Michael Sedano
The future of Chicana Chicano science fiction offers a question filled with sound and fury signifying something important happening in popular fiction. That fact manifests in Riverside, California, where the University of California campus’ Tomás Rivera Library houses the world’s largest publicly accessible collection of science fiction, fantasy, horror, and utopian literature. The University recently hosted the world's first conference on Latinos in Science Fiction.
The fury comes muted by the nature of the occasion, a junta con six authors whose work comprises nearly the entirety of chicana chicano-produced science fiction and speculative fiction. The six sit at the same table and talk craft and their novels. Pocos pero picosos.
 |
| Cinco de Los Seis: Lunar Braceros, high tech mexicas, vampires & zombies, life in other dimensions. |
Los Seis
Rosaura Sánchez and Beatrice Pita bring copies of their hard-to-find thriller, Lunar Braceros 2125-2148. Lunar Braceros becomes the final publication from San Diego's shuttered Calaca Press.
Rosaura Sánchez develops an account of writing Lunar Braceros with distinct political awareness of her dysptopian vision of camps for labor and dissidents, privilege for a multiethnic elite, global isolation.
Beatrice Pita with Lunar Braceros
Ernest Hogan, father of chicano sci-fi. They call him that because he is. Hogan admits to the sobriquet while appearing mystified at the notion. He tells the students he read technology and science fiction as a youth and when he took to writing, he wrote what he knew, kinda. He makes up a lot of stuff, like languages and space travel with real chicanos in outer space.
Ernest Hogan autographs with a sig and cartoon alluding to his story, "The Frankenstein Penis." Getting his work into the hands of readers becomes a writer's major hurdle, Hogan relates, telling the audience accounts of bringing stories and novels back to life, as he once did. Hogan tells the collected readers he was once thought dead. Garcia confesses that's what he thought when he wrote in La Bloga that Hogan was dead. Hogan emailed back in living color. Hogan is a Thursday bloguero at La Bloga.
Mario Acevedo, bestselling author of steamy Felix Gomez detective vampire novels, has a major hit series, going full steam ahead.
Mario says he digs into the genre's rules--"tropes" scholars call them--like a nuances of one's meal of blood, a vampire's hypersexuality seen in titles like Nymphos of Rocky Flats, Jailbait Zombie. Entertainment, he says, is his goal.
Mario says he digs into the genre's rules--"tropes" scholars call them--like a nuances of one's meal of blood, a vampire's hypersexuality seen in titles like Nymphos of Rocky Flats, Jailbait Zombie. Entertainment, he says, is his goal.
Mario Acevedo speaks enthusiastically about the liberties of genre writing.
Rudy Ch. Garcia, asks what if the world's wildest dreams keep going in a separate dimension, and you fall in, get trapped in a world where Che Guevara and Marilyn Monroe are your best pals? What if looks like this, Garcia's surrealistic and entertaining The Closet of Discarded Dreams.
Rudy Garcia points to his novel's award sticker.
Jesus Treviño films the discussion from behind the camera, otherwise the author of The Fabulous Sinkhole stories would have taken a seat with the other five living authors of chicana chicano science fiction and speculative fiction. Read a recent entry in JT's Zombie Mex diaries at Latinopia.
Jesus Treviño as panelists see him.
The six writers don’t hold back in free-wheeling discussions managed superbly by profesora Sherryl Vint, who hosts the event and looks to having more. Dra. Vint is Professor of Science Fiction Media Studies. Vint, with colleague Nalo Hopkinson, have organized today's gathering.
Author talk ranged from everyday irritations to major insults, by way of explaining the presence and absence of raza in outer space and ranks of published authors.
When brown actors finally reach outer space they wear tattooed faces or wrinkly foreheads. If sci-fi were a religion, movie producers commit a mortal sin with the ultimate sacrilege of giving Ricardo Montabán’s Khan role to some guy from England.
Two blogueros surrounding vampire writer Mario Acevedo. Ernest Hogan, Rudy Ch. Garcia
Rosaura Sánchez develops her narrative.
