dear Rose of Sharon, My Lily of the Valley.
I copied your signature, hours, the slanted backwards joy
on the envelope, unconscious prayer for my future name. I swam
into the rhythm of your whole body
making the characters for Japan
“The Land of the Rising Sun.” I fell in love
with Earth, the land of Nippon, the largest body
of water, coastlines more than all the others put together.
The Pacific, like you so large. I so large
in love

In July when the Hornet came in I met you
wearing the red dress I designed and made for you.
We climbed back up the mountain and you told me
of your prostitutes in Yokohoma. I didn’t understand
the Manhattan Project, the Atom Bomb and those girls
just that you were from Manhattan, island
of many hills, you said. Mannahatta
before white man leveled them, but the pain
was unlike any I’d known. I stood in the front window
watched you down below dig with my father
the hole for the swimming pool. “Forced
like a slave!” you hissed, “your Dad’s
like my officers,” until I vowed my love to you
as I’d vowed it to him, the stupid authoritarian anger
dismissible, just lowly misunderstanding. When at last we married
my mother threw out your letters
filed by date in the corsage box which never lost its perfume
in the cupboard at the foot of my bed. My mother
censurer of my story, afraid even then of writing.
And you, my bridegroom, my husband, my
Lord, were relieved.

                    2. March 11, 2011
In San Francisco my current love and I hurried down to the beach
to watch the tsunami come in. The police
blocked our ways. The newspaper map
showed the radioactive waves
coming over. As Fukushima goes
so goes Japan, the tide
going out and you going out
in Manhattan Beach.

A friend drove by 610 Rosecrans. Your yellow truck
ticketed, not moved for Friday’s street cleaning. The months you struggled
with MB’s City Hall to get your handicap parking permit.
He rushed in, called the paramedics. When I was fifteen on this day
your ship docked in Japan.

                    3.”A gracious spring, turned to blood-ravenous autumn”
In the journey to your bedside I sleep in the rest stop
in Gaviota Pass, fall asleep
reading the Creation Myth
about land that erupts, twists and turns so abruptly
it turns into Southern California. Bigger than life my first love Ramon
comes over the high granite cliff
and down on me, Love
even before you, singing Kumeyaay, the songs
of his ancient tongue. Rolling ys and us and ss. Sensuous
love of this place. Oh, sensuous boy
I first loved before we could speak, the sweet perfume

lingers as the tide comes in
goes out, all these years, eons, the short time
of our journey, creation and love
that is life, time and seawater, the creatures
writing in the dark

In the morning when I arrive you lie white, tied down.
As with Ramon long dead of our Agent Orange, they are carving you up
for your insurance. At fifteen I pledged myself to you
for life. Now our children, islands
in our blood, your DNA and mine, the two of us
forever as one in them.

                   4. Karma
And when I fly back in October the last time
to stand by you the news breaks
in LAX, Khadafy’s body
like yours still alive passed from a culvert, a baby’s face
in shock, disbelief, above our heads. Muammar Khadafy moves through all of us
waiting in the afternoon airport bar, resignation
and TV beyond shock, his three year old daughter, Hanna
we bombed in his tent, and two thousand other Libyans. In May we assassinated
Osama bin Laden. Before that we hung Saddam Hussein.
Now radioactive water crashes on our shores, the Pacific Ocean
dying. But as always I know my lovers

to forgive, my enemies to love, my crucified Savior,
my father, my country, my husband. Who

brought this to pass? I see you as I first saw you
that January you were nineteen. Now I see them rape you, barbarous kings
by medical rod, by multiple rifle butts,
then carry you out of the drain hole
to the imperial cameras, over and over
their insurance to the World. You look
so innocent, our three year old Hanna
pulled apart, my love for better or worse
no matter what, I vowed forever

though sorrow. Sorrow like rain
sorrow to go, and sorrow, sorrow returning

At fifteen I desired my dust
to be mingled with yours forever.
You dragged your feet when you went out

to the land of Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Yokohama,
The Pacific Ring of Fire. As Japan goes
so goes the planet. Now there is no wall left to the village
only high heaps of white bones.

