Xanath Caraza
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Levi talks about the two-room adobe and plaster home his grandfather built. “They brought the vigas in from the sierras. In the ‘40s he pitched the roof with corrugated metal. It’s the last, continuously inhabited house in the area without plumbing,” Levi said.
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Levi’s first collection of poetry, “In the Gathering of Silence,” West End Press, published in 1996 features, “Woodstove of My Childhood,” an epic poem based on personal and communal histories. His latest collection, “A Poetry of Remembrance: New and Rejected Works,” with UNM Press in Dec. 2008, sold out within a month of its official publication, which is unheard of in regional Chicano poetry.
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In 1983, Levi’s plan was to go to Albuquerque and save enough money to go to San Diego. He laughs. “It’s 2009 and I’m still not there. Nobody goes to Albuquerque to save money. You make just enough to get by,” he said.
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Levi Romero’s work focuses on cultural landscapes studies and sustainable building methodologies of northern New Mexico, including centuries-old traditions of acequia systems, molinos, salas and other agrarian and cultural contexts related to the upper Rio Grande watershed. His documentary work is often presented through an interdisciplinary studies format that includes lecture, video/audio, and literary presentation. Romero’s latest book publication, Sagrado: APhotopoetics Across the Chicano Homeland, (co-authored with Spencer Herrera and Robert Kaiser) has just been published by UNM Press. His two collections of poetry are A Poetry of Remembrance: Newand Rejected Worksand In the Gathering of Silence. He was awarded the post of New Mexico Centennial Poet Laureate in 2012. He teaches in the Chicana/o Studies and Community and Regional Planning programs at the University of New Mexico.
Wheels
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“…that year I had risen out of the ranks of the “D-group” students
the ones bound for prison and/or a life lived
and terminated before the age of thirty
the ones who spoke the Spanish of their grandparents
as a first language
with accents thick and soft and musky
as the upturned earth rolling off
their grandfather's horse drawn plows”
excerpt, High School English
Levi Romero Sows Crops
This is Dixon, N.M. – Levi’shome. It was his home as a small child living with abuelos y tíos. It was his home as a lowriding teenager, even when he lived in Albuquerque attending Menaul School. It was still his home when he studied at UNM, or now, when he teaches there. You can go home again, he’ll say, but it can be a hard road.
Levi earned architecture degrees at UNM – a bachelor’s in 1994 and master’s in 2000. Funded by UNM Center for Regional Studies, he is now a visiting research scholar in the UNM School of Architecture and Planning. Designing buildings isn’t much a part of his life any more. He’s more interested in the structure of stories, the building blocks of memory and preserving the cultural landscape through people in New Mexico.
Levi’s family has been in the Embudo River Valley since the 1600s. “My grandparents never had to wonder about identity. They never asked, ‘Are we Hispanos? Chicanos? Mexicanos?’ Nobody asked them if they were from here. Everyone was from here until the 1960s,” Levi said.
The longstanding families who raised corn, chile, radishes, onions, carrots and peas, soon found a crop of newcomers – trust fund babies who had their eyes on the land.
The etiquette on the narrow road has always been for one car or the other to pull to the side to let the other pass, depending upon which had a better place to pull off. “Now the young people are in a hurry. They aren’t polite. They don’t acknowledge when someone pulls over to let them pass,” he said. They don’t want just to get by. They want to get away.
Young people have moved away and fields abandoned. “I always came back to work the land except when I was in grad school. Then the Chinese elms took over the fields. There were never weeds when my grandfather Don Silviares lived here,” he said. Don Silviares was legendary for his trade route and his produce – everything from apples to chile – that he hauled along his route from Embudo to Ratón and Cimarron to Dawson. Levi wrote a story about his grandfather, El Verdolero, the vegetable vendor.
There’s No Place like Home
Levi talks about the two-room adobe and plaster home his grandfather built. “They brought the vigas in from the sierras. In the ‘40s he pitched the roof with corrugated metal. It’s the last, continuously inhabited house in the area without plumbing,” Levi said.