Ernest Hogan with Cortez on Jupiter
Ernest Hogan and Mario Acevedo colloquy
Latino characters and settings don’t heavily populate sci-fi but there’s a handful. See Rudy Ch. Garcia’s column for the current La Bloga directory of titles and dates. These include 1969's Afro-6 by Hank Lopez, and Isabella Rios' Victuum in 1976. A montón of these lesser-known uncelebrated writers and titles flies back and forth from audience to the table up front. It is a delightfully informed group.
A number of hands go up when one of the authors asks who are writers? Here is the face of the future. I like that el papa, or padrino of chicano science fiction, sits in the front row, unable to see the future coming from behind him.
Latino sci-fi and media audience, future authors. Ernest Hogan at right.
UCR awards a Ph.D. through its Science Fiction and Technoculture Studies program, led by Dr. Sherryl Vint. The program looks to offer an undergraduate minor one day, right now it's all high level researchers and writers. These folks comprise the audience for Wednesday’s one-day trailblazing meeting.
Professor Sherryl Vint
Sherryl Vint and Rudy Ch Garcia consult
Lively Q&A engages Tyler Stallings
 |
| Vicki Vertiz, a poet graduate student in Creative Writing takes notes as Nalo Hopkinson shares parallels in her sci-fi authorial path. |
Lively Q&A from sci-fi author Nalo Hopkinson, who teaches creative writing at UCR. Nalo's hands hold not just a microphone but also the future. With Dr. Vint, Hopkinson leads UCR's Science Fiction and Technoculture Studies program to plan this and the university's ongoing program of town and gown service like future Latinos in Sci-Fi conferences.
Q&A brings long, complicated questions that result in engaged group responses up front. Like the literature, the conference is puro fun. Everyone is on their toes.
Ernest Hogan holds up his sketch pad as Beatrice Pita and Mario Acevedo listen.
Emerging scholars from UCR.
Danny Valencia, Paris Brown, Rubén Mendoza.
The afternoon sessions, emerging scholars take the rostrum along with Jesus Treviño and La Bloga’s Michael Sedano, in a showcase for the program’s Ph.D. students. These include Danny Valencia, Paris Brown, and Rubén Mendoza. At various levels in their program, all demonstrate confidence in their subject matters and comfort at the front of the room explaining their ideas.
Subject matter includes Latino science fiction, SF as pedagogy in Latino communities, and Mexican dystopias and religion. These are well-prepared scholars. The future is good.
I was happy seeing Rubén Mendoza. He joined emerging writers reading at Festival de Flor y Canto • Yesterday • Today • Tomorrow, 2010's reunion floricanto of the 1973 original. Now Rubén is on the cutting edge of applied razacentric sci-fi in classrooms.
Jesus Treviño talks about the future as co-panelists take it in.
The school’s Tomás Rivera Library houses the Eaton Collection of Science Fiction and Fantasy in Special Collections & University Archives under the aegis of Dr. Melissa Conway.
Conway, with writer director Latinopia founder Jesus Treviño, climaxed the conference with the director’s donation of his marked-up scripts for the television programs he directed in series such as Star Trek and Babylon 5, along with others in the genre.
Steven Mandeville-Gamble, University Librarian, Alison Scott, Associate University Librarian
for Collections and Scholarly Communications, Melissa Conway, head of Special Collections & Archives, Jesus Treviño, holding archives box.
With Sherryl Vint’s specialization in media studies, Treviño's scripts should have immense value to her and UCR graduate students’ investigations. Treviño confesses to welcoming the space in his garage. Those papers now reside where Conway can let investigators have a look into the making of legendary television programming.
Riverside’s campus of the University of California has become the go-to place for study of Latinos in Science Fiction. Now, there's talk of holding the conference next year together with a workshop-based National Latino Sci-Fi Writers Conference.
Latino sci-fi and fantasy stories fill a need that only writers of sci-fi and fantasy can satisfy. Why not invite a small group of writers to workshop and develop their stories, knowledge, perspective?
Is that an idea you find appealing, a workshop to hone writing skills using science fiction as the genre? Give writers focused opportunity to browse the Holt Collection for hard-to-find gems like the ones in Rudy Ch. Garcia's Spec Lit Directory, should UCR do that?