But if you are coming down through the narrows of Gaviota
in your yellow truck
even if leveled
I will come out to meet you
                                             

____________________________________________
1 “Off shore, by islands hidden in the blood
jewels and miracles, I….
tell you…” Charles Olson

2 Sacred Sites, The Secret History of Southern California, Susan Suntree, University of Nebraska, 2010.

3 I sit here in Valentine, the storm goes on

grey relentless
the white capped rollers

churn

Two people, silhouettes out there
at the long tidal line and a gull
Now there’s only one
and a flock
(Feb 14, 2011, Ocean Beach, SF—inscribed in Sacred Sites)





The leaf
By Iluminado Maldonado

The night of thundering heart and sleeplessness
Takes me back to where the leaf began
Crunching on pavement
Anticipating a gathering ahead of me
With the drums roaring amid a patch of sanity
Encircled by brick stone and tar
The leaf intrudes
Making its presence known
Dominating in the face of ignorance
The will to live in such an inhospitable place
Speaks of her strength
She knows she will inherit what's left



Iluminado was born in Arecibo Puerto Rico in 1948, was raised in Brooklyn New York. A Vietnam Era vet, he studied Journalism at Long Island University. He's a multi talented artist with a passion for music, primarily folkloric and jazz. He hosted an Afro Cuban Rumba/Jam Session in Berkeley for 15 years which continues today. Iluminado is a priest in the Ifa/Orisa tradition. Before suffering a stroke that took his vision in 2011 he was an avid photographer and cyclist, he still trains today and presently lives on the Russian River in Northern California with his family and two dogs Rosie And Mina.





For Fukushima
By Malke Singer

this spring blossoms early
when pink flowers drop away
to reveal tiny fruits
Fukishima you will be on my mind
My prayers for your people
and our tiny shared planet
are only small spring blossoms
sheltering the tiny fruit
promises of a new year






Wind Chimes - Tanka / Carrillones De Viento
By Paul Aponte

Fukushima love
Shattered by nature, by man
Wet, Wailing Walls cry
Erasure of human temples
The wind-chime friends that once loved

Amor de Fukushima
Desgarrado por la naturaleza, por el hombre
Mojados, Muros de Lamentación lloran
Erradicación de templos humanos
Amigos que amaron, ahora carrillones de viento


Paul Aponte is a Chicano poet from Sacramento, California.   Paul, is a prolific writer and member of "Escritores del Nuevo Sol", and can be seen reading at various venues throughout the SF Bay and Sacramento areas. He is the author of the book of poetry "Expression Obsession" , and has been published in "La Bloga" and in other publications. Many of his poems can be found on his Facebook "Notes" under the pseudonym Wolf Fox.




Survive Soil Repeat
By Iris De Anda

the days are long gone
for cutting daises
putting one in your hair
as you strut down the street
with nowhere to be but the coffee shop
reading a book or eating day old pizza
now you must turn the dirt in your garden
plant deep dreamseeds
ideally, the planting would have happened long ago
so now you just water the soil
talk to the leaves
repeat
everyday after sundown
you see now it's about
survival
finding nourishing people and places
drink tea instead of tequila
travel more worry less
repeat
travel inward listen more
survival
the things one should do to make it through
this labyrinth of city blues
go, go, go
where to?
stay put
tampoco
it's a dance
this putting one foot
in front of the other
it's okay to dance alone
do things alone
adventure in your own backyard
if there is no garden begin
pick out the land
stand barefoot on its wet mud
imprint love
this will feed you
in the years ahead






Dystopian Pollution
By J. A. Mitchell

Don’t step in
the burst bubbles of
engineered memes
acid rain dots
chemical tears
collectively  shed
by mankind

Take
this pill, it will
make you
smaller
calmer
younger
whatever you
desire to be

Buy
high priced
hi tech  gadgets
magic pixel screens
digital cameras that
capture and flip
images

Ignore
Dropped
drone bombs
leaving in their wake
homeless
maimed populations and
luminous yellow
cake crumbs

Sounds from
underground
cyclotronic machines
are strange screams
deep inside the planet
that enter our dreams

Scientists
have yet to admit the
cumulative effects of
satellite rotation or
wireless communication on
human cognition
“Let it rain information”
say they, squealing with glee