The kitchen features a wood burning stove. “It’s not the original, but it’s similar to the one my grandmother had,” Levi said. The room also sports a more modern 1950’s stove and refrigerator. The kitchen cabinets are old trasteros; one features a flour bin from which many a tortilla had its start. On the wall is a mirror with the silvering wearing off. “Imagine the many souls reflected in that mirror,” Levi said, asking me to look into it, afterwards adding that mine is now among them.
The walls were crude, Levi said, and the kitchen was pink, and the other room green. “I wondered about a pink kitchen, but then my aunt told me that at one time she had the stove moved from one room to the other, completely changing the function of each room. That’s interesting to me architecturally – how the spaces were used and how their function could be changed so efficiently,” he said.
Levi points to windows that offer up potted geraniums to the sun. “From the windowsills you can see that the walls are 23 inches thick and that the windows have tapered openings to maximize the sunlight streaming in,” he said. “My grandmother always had geraniums in coffee cans in the window. I have memories of them. It’s where the story starts. I reach back and recall family, community and place,” he said.
One room blooms with floral wallpaper. He thought about taking it off and restoring the walls. “If I take it down, my memories go with it. So many memories – names of people and things that happened – are triggered by looking at those walls,” he said. Writing in Spanish, he said, helps preserve the memories, too.
He debated with his wife about whether or not to install electricity or plumbing. Ultimately, they decided to install electricity, but they incurred a much greater cost by running the wiring underground so that electrical lines wouldn’t be visible.
Levi the Poet
Levi’s first collection of poetry, “In the Gathering of Silence,” West End Press, published in 1996 features, “Woodstove of My Childhood,” an epic poem based on personal and communal histories. His latest collection, “A Poetry of Remembrance: New and Rejected Works,” with UNM Press in Dec. 2008, sold out within a month of its official publication, which is unheard of in regional Chicano poetry.
Levi drinks from the memory well the house in Dixon serves. He recalls his grandmother playing harmonica while hummingbirds poked their beaks into hollyhocks.
Although he was always at home in Dixon, he didn’t always live there. As was common in Northern New Mexico, many families sent their children to Menaul School in Albuquerque. “The Presbyterians were a big influence in places like Dixon, Mora, Holman. It was a tradition for many families to send their children to school there, until the school no longer offered a sliding scale for tuition,” Levi said.
Levi was a successful student at Menaul and he was offered a scholarship to any New Mexico college. “I hated school and told them to give it to someone who wants to go,” he recalled.
“No one modeled college for me. My cousins hadn’t gone to college – they’d worked trades or in the mines,” he said. Also, his father died when he was 14 and his mother bedridden with rheumatoid arthritis. “I felt like I had to stay close to home. I wanted to come back to Dixon,” he said.
He’d seen the trust funders living as artists, sculptors and musicians while raising some crops. He thought he’d like to become an artist and then live off the land as his grandfather did. He learned that designer Bryan Waldrip needed some drafting help. Levi had no experience, but Waldrip took him on.
“It took more time to train me than he had time for so he suggested I enroll in the community college drafting program in Española. At the end of the first term I went back to work for him. He was also a painter, an artist. We drew and drafted all day and all night,” Levi said.
Levi’s job was to go into the studio early and fire up the wood stove. “He invited me with him to Taos each week where he attended figure drawing courses, which mostly means drawing naked women. My lowrider friends thought that was pretty cool, but it really was all about drawing the forms, the same as if I were drawing this bottle,” he said.
He also realized that he had grown through the world of art and architecture, being surrounded by Waldrip’s labor and library. He told Waldrip he was leaving for San Diego, but since he’d threatened to move many times, Waldrip didn’t believe him. He learned that Waldrip told others that Levi would be fine because “he could get a job as a draftsman anywhere.”