Let's not leave it to Time to tell the future, to develop by its own inertia, out of the future, through the present, into the past. Take things by the quill and dip into the inkwell.
If Nalo Hopkinson and Sherryl Vint have the ganas, and can garner the money, next year's Latinos in Sci-Fi Conference will draw the next generation of science fiction and fantasy writers to Riverside. Are you willing to help, with an idea? a proposal? a sponsorship?
 |
| All roads lead to Riverside. |
Leaving Comments at La Bloga
Find the Comments link at the bottom of today's column. Look for Javier Pacheco's mug shot and biographical sentence.
The screen capture shows Xánath's column. Today's read's Posted by msedano.
Click the small pencil icon. This opens a new window where you paste your message or type in situ. Please click and type through the verification rigmarole so necessary to combat SPAM.
Be sure to click the box "Email follow-up comments to" This way, when your message gets a response, you'l receive an email that you've joined a conversation.
Ana Castillo Reads At Anaya Conference
 |
Linda Greenberg, one of CSULA's emerging scholars, has the pleasure of introducing Ana Castillo, whose presentation, On Writing About New Mexico, delivers an aural montage from Castillo's work. The capstone is Ana Castillo reading from, then signing, Give It To Me.
|
La Bloga ran one of the first reviews of Give It To Me. I called Give It To Me the literary sensation of 2014. The next few months are going to give me the cachet of a Walter Mercado or a Criswell when it comes to predicting sure things. Give It To Me is the literary sensation of 2014.
Readers eagerly line up to buy copies of Castillo titles. These buyers are among the first to get copies. University booksellers often take a cut from conference sales but on this 90 degree day I spot one of Castillo's friends weighed down by cases of Give It To Me he's lugging in single-handedly.
A popular author rides a capricious wave. People look toward publication date--Give It To Me was released just last week--and readers rush to be among the first to get the new book. Like it, they tell a few friends; hate it, they tell everyone they know!
Reviewers offer motive power to get the new book, making readers aware of impending publication, giving a critic's benediction or a sharp stick in the author's eye. La Bloga struggled not to gush, in reviewing this outstanding hit of a book. Give It To Me is the literary sensation of 2014.
Readers Rule! The most powerful motivator among book buyers comes from word of mouth, a recommendation by an admired person. Tell a friend, that friend tells five friends, those five tell another five. And in no time at all, the book goes "viral" among ever-wider circles of friends, a literary sensation.
Photographing Castillo is a dream. She makes frequent eye contact pauses, reads at a measured pace with understated expressiveness. She selects a passage for general audiences that illustrates the tension holding two characters in fitful closeness.
Today, because Castillo doesn't have a light show, the house lights are raised to permit capturing gestures and momentary expressions. The delivery comes with a freshness difficult to find after the 50th signing event, the book still fresh in the reader's hands.
Castillo honors her work by giving the words careful, considered reading. Oral expression makes or breaks a reading. A reader comes to the lectern with two principal goals. First, to engage the audience favorably to content and writer. Second, to sell books.
Ana Castillo doesn't merely read, she conducts a workshop in reading your stuff aloud. Writers need models to emulate because so much poor reading happens all the time. When Ana Castillo brings the Give It To Me book tour to your regions, be there, observe, imitate.
Darn the microphone stand! I love this candid portrait of Ana Castillo. Composition draws one's eyes to her profile framed by coif and highlighted against her dark neutral background. Enjoying the writer's beauty and character in this wonderful moment of left-handedness, one's eyes then take in the whole image and there's that blasted blurry device impinging the beauty of the moment.
I regret not taking a foto of Castillo's bracelet on her right wrist, recounting St. Michael--my tocayo--slaying the dragon. These fotos use a 100mm lens, 1/160 f/2.8 iso3200, handheld in ambient light.
There's an article floating around about the off-kilter questions audiences throw at authors. There was a gem at CSULA, "I don't read your stuff but I read Junot Diaz…." Castillo handled the awkwardness with amused aplomb, respectful of the question and gracious to the Diaz fan. During sign my book please time--invariably a long line--Castillo engages every person in gracious personal repartée before firmando and writing something appropriate.