J.A. Mitchell was born in the urban outposts of Hoodoo culture in a suburb of New York City in the early 1950’s.  Writing as Mama Whodun, she pens the Neohoodoo blog. She has been published in Scarlet Imprint’s Mandragora  poetry anthology, in Kalyani Women’s magazine premier  issue and is included in Seeds of Resistance "E4rth is my Flesh" Flor y Canto 2015 Zine.
https://www.tumblr.com/blog/realdarkart




Fervent Aperture
By Jolaoso Pretty Thunder

This
Where the Redtail and Kite feed well
And the Owl’s* cough is intricate and varied
We step around it quietly       still seeing
Still hearing the field mice scurry within       ghost.

Grasses burn ripe in this moon
Locusts are on the grain

Antlers lock somewhere in the night close by
Causing a great ruckus on the earth
The stronger of the two pushed the other
Across the scrub brush to the base of Fist Mountain
                        Which took a long time     seemingly

We grow still inside; quiet listening and find peace in the disorder-
The rattling and grind the push and shove. They leave their tracks for those
Who honor such battles

A small stone shows itself there in the dusty furrows, inside it a bear, thunder
We pause, listening again; perhaps we keep it or let it go to another
Who may need it more

We ourselves are only the smallest green in malachite
Our faces fading on the bark and rocks of deep orange lichen
Marrow of sustenance, cool pine needles beneath bare feet
See us in the feather, strike of the flame
       The pine seed winged      strange butterflies

Cupped hands
We are river
Reaching salt
Buffalo against
Alien wire- Goodbye.

We are the Black Salmon sucking    we defy
Often dying close to each other

Pit our breastbone to the moons
Lightning has struck water and rock; The Great Wind has swept it
                                                                                                             We are ready


Iya Jolaoso Pretty Thunder is an initiated Apetebi, Osainista and Orisa priestess of Oya. She lives in the woods of Northern California with her family and two dogs Rosie Farstar and Ilumina Holy Dog. She is a practitioner and student of herbal medicine (Western, Vedic, TCM and Lukumi medicine). She is also an ordained minister of the First Nations Church and the founder of Straight Arrow Women's Lodge. She is a well-traveled poet who loves southern rock, porch swings, pickup trucks, cooking, campfires, lightning, steak, long drives, hot cups of coffee, gathering and making medicine and singing with friends and family.






Seven Morning Senryū
By Odilia Galván Rodríguez

morning aftermath
almost complete clean slate
broken and split bones

building shambles
foundations guts protrude
metal seaweed

called paranoid
re: radiation worries
for knowing what they feel

at night street’s silent
the world walks on cat’s paws
no one wants to wake
to the nightmare of meltdowns
to what is no longer

radiation haze
blooms new butterflies
steadfast in their survival

measuring death
the collateral damage
of nuclear power

we dream Japan
waking free of all poison
a blossom unfurled



Odilia Galván Rodríguez, eco-poet, writer, editor, and activist, is the author of four volumes of poetry, her latest, Red Earth Calling: ~cantos for the 21st Century~. She’s worked as an editor for Matrix Women's News Magazine, Community Mural's Magazine, and most recently at Tricontinental Magazine in Havana, Cuba. She facilitates creative writing workshops nationally and is a moderator of Poets Responding to SB 1070, and Love and Prayers for Fukushima, both Facebook pages dedicated to bringing attention to social justice issues that affect the lives and wellbeing of many people. Her poetry has appeared in numerous anthologies, and literary journals on and offline.

•             Age Range: 4 - 8 years
•             Grade Level: Preschool - 3
•             Hardcover: 48 pages
•             Publisher: HMH Books for Young Readers (March 31, 2015)
•             Language: English
•             ISBN-10: 0544102290
•             ISBN-13:978-0544102293

 