Building a Future
In 1983, Levi’s plan was to go to Albuquerque and save enough money to go to San Diego. He laughs. “It’s 2009 and I’m still not there. Nobody goes to Albuquerque to save money. You make just enough to get by,” he said.
The architectural firms in Albuquerque didn’t have shelves lined with art books, cats in the window and the work wasn’t in beautiful passive solar design as it had been with Waldrip. A few years later he decided, if he wanted to get back to that, he had to go to college.
The UNM architecture program was difficult and demanding. Poetry writing, an outlet in his youth, continued to be a passion. “I’d been writing poetry, but there was no poetry scene yet. Until Jimmy Santiago Baca came along, poetry by young Chicanos had no audience,” he said.
Poetry and writing, activities that had always been a sideline to architecture, began to grow in prominence in his life. Soon, following undergraduate school, and a couple of classes short of a minor in Creative Writing, he wasn’t just writing, but teaching workshops for literary organizations, detention centers and youth mentoring programs.”
He’s also taught in the UNM creative writing program in the English Department. As part of his class, Writers in the Community/Schools, his students have also taken their teaching on the road facilitating semester long workshops at detention centers, charter schools, homeless shelters, senior nursing homes and in the Albuquerque Public Schools. “I am able to get past the veils and obstacles put up by students who don’t feel comfortable in an academic setting because I used to feel like them,” he said. He also developed a spoken word class where the students delved into Native American storytelling, cuentos, dichos and slam poetry.
Following his time in the English Department he came home again – to the School of Architecture and Planning – where he is a visiting research scholar.
He also assists in the Design Planning Assistance Center studio and has worked on various New Mexico community studio design projects, including a design for a field studio and community center based in the old Sala Filantropica dancehall in Dixon/Embudo. This spring, Levi worked with students on a MainStreet project in Deming, N.M. His role was to elicit the dreams and ideas from the town’s Hispanic community since they were unlikely to attend the charrettes to share their thoughts and memories. Those stories were then shared with the students who incorporated those ideas in the designs for everything from streetscapes, youth community centers, to skate parks in the town of the legendary Duck Races.
He is currently exploring the histories and stories of the people in northern New Mexico along the high road to Taos and beyond. He looks at acequias, salas, molinos and gardens, nuestra gente and all that represents the life and people of the region. “I’m doing some cultural cruisin’. It’s not about kicking back, but about the important work that needs to be done. If we don’t gather these stories now, they will be gone forever. “Places, stories and history will be recognized as invaluable informants to architecture study in the future. It will, ultimately, become part of the curriculum,” he said.
He’s laying some new groundwork on well-travelled roads.
Story by Carolyn Gonzales
Wheels
how can I tell you
baby, oh honey, you'll
never know the ride
the ride of a lowered Chevy
slithering through the
blue dotted night along
Riverside Drive Española
poetry rides the wings
of a '59 Impala
yes, it does
and it points
chrome antennae towards
'Burque stations rocking
oldies Van Morrison
brown eyed girls
Creedence and a
bad moon rising
over Chimayo
and I guess
it also rides
on muddy Subaru's
tuned into new-age radio
on the frigid road
to Taos on weekend
ski trips
yes, baby
you and I are two
kinds of wheels