Reyna Grande buys two books. In the press of conference activities, Grande forgets her books and expresses relief the next morning when Corina Martinez Chaudry of The Latino Author, retrieves the lost treasures for Reyna. A worker who found the books turned them in. Chaudry and Grande were essential contributors to the Conference in diverse roles.
Michael Sedano
I do not remember the last time I attended an academic conference. When I found myself at two in the same week, my head was spinning around missing the excitement found on a college campus. So much interesting life goes on, and it all comes to the U. What need ever to step into the real world?
That was my mood as I took my seat in Cal State LA's fancy student union. It was old home week in several ways. LA State was my last stop before launching a career in private industry.
The familiar was simultaneously unfamiliar. Some of those people got old. Then I looked across the room and spot an old guy from the nation's best-kept cultural secret, the NHCC.
Carlos Vasquez, who organized ten years of the National Latino Writers Conference in Alburquerque's National Hispanic Cultural Center, was up to his usual travesudas across the room. Instantly I regret my playera. I should have worn my Kukulcan shirt. It's a Sir Guy style garment Carlos wore one day and I told him I admired it. The next day he brings me the shirt off his back. It's my favorite shirt.
Then my most delightful surprise of the year, not just this conference. Sitting in the front row is la madrina of La Bloga, Teresa Marquez.
Rudy Garcia, Manuel Ramos, and Michael Sedano met on Teresa's CHICLE listserv board. We formed La Bloga when the University of New Mexico shuttered the board. In one early idea, I had Teresa's permission to use "CHICLE" as the name of a chicana chicano literature replacement Listserv. Instead, Rudy and Manuel came up with "La Bloga" y hay 'stamos.
 |
| La Madrina de La Bloga, Dra. Maria Teresa Marquez |
If I had better reading acuity, I would have known Teresa Marquez was on program. I did note Enrique Lamadrid on the agenda, lecturing on Cultural Authority, Authenticity, and Performance in Rudolfo Anaya, who was introduced by one of those vatos whom I knew way back then, Lou Negrete. I'm not going to say Lou got all old, because he tells me he was sick.
Enrique Lamadrid
My joy at hearing Lamadrid lecture stems from photographing him at the 1973 Festival de Flor y Canto when I was in grad school at the University of Southern California. It's where I met Roberto Cantú, photographed him, too.
Horst Tonn from the University of Tübingen, Germany takes the lectern. A Citizen of the World: Transnational Imaginaries in the Work of Rudolfo Anaya, examines some of Anaya's travel writing and varied titles. He expresses keen interest in A Chicano In China.
Tonn teaches graduate level courses in Chicano Literature in Tübingen, developing his interest at UT Austin and working as a UFW organizer on the US East coast.
 |
| Dr. Horst Tonn |
Tonn has not seen the Oscar Acosta video from 1973's Festival de Flor y Canto where I first photographed Cantú. Dr. Tonn teaches Acosta's novel and autobiography, so the reading from the autopsy chapter in the latter will prove incredibly useful to his teaching and his students understanding of what chicanismo felt like in 1973.
High school students in Germany study la chicanada as an element of their curriculum. ¿Que pasa, USA, that we're tan insular that we're banning chicanos from classrooms while in Germany, it's required reading?
Lunchtime conversation brings together, from right, Corina Martinez Chaudry, Sandra Ramos O'Briant, and Mario Acevedo for pleasant camaraderie while retired dean Don Dewey looks on.
The second day of the Anaya Conference engaged an early-rising audience with Mario Acevedo's delightful lecture, How the Gothic Put Its Whammy on Me.
Acevedo recounts his writer's process of jumping into vampire fiction with the full abandon allowed to fiction. Mario gives a nod to literary influences and co-conspirators in noir fiction, including La Bloga co-founder Manuel Ramos. Ramos' Desperado features the stolen tilma of Juan Diego, narcos, bad cops, false friends, good reading.
The fruits of academic conferences grow not simply from the ambiente of a campus but from the meeting's central purpose, presenting and sharing ideas about Anaya and literatura chicana.