Guest Blog by Veronica Sandoval

Erika Garza-Johnson

Cross-eyed chachalacas in the haze of a Texas morning, pushing past toothless abuelas, shadow puppets, and dead butterflies--this is the place where La Llorona and Allen Ginsberg converse next to piñatas and saints, this is the borderland of Anzaldúa, this place of in-between and ambiguity, this place called home. Unwoven, a collection of poems by Erika Garza-Johnson, is published by FlowerSong Books, an imprint of VAO Publishing, and contains 84 poems by one of the most original Rio Grande Valley voices. With prose, free verse, list, litany and language poems, Garza’s collection is an organic composition of subjects, moods, and styles that strategically code switches from English to Spanish, Tex-Mex, and Pocha. Garza’s work feels Beat, feels like excavating las historias de la gente we must not talk about, to whom Unwoven replies:

 

how do you steal your own memory

mimic your own voice…

so I’ve sealed

my own heart away

and sent it to silencio

ripped my hands off

erased my face and

drowned my past in the

Rio Grande (3)

Within this collection you will find heridas beating tenderly and feverishly, una pinche princess, Jesucristo blessing prostitutes and humming alabanzas, paleteros con beersicles, electric tight rope walking tlacuaches, Madonna by tinacos, cantina noches and jazz-less barrios. Using subjects like Sylvia Plath and Allen Ginsberg in juxtaposition to Mesoamerican deities like Coatlicue and Mayahuel, Garza is a nepantlera negotiating her positionality as a daughter, mother, wife, sister, and academic. Her most heartfelt poems are those like “Urraca Song” and “Cross Roads” where her images grapple with the decolonization of spirituality subverting as Laura Medina stated the “dominant cultural norms which traditionally places spiritual authority in hands of male mediators who can easily orchestrate a monopoly of the sacred” (Facio 67). With prayer, Garza challenges the patriarchy of the church that in “Urraca Song” condemns her marriage as nonexistent in the eyes of God:

 

                           I prayed to the moon, to the sun, to the butterfly that was lost

                           in the weeds. I prayed to the cat that sleeps all day and plays

                           with bottle caps at night…I prayed to Facebook. I tweeted a message

                           to a goddess I met at metropolis on Goth Night. She wore Doc Martens.

                           She was my ghost. There is a God and…she lives, somewhere all of

                           my ancestors feast on peace. (83)

With Unwoven, Garza weaves a new heart, a huipil that suits her (15), tackling the difficulty of subjects like rape, immigration, homesickness, love, and loss. With poems like “Labeled” and “Llorona RIP”, Garza’s work could be misconstrued as Post-Chicana; however with references in her work to cultural historical elements, environmental injustices, and criticism of cultural appropriation, Garza’s work utilizes a Chicana Feminist praxis making Unwoven a great addition to any Chicana Literature or Creative Writing Course.

 

 

Works Cited

Facio, Elisa. "Spirit Journey: "Home" as a Site for Healing and Transformation."Fleshing the Spirit: Spirituality and Activism in Chicana, Latina and Indigenous Women's Lives. 1st ed. Tuson: U of Arizona, 2014. 67. Print.

 

 

 

Veronica Sandoval is Lady Mariposa, a poeta from the Rio Grande Valley Tejas. She is currently a graduate student in the Critical Cultural Gender and Race Studies Department at Washington State University. Her poetry has appeared in various anthologies and publications like: Revista Literaria de El Tecolote, BorderSenses, Boundless, The Savant Poetry Anthology, El Mundo Zurdo III, New Border, Along the River, Gallery & Lung Poetry. She has a Spoken Word Poetry Album called Hecha en El Valle, Spoken Word and Borderland Beats which is available on ITunes. When she is not running around doing super Chicana power stuff, she is at home with the Chubby Vato of her heart, and their cat named Boots.

 

 

 

Veronica.Sandoval2@wsu.edu

www.facebook.com/ladymariposa

https://www.youtube.com/user/VeronicaSandoval75

 

MLM: Yes, it was very difficult. I didn’t know what to do when I came back from my first trip to Los Duros. I felt depressed about the overwhelming futility of their situation. But Molly, my wife, told me that I had to write about them. It was perhaps the only bit of influence that I might have. I thought about this for a long while before I began the project. I recognized that I was in a privileged position. I knew these kids and they trusted me with their stories. Our workshops were set up to give them a voice, to let them know that someone out there was listening. I convinced myself that I wasn’t going to write about them so much as that I was going to write through them. And if nothing else, they’d know that I heard them. The suffering is real. It’s out there right now, being experienced right now. Pain is never abstract. People should know the kind of real pain that their political decisions cause. This is the most unflinching work I’ve written. It’s not an easy thing to confront. I wrote Los Duros because I don’t want to give myself or any of my readers an easy way out. 