on the same road
listen, listen
to the lonesome humming
of the tracks we leave
behind
Gavilan
aquí estoy sentado
en una silleta coja y desplumada
recordando aquellas amanecidas
cuando nos fuimos grandes y altos
en aquel tiempo que nos encontrabanos
sin pena ninguna
cuando la vida pa nosotros
apenas comienzaba y la tarea
era larga y llena de curiosidades
entretenidos siempre con
aquel oficio maldito
un traguito para celebrar la vida
y otro para disponer la muerte
ayer bajo las sombras
de los gavilanes que vuelavan
con sus alas estiradas
como crucitas negras
encontra del sol
pense en ti
tú que también fuites
gavilan pollero
con una locura verdadera
y aquella travesura sin fin
hoy como ayer
tus chistes relumbrosos
illuminando estas madrugadas solitarias
que a veces nos encuentran medios norteados
y con las alas caidas
tal como esos polleros
tirando el ojo por el cerrito de La Cuerda
así también seguiremos rodeando, carnal
carnal de mano
y de palabra
amistad que nació
en aquel amanecer eterno
y si no nos topamos
en esta vuelta
pues entonces, compa
pueda que en la otra
en memoria de un gavilan: Rudy “Sunny” Sanchez
Of Dust and Bone
do I hear
‘mano Anastactio’s
muddy mystic drawl
coming over brain waves
fuzzy as AM Radio
nights long time ago
when we slept outdoors
in the humming
summer
sharing 32 oz. bottles
of soda pop
and bags of chili chips
and strumming broom guitars
to Band on the Run
with our transistor radios
tuned in to
X-ROCK 80 or OKLAHOMA
seventh grade crushes
and teasing howls
in the mooing cow dusk
and hopping toad yards
lit in golden orange
adobe dust
on my brow
and burning, yearning
learning, love exploding
from my heart
like bottle rockets
on the starry spangled
Fourth of July
where are you lain
little dipper dreamers
who once stirred
under granma’s homemade
blankets in the dewy breath
of early morn
when grandfathers
with shovels slung
across their shoulders
headed for the ditchbanks
to open up their
gates
oh, July apple
suckling summer with
the sweet and bitter taste
of wisdom’s tears trickling
down your pink mountain slopes
I see you
I feel you
I hear you
dying
to be born again
oh, father’s graves
with splintered crosses
swaying skyline bare
under a November
moon
whose resurrection burneth
through the flaming hearts
of your displaced
sons
and from snowflake
whiskered men
mumbling broken mouthed
forgotten ancient prayer
of dust and bone
in the plaza
where rainbow haloed angels
crowned with a wreath
of wild country flowers
blow their groggy
horns
I hear you
yes, I hear you ‘mano Anastacio
I hear you cawing
like a lone crow
in the pines
Molino Abandonado
sopla viento, sopla más
y la paja volará
hay preparado el banquete
pa’ todo el que vaya entrando
sopla viento, sopla más
y la paja volará
hay preparado el banquete
pa’ todo el que vaya entrando
la historia
de un pueblo
hecha polvo
¿ qué pasó aquí,
qué es esto?
¿ en dónde está la sabiduría
granma, granpa ?
ya no quedan ni míajas
ni tansiquiera una tortilla dura
¿ el sonido esta tarde?
una Harleyretumbando por la plaza
¿ y con eso seponemos de quedar contentos?
sopla viento, sopla más
y la paja volará
hay preparado el banquete
pa’ todo el que vaya entrando
sopla viento, sopla más
y la paja volará
hay preparado el banquete
pa’ todo el que vaya entrando
aquel molino
en un tiempo con su rueda en el agua
ahora, se usa de dispensa
¡ay, hasta miedo me da
arrimarme a este pueblo!
las lenguas como flechas
apuntadas y venenosas
somos hijos de los hijos
de hombres en aquel antepasado
que se trataban como hermanos
ayudándose unos a los otros
al estilo mano a mano
sopla viento, sopla más
y la paja volará
ay preparado el banquete
pa’ todo el que vaya entrando
sopla viento, sopla más
y la paja volaráa
hay preparado el banquete
pa’ todo el que vaya entrando
¿ qué pasó aquí,
qué es esto?
¿ qué no te conozco,
de qué familia eres?