The next program, featuring five emerging scholars of Mesoamerica and the US Southwest, offers a dual reward of knowledge and the future, a panel of emerging scholars.
 |
| Xochitl Flores-Marcial, Ricardo García, Daniela S. Gutiérrez V., Michael Mathiowetz, Kristina Nielson |
The five scholars from UCLA, Cal State LA, Cal State Long Beach, hold their Ph.D. or are candidates progressing steadily to the final period on that dissertation.
This is our academic future on display. And, as at UCR, we sound strong. Teresa Marquez and I congratulated a panelist, remarking how back on our grad school days, we were the only ones in our programs, and now here are five new Ph.D. in the same place at the same time. Ajua!
Xochitl Flores-Marcial shares insights into Mexican Indigenous Traditions in the United States Southwest. Ricardo García skims across highly technical material in his paper, Yang and Yin: The Mayordomo and the Tenantzin in Indigenous Communities of Western Mexico.
Bringing the focus to El Lay, Daniela S. Gutiérrez V., in Casta, investigates Casta paintings related to los pobladores who founded the city. She shows how LA was founded by a congregation of black and mestizo gente, and how Spain's taxonomy for racial discrimination persisted onto these far western shores of Aztlán.
Michael Mathiowetz and Kristina Nielson wrap up the invigorating session. Mathiowetz illustrates two routes of cultural penetration south to north in Reconsidering El Santo Niño de Atocha del Santuario de Chimayó, New Mexico: The Prehispanic West Mexican Roots of a Chicano Cultural Tradition. Nielson keeps the conversation moving with her report on The Converging Histories of Danza Azteca.
2014 Conference on Rudolfo Anaya: Tradition, Modernity, and the Literatures of the U.S. Southwest provides many more opportunities to share ideas. A Roberto Cantú conference utilizes all the time a day allows.This is our academic future on display. And, as at UCR, we sound strong. Teresa Marquez and I congratulated a panelist, remarking how back on our grad school days, we were the only ones in our programs, and now here are five new Ph.D. in the same place at the same time. Ajua!
Xochitl Flores-Marcial shares insights into Mexican Indigenous Traditions in the United States Southwest. Ricardo García skims across highly technical material in his paper, Yang and Yin: The Mayordomo and the Tenantzin in Indigenous Communities of Western Mexico.
Bringing the focus to El Lay, Daniela S. Gutiérrez V., in Casta, investigates Casta paintings related to los pobladores who founded the city. She shows how LA was founded by a congregation of black and mestizo gente, and how Spain's taxonomy for racial discrimination persisted onto these far western shores of Aztlán.
Michael Mathiowetz and Kristina Nielson wrap up the invigorating session. Mathiowetz illustrates two routes of cultural penetration south to north in Reconsidering El Santo Niño de Atocha del Santuario de Chimayó, New Mexico: The Prehispanic West Mexican Roots of a Chicano Cultural Tradition. Nielson keeps the conversation moving with her report on The Converging Histories of Danza Azteca.
Over this two day conference scheduled from 8 a.m. until 9 p.m., Cantú's time-allowed strategy allows a flowering of ideas, new professional relationships, quick hellos. It was good to say hi to poet photographer Claudia Hernandez, whose Today's Revolutionary Women of Color project soon adds Ana Castillo.
CSULA and Roberto Cantú hold conferences like this annually. Next year's conference will be Conference on Mariano Azuela and the Novel of the Mexican Revolution.
Visit the Anaya Conference webpage for details on the scholars and précis of the lectures at this fulfilling and satisfying celebration of Rudolfo Anaya's work.
Roberto Cantú praises the emerging scholars while asking a question. Reyna Grande and Maria Teresa Marquez listen.
Mario Acevedo signing for a reader. Read! raza. Everyone, Read!