Alma Luz Villanueva


In the late 90s I traveled to Sonora, Mexico, to research my family landscape. I wanted to get a feel for the desert and the ocean near Guaymas, San Carlos, and Cuidad Obregon. I took a bus and noticed how the drivers personalized their vehicles, including taxis. The deer is a symbol you’ll find all over Sonora because it is a Yaqui symbol. The Yaqui Deer Dancers are famous. In this painting I hid a deer head...see if you can find it...and added a pelican because they flew over the beach of Bacochibampo, or the Bay of Sea Snakes, in Yaqui. I also added a dog because I saw many stray dogs as I traveled the area. The Virgin de Guadalupe was another recurring symbol. I painted myself to the left: the brown haired woman with sunglasses. - Anita Endrezze

© Anita Endrezze. Acrylic on paper.

I first got to know Anita Endrezze’s multi-genre creative talents via her book, Throwing Fire at the Sun, Water at the Moon, 2000. In this book she weaves together poetry, short stories, essays and her marvelous paintings, creating a universe of her own, with roots firmly within her Yaqui, European heritage.

With the focus, in this book, on the Yaqui ancestors, people, I was drawn to this book as I was raised by my grandmother, Jesus Villanueva, a full blood Yaqui curandera from Sonora. She taught me dreaming, poetry and stories in the Mission, San Francisco.

I was right at home in Anita’s universe- the curiosity that drives her journey throughout this book, and the beauty she always reveals. Side by side with hard truths, always the beauty. Anita’s paintings as her witness.

"Butterfly Moon"© Anita Endrezze

And then, recently I read Butterfly Moon, 2012, a collection of short stories that include Yaqui and European myth/truth, that beauty. Anita’s painting graces the cover, the butterfly moon. When I finished reading these magical stories, where myth/reality dance, I realized she had merged/married the Yaqui/European into a mysterious, coherent whole. Each story bleeding into the next one, and finally creating an alive, breathing, singing, weeping wholeness.

On page 89, ‘Choices,’ I came upon a wise, Yaqui grandmother named Alma Luz- I laughed with delight. “Jessica’s grandma, Alma Luz, once told her that Yaquis knew how to face life’s hardships. It was part of their creation story. Those ancient people who couldn’t face the future were allowed to leave the human race. Some ran into the desert and became ants. Others waded into the waves and became dolphins or sea mammals. Only her ancestors decided to face life. They did it with wisdom and courage.”

My grandmother, Jesus, used to tell me, in Spanish, “If you have one drop of Yaqui, you are all Yaqui.” Anita evokes this dreaming wisdom in this wondrous, alive, magical book of stories- spanning, including, all of her ancestors. Into wholeness. And so, here’s the interview- from San Miguel de Allende, Mexico (where I now live), to Everett, Washington (where Anita lives). This sacred Turtle Island.


Alma Luz Villanueva: WHERE are you from? Tell a childhood story.

Anita Endrezze: I was born by the Pacific Ocean in Long Beach, CA. My mother was second generation American: she’s north Italian, German, and Slovenian. My father was Yaqui Indian, a tribe/Nation from Sonora Mexico. His parents came from Mexico. I was born with a displaced hip and wore a cast for a year. My leg never healed right and it was an omen of future ill health.
We lived in Merlin Oregon for a couple of years. My parents logged their acreage to make money. My little sister and I would nap in a tent, play with twigs and moss to make little houses, and watch out for snakes. I have never forgotten the sweet strawberry smell of dried pine needles.


ALV: WHAT were you born to write about- your driving themes.

AE: When I was too young to read, I told stories about the Great Pacific Northwest. It was important that that phrase start every story. And yet, in spite of that early idea of location, I’ve written more about the spirit and especially, the female spirit, passion, and ….oh, whoa! here it is: a woman’s relationship to the earth. So, I guess, I do write about place. Now that I’ve gotten older and sicker, though, I write more about the temporal body, my body, that is a failing location of my soul.
I have MS and I’m in Stage Two which means I can barely walk and my legs hurt. I am weak all over. House bound and basically, chair bound, my location is in one spot 24 hours a day.