! o, pues, yo y tu abuelo anduvimos juntos
en la borrega en Colorado
y en el betabel en Wyoming!
nos conocemos bien
sin saber quién semos
esta tarde, aquí
el maíz bailando
seco en el viento
y el pueblo sin molino
sopla viento, sopla más
y la paja volará
hay preparado el banquete
pa’todo el que vaya entrando
sopla viento, sopla más
y la paja volará
hay preparado el banquete
pa’ todo el que vaya entrando
I Breathe the Cottonwood
I take the sage brush scent in
The folding hills
The heat of the asphalt
Twenty-seven minutes past noon
Past the historic marker
And the twisted metal road sign
The yellow apple dotted orchards
The alfalfa
I take it all in
For you my brothers
And sisters
Lying on rubber mattresses
In your jail pods
Finger-nailing the names
Of your loved ones
On styrofoam cups
The cactus flower puckers
Its sweet magnolia lips
For you today
Its prickly arms stretching
Up toward the clouds and the sky
Las mesas, los arroyitos, los barrancos
El Río Grande
La urraca, el cuervo
The cigarette butt pinched
And yellowed, the crunched
Beer cans on the roadside
I take it all in
Past the presa and the remanse
The swimming hole
Where you frolicked in the water
With your first crush
Her hair wet and pasted
Against the slant of her forehead
Her bare shoulders glistening
con l’agua bendita
Throughout the Genizaro valle
Las milpas de maíz
Are lined in processions
Their powdery tassels
Swaying back and forth
Like pueblo feast day dancers
Atrás, adelante, atrás, adelante
Heya, heya, heya, ha
Past the ancient flat roofed houses
Like loaves of bread and their
Backyard hornos with their black
Toothless mouths yawning
The acequias’ lazy gurgle
The tortolita’s midafternoon murmur
The cleansing cota flower
Los chapulines, las chicharras
El garambullo, el capulín
For you, my brothers and sisters
The willow, the mud puddles
Reflecting brown the earth’s skin
I take it all in
Years after my father died
and his body was lain into the earth
his garden continued to yield vegetables
radishes and carrots burrowed into the dark
moist dirt and the onion stalks stood straight
as the soldiers standing for the 21 gun salute
yesterday morning crickets purred
under the shade of the last broad
green leafed plant in the yard
while insects flicked under a canopy
of morning glories
last time I saw you
we spoke of conflict
and that all endings
must have resolution
this afternoon I long
for the voice of the
red breasted robin
I yearn for the slow sinking rhythm
of a long summer evening
and good conversation
a thin thread of web glistens
in the crook of the plum tree
I am accompanied only
by the caw and swooping flight
of the crow across the afternoon sky
the sunflowers in the meadow
are crowned with halos of petals
browned and golden in the haze
of autumn sunlight
crouched and looking
like old men
with wrinkled faces
their reach toward the sun
frozen in a final grasp
toward warmth and light
it is when you are not here
that I can feel
your presence most
when your presence lingers
and I am bent
like a branch
after seasons
of wind
I love how you hold me
my heart threshed
by the years
how you hold me up
from the weight
of all the years
your absence radiates
like the pungent heat
of a season turning
it radiates, it lingers
pungent and delicate as
crabapple blossoms
I love how you hold me
when you are not here
my heart threshed
by the seasons
the years
Levi Romero
Levi Romero, New Mexico Centennial Poet in 2012, is the author of Sagrado: A Photopoetics Across the Chicano Homeland, UNM Press, A Poetry of Remembrance: New and Rejected Works, UNM Press, and In the Gathering of Silence, West End Press. He is from the Embudo Valley of northern New Mexico. Romero is a bilingual poet whose language is immersed in the regional manito dialect of northern New Mexico with its 17th century archaisms and melodic registers. His work has been published throughout the United States, Mexico, Spain, and Cuba. Romero's writing is a narrative tapestry of formal poetics woven through a palette of Nuevomexicano colloquialisms and the poetic richness of vernacular language. His poem, “De donde yo soy,” was published by Scholastic as part of a nationwide educational project and his radio interview by Taos journalist Tania Casselle won several regional and national press awards. “A Poetry of Remembrance” was a finalist in the Texas League of Writers’ Book Awards and listed as a Best Books of the Southwest, Arizona. He teaches in the Chicana and Chicano Studies program at the University of New Mexico.
In Other News
In El Segundo Festival Internacional de Poesía de Occidente in El Salvador I will participate. What an honor!