Nancy Lorenza Green, Juan Flores, Alma Luz Villanueva, Javier B Pacheco, Anne Elizabeth Apfel
Andrea Hernandez Holm and the moderators of the Facebook team, Poets Responding to SB 1070 Poetry of Resistance, submit the work of five poets for La Bloga's May 6 On-line Floricanto:
• “Watching Cesar Chavez Sitting in the Center of the Theatre” by Nancy Lorenza Green
• “Mis versitos de las buenas noches” by Juan Flores
(“La SB1070, Una Verguenza para Arizona”)
• “Unconquered” by Alma Luz Villanueva
• “How’d we get this way?” by Javier B Pacheco
• “Migrants Working….” By Anne Elizabeth Apfel
Watching Cesar Chavez Sitting in the Center of the Theatre
by Nancy Lorenza Green
The film projects slivers
of so many people’s lives…my own
working in the fields
silenced voices of women and children
modern slavery alive and well
The power of transformative vision on film—
the amazing craft of seasoned actors
who project their spirits to sense
and feel and articulate profound meanings
Memories of everyday life
So many working families struggle to survive,
yet thrive on the knowledge that honest work
feeds a nation, nurtures the collective will
to live a peaceful, healthy life
A flood of tears when the film ends
Tears of longing for social justice
Tears of anger at the ignorance and injustice that prevails
Cathartic response to a call for action from beyond the grave:
Empowerment, self-determination reaffirmed
A writer, musician, and photographer, Nancy’s vision as an Afro-Chicana from the border region offers a unique perspective grounded on spiritual values.
She can be reached at: nancygreen9@yahoo.com
LA SB1070, UNA VERGÜENZA PARA ARIZONA
por Juan Flores
Nefasto aniversario se cumple este día
una ley tirana impuesta por la bruja
el corazón de muchas familias estruja
las separa y les ha robado la alegría.
Arizona se ha convertido en estado nazi
la gober preciosa como soberana absoluta
Arpaio es un ser dotado de mucho poder
como comisario comunista, casi, casi
los dos nomás pensando en cómo joder
aunque la verdad es que los dos son
hijos de… la misma mamá
Han de dispensar el florido lenguaje
pero con estos dos seres tan carajos
que solamente entienden a plumazos
hay que hablarles como el peladaje.
Ambos perdieron otra batalla legal
este lunes la Suprema Corte decidió
con gran tino dio les otro golpe letal
y la injusta ley casi les desapareció.
Apelación tras apelación han perdido
aunque mucho dinero le han metido
de las arcas del pueblo, por supuesto
pero ni así sus fans los quitan del puesto
pueslos siguen como simples borregos
los ensalzan y les aumentan sus egos.
Peroesta decisión es una victoria
conla que la Corte pasará a la historia
Definitivamente, seee laaa peeerdiooó…
Jan Brewer seee laaa peeerdiooó…
Juan Flores. Me gusta escribir desde muy joven. Trabaje en varios periodicos de Mexico, reporteando temas de politica e informacion general. Y en EU, en el periodico La Opinion, en el departamento Editorial y algunas veces colabore escribiendo temas de política. Actualmente estoy retirado.
UNCONQUERED
by Alma Luz Villanueva
I eat breakfast
and watch Moctezuma's
throat be slashed, the
conquest unfold,
Sor Juana at the
top/edge, encircled in
violet, her poet's
heart on fire, La
Virgen carried on a
banner, Coatlique in
disguise, her skulls
hidden under her
gentle dress, a
woman giving birth
with great IxChel's
help, as all women
are, umbilical cord
dangling from vagina,
child alive, survivor of
the conquest, I am
a survivor of the
conquest, a wild
mestiza child, my
poet's heart on
fire, I am the
dreamer, one of
thousands, Moctezuma
slaughtered, terrified of
our dreams, our visions,
now I sit, centuries
later, my dreams,
visions, memory,
intact- I see the
Great Books burning,
I weep, this I know,
dreams can't be
burned, I see
Sor Juana's
poet's heart on
fire,
as the woman's
vagina burns with
birth, IxChel singing,
"Dreamers, you have
survived, each century
your voices stronger,
sweeter, your poet's heart
unconquered, dream
new words,
new stories,
new Great Books, on
fire."
To Sor Juana's heart
*Written at Instituto Allende, San Miguel de
Allende, Mexico, while gazing at the magnificent mural of
Mexico's his/herstory, on fire, unconquered.