ALV: YOUR first memory of writing. And since you’re also a gifted painter, your first memory of drawing.

AE: I don’t remember my first written work. I do remember drawing. I drew rainbows over hills that resembled sleeping women: all broad hips and round shoulders. I drew teepees and horses. I drew with lots of color, using crayons. I loved reading the names of the crayon colors on their slips of paper: Spring Green, Blue Violet, Brilliant Rose. In 1958, when I was 6, new colors were added making the box total of 64. My mother worked as a draftsman on Terminal Island. She brought old office papers and blue print sheets for us to draw on.


ALV: TELL a vivid dream.

AE: One of the recurring dreams I’ve had for 40 years is of a house. The house represents my body, with the attic being the Light, the Spirit. The basement is either my genitals or my subconscious. About 20 years ago, I started dreaming of a greenhouse attached to the house. The greenhouse was full of dying plants. It was always on the left of the dream house and I now know that it was my body weakening from MS, since my left side is weaker.
I loved the dreams, though, where I’d wander through an infinity of rooms. I liked the houses where there was no end to discovering another room.


ALV: WHAT subjects do you consider to be taboo- who are your ‘critics’... as in parents, children, spouse, minister etc.

AE: I generally don’t censor myself although I would think twice about writing something involving my family. I seldom swear in my writing, even though I do swear otherwise! I don’t have any taboos.


ALV: YOUR favorite novel, character in fiction- why?

AE: I enjoyed reading Octavia Butler’s books, especially Kindred, and the trilogy of Lilith’s Brood. The characters of the alien third gender, the ooloi, were mind-bending when I read them back in the 90s. I also like reading the Jack Reacher novels, a loner ex-military cop. I read all of the Number One Ladies Detective Agency books, all of Harry Potter books, and the Twilight series when my daughter was young. One of my favorite authors is Luis Alberto Urrea.

I just finished reading Wild and now am starting A Fistful of Collars by Spencer Quinn...a dog detective!

I loved the book, The Art of Racing in the Rain. Terribly Loud and Incredibly Close was another book I liked.


ALV: YOUR favorite poet(s), why?

AE:I have always loved Neruda. His passion and seductive words enthrall me. I also like Leonard Cohen. I didn’t know he was also a musician until I was in my 40s!


ALV: MAKE three wishes.

AE: I wish for health. I’m very sick. With health I could be a part of my life instead of just existing. I could visit my family. I could touch the earth with my bare feet. I could see a sunrise. I could walk under the stars and moon at night. I could be ME instead of being weak and hurting. And I could let my family free of worrying about me.

I only have one more wish and that is that my children have happiness in their lives and can do things to make the world a better place.


ALV: ONE more… List the ‘top twenty’ most transformative moments of la vida, more if you want, of course. Maybe write it via una poema…

AE: My life in twenty versions
I was born a chamber of the sea. I was a particle of salt and tar, motion and shore.
I was a little girl with a crooked leg, skipping in puddles that cradled clouds.
My mother lay on the ground, a tree across her back, while my father ran for help, and she screamed he tried to kill her.
We drove through the snowy night, leaving him, carrying bundles of clothes and fears.
An “uncle” touched my small breasts while I was swimming, swimming, or in bed while I was sleeping, sleeping, and I drowned in my skin.
I was married, one two three. And each time, I thought it would be the last, he’s the One, although their faces blurred.
I have two children, a boy I was terrified of since I knew nothing of men and love. And a girl I was terrified for, knowing men and love.
The third marriage is good, better than good, and my children grew up to be stronger than I am, and beautiful. My fears were for nothing.
Except they were fears more terrible than monsters in the bed or under it. The fear was real: I was diagnosed with MS.
Broken bones from falls, crooked arm, fractured cheek and wrist. Bent spine, weak legs, weak torso. Blindness, paralysis, voice broken.
I am like a shell that washes up on shore, battered against the foamy rocks, the roiling surf, and the pearly sheen of my skin is a bruise.
I’m an artist and a writer, but I’d give it all up to be healthy.