March 2014
Author of eight books of poetry, most recently, Soft Chaos (2009). A few poetry anthologies: The Best American Poetry, 1996, Unsettling America, A Century of Womens Poetry, Prayers For A Thousand Years, Inspiration from Leaders & Visionaries Around The World. Four novels: The Ultraviolet Sky, Naked Ladies, Lunas California Poppies, Song of the Golden Scorpion, and the short story collection, Weeping Woman, La Llorona and Other Stories. Some fiction anthologies: 500 Great Books by Women, From The Thirteenth Century, Caliente, The Best Erotic Writing From Latin America, Coming of Age in The 21st Century, Sudden Fiction Latino. The poetry and fiction has been published in textbooks from grammar to university, and is used in the US and abroad as textbooks.
Has taught in the MFA in creative writing program at Antioch University, Los Angeles, for the past eleven years. And is the mother of four, wonderful, grown human beings.
Alma Luz Villanueva now lives in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, for the past nine years, traveling the ancient trade routes to return to teach, and visit family and friends, QUE VIVA!! And taking trips throughout Mexico, working on a novel in progress, always the poetry, memory.
www.almaluzvillanueva.com
"How’d We Get This Way?"
by Javier B. Pacheco
And this is supposed to be a "Christian Nation"?
We've got the most homicides, homeless people, human trafficking,
abandoned veterans, cancerous elders, untreated mentally ill, apathy,
alienation, & overly-stimulated vulnerable children.
That fence you straddle
between hardness and softness
erects that great divide between us
where there is no visible drawbridge.
I’m stuck on the foggy bank
wondering what you put in the moat
what circles ‘round your corporal castle?
What electric fence barbs your vibe?
convenient separation, marking distances
no chance to retrace steps
to replay the hurricanes
there is no boundless room
no open majestic sky
only light-year distances
and emotional gaps I cannot fathom
finely-embroidered sentiments washed away
pebbles causing reverberating echoes
in the depths of our splendor caverns
in the cold abyss of avoidance, of neglect
as time takes its course
magic gold reverts to rotted tin
how did we allow the gentle tide to go out?
allowing the storm to stay,
bringing in the cold front
because your castle is a prison
your beliefs are set to stone,
imposing a motionless cloister effect
once again we’ve come to blows
without addressing the circumference
without finding out what circumstance
converted this garden to thistles
and thistles to desert,
altering our relationship?
thrusting us from Spring to Winter
from sincere friend to subtle foe?
Neglect feeds hardened adversaries
it does no better when its flesh and blood:
We went from weekly family dinners
to unfriendly distances, glacial dissolution;
instead of creating a harmony of belonging
of interpersonal nourishment
reconciling our separateness
we’ve become hesitant, benign strangers
operating only at the surface
distant and noncommittal
conventionalized duty and honor
erecting impenetrable barriers
people “too busy” to be family,
who cannot be questioned
carrying arsenals of automatic reprobation
like fully-loaded weapons, sensitive to the touch,
a ready Pavlov response to any hint of reprimand
shooting from the hip--the damage already done
we are merely corpses going through the motions
of removing splinters lodged in the heart,
distances aggravated by time and neglect
converted into carnivorous, territorial behavior
in an irrecoverable process of generational and sibling
rivalries
building better kinships with neighbors
than with blood relatives.
The Police now dress in full flak outfits
drive armored vehicles
are store-bought by wealthy contributors
use deadly force dispassionately
shoot and ask questions later
“Community Policing” is an old fairy tale
when the authorities stray from
love, fairness, righteousness, and mercy;
squashed vibratory rate.
Today’s devils and derelicts are indistinguishable
masses are easily misled by magicians,
by the virtuous guise of charismatic high priests
a special language that can only express appearance.
How did people lose sight of the way to live?
How did we stray from our own intuition?
The Essence sleeps deeply,
people are bottled up in ancient beliefs,
stuck totally in the physical,
trading inward powers
for outward chutzpah
consumption trumps courage
we’ve enabled death
and disabled life
oblivious to our ethereal, and astral bodies
oblivious to the quality of quietness
drowned out by the clamoring strobe box
and false oratory of modern barbarians.
Migrant Working…
by Anne Elizabeth Apfel
Hold up...Hold up here....
No wait a minute let me get this straight...
Your not worried about me taking this job....Right?
This job with my hands in the dirt....
Picking your pumpkins and watermelons and apples...
This job where I put that food on your table...
Cause if you were.. I wouldn't be here...
Why aren't civil rights civil?
You're worried about me bettering myself and taking your job..
Aren't you? That's what this is really about....
That's the darn truth....
And you know what ..? You should be scared...
I mean you should be really afraid...
Because while my hands are here in the dirt pickin your dinner...
I'm getting my body fit and filled with sunlight.
What is an elite society...?
I'm going to live many years longer than you are....
So you can keep that job....I'm not interested..
And you know what....? You couldn't do this if you tried..
You would last five minutes out here in the heat...
You're fat..your tired..you're lazy and you've lost your ability to think rationally.
I hope you're not gonna rely on those bankers to help you when your old...
Why are they paying for education...when they are only getting programmed?
Me...I can still grow something...Me and mine..we'll survive well into the future...
That lie your telling yourself that your healthier than me.....Get your face outta my cart..stupid
That's a Recipe for disaster...When your society collapses...
One Society...falls down because it's women would rather polish their nails and spray their hair..
Than get outside and plant a tree....or a strawberry or ....anything .....that touches the dirt..
Their men can no longer understand the farmer they once were from under their necktie..
I would be crying too if I were you..I really would be...You're the Devil...
Why are they going into the Church to pretend to talk to God...?
Migrant Working…
by Anne Elizabeth Apfel
Hold up...Hold up here....
No wait a minute let me get this straight...
Your not worried about me taking this job....Right?
This job with my hands in the dirt....
Picking your pumpkins and watermelons and apples...
This job where I put that food on your table...
Cause if you were.. I wouldn't be here...
Why aren't civil rights civil?
You're worried about me bettering myself and taking your job..
Aren't you? That's what this is really about....
That's the darn truth....
And you know what ..? You should be scared...
I mean you should be really afraid...
Because while my hands are here in the dirt pickin your dinner...
I'm getting my body fit and filled with sunlight.
What is an elite society...?
I'm going to live many years longer than you are....
So you can keep that job....I'm not interested..
And you know what....? You couldn't do this if you tried..
You would last five minutes out here in the heat...
You're fat..your tired..you're lazy and you've lost your ability to think rationally.
I hope you're not gonna rely on those bankers to help you when your old...
Why are they paying for education...when they are only getting programmed?
Me...I can still grow something...Me and mine..we'll survive well into the future...
That lie your telling yourself that your healthier than me.....Get your face outta my cart..stupid
That's a Recipe for disaster...When your society collapses...
One Society...falls down because it's women would rather polish their nails and spray their hair..
Than get outside and plant a tree....or a strawberry or ....anything .....that touches the dirt..
Their men can no longer understand the farmer they once were from under their necktie..
I would be crying too if I were you..I really would be...You're the Devil...
Why are they going into the Church to pretend to talk to God...?
Island was featured as the cover story of the Yellow Medicine Review along with a photo of her feet as the book cover. Her next stop was opening for Tom House at the Pratt Opera House in Albion, New York. She would one day like to read with the other La Bloga writers. Her inspiration for the poem "Migrant Workers" came from watching them in the fields and orchards in New York. She had a dream when visiting Arizona of the people of South America flooding into North America and teaching us a better way to live. The internal conversations she has with men and women as she drives by in her own life often inspiring her writing. Often she would like to pull over and photograph the migrant workers working but so far has not gathered the courage. Maybe this year will be the year of the Migrant Worker being seen as a part of who we all are as humans. Anne is a Trudellite....ask her what that means and she will begin to tell you the story of how she learned to have an entire informed conversation about Hemp by the writings of a poet whose work she admires.
Thank you, Ana Castillo, for a fabulous reading and a sensational book.
ReplyDeleteSherryl Vint, a great conference. Nalo, let's make the workshop model happen.
Today's On-line Floricanto poets, you sound great!
mvs
Wow - what a post!You set the bar high, Msedano.
ReplyDeleteGreat reporting, Sedano. You do us proud. - RudyG
ReplyDelete