No, sorry: my life doesn’t have twenty versions. Now all my selves
sit in a chair all day and watch TV or read, talking to the Other Fears in my head. I’m house-bound, in a chamber of skin and bones, far from the stars or beach.

My dreams are twenty windows,
all shut and sealed.


ALV: Anita, I’ve loved all of your answers, especially your final one, although it contains much pain, this is your truth, your courage, gracias.

I have one more question after reading your wondrous book of stories, Butterfly Moon, which seems to contain all of your ancestors, Yaqui to European. I especially love the ones where the ancient myths (truths) come into play. The final story in the collection, ‘The Dragonfly’s Daughter,’ features Desetnica GoLightly. At the end of the story she learns she was born with the tenth child’s blessing, to become a roaming storyteller as her mother was. Desetnica meets three magical women who tell her the destiny of the tenth child, as they call her magical name, Dragonfly’s Daughter. They give her a “carved with runic symbols and other wondrous images” walking stick. “This is a storyteller’s walking stick. All will recognize you by this,” they tell her.

They give her an amber necklace with a tiny dragonfly inside: “You will take your father’s spirit with you, for his ashes drifted into the creek. The dragonfly formed its larvae from your father’s bones.”

“‘And here.’ They circled me, placing their hands on top of my head. ‘We give you our blessings, Desetnica GoLightly.’

“Their hands felt like a wreath of shining stars on my head. ‘Thank you, ladies.’

“‘We will meet again one day, child….Remember that you do sacred work. Death can be its own blessing.’

“I took a deep breath. ‘I do not understand my fate, but I accept it.’

“‘And that’s as it should be...Now, go forth and tell stories.’”

As I read this wonderful story, I recognized myself as the tenth child of my lineage. And I recognize you as the tenth child of your lineage, Anita GoLightly. I think I just answered my final question, via the excerpt from the story, above.

You went forth and told/wrote the stories, Anita. You’ve gifted us with your marvelous poems, magical stories, and powerful paintings. GRACIAS for your very necessary voice and vision.

© Anita Endrezze

Anita Endrezze’s web site with a full listing of all her books, artwork and a biography. www.anitaendrezze.weebly.com












Alma Luz Villanueva is the author of eight books of poetry, most recently Gracias 2015, and four novels, most recently, Song of the Golden Scorpion, 2013.

She’s taught in the MFA in Creative Writing program, Antioch University Los Angeles the past sixteen years.

Mother of four grown children, and Mamacita to five grandchildren, two Greatgrandhijitos. Has lived in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, for the past ten years, returning to teach, visit la familia. www.almaluzvillanueva.com




New Theatre For Now at LATC
Michael Sedano

Over a recent weekend, Los Angeles theatre-goers exulted in the grand spectacle of a world-class raza ensemble bringing a twenty-two hundred year-old play to life, Plautus'La Olla - The Pot of Gold. Plautus is so old, he's brand new--in the hands of the incredibly talented players of the Los Angeles Theatre Center.

Energized by a brilliant adaptation, sparkling improvisations, code-switching hilarity, actors comfortable in roles including a miser, some bad guys, colorful samberos, and denizens of nightclub society, kept the heavily subscribed house laughing. All in all, LATC's La Olla at the Malibu Getty offered a wonderfully absurdist noir.

 Now this same theatre company presents its 2015 season that features local work and local talent,  along with visiting companies who, like the locals, work at the leading edge of world theatre. Years ago, the phrase "New Theatre For Now" signaled an exciting season that lived up to its name, bringing brand new plays to off-the-beaten-path locations.

Season after season, the Los Angeles Theatre Company evokes that long-ago feast for theatre-goers, with the plus of the LATC's deluxe auditoria, convenient parking, and a lively street scene.

Getty Malibu ceramic

•    Age Range: 7 - 11 years
•    Grade Level: 1 - 6
•    Hardcover: 40 pages
•    Publisher: Cinco Puntos Press (May 5, 2015)
•    Language: English
•    ISBN-10:1935955918
•    ISBN-13: 978-1935955917