Poetry in the Air/Mission Poetry Series/ Martin Espada

Melinda Palacio

Tomorrow in Santa Barbara!

The Mission Poetry Series is one of the best poetry events. And, yes, I'm saying this because I am one of the curators. Emma Trelles titles this season's event: "Inventing a Country: Three Poets in Spring." The title is taken from a line from "In a Country," by Larry Lewis. Tomorrow, the Mission Poetry Series presents Gabriella Klein, Lee Herrick, and Pamela Davis. Here's a sampling of each poet.

Elsewhere Desire

By Gabriella Klein

As soon as you read of the boom you read

they have moved on. The gamblers, the outlaws,

the Argonauts in a cold stream.

The miners are ghosts. The mines have been deserted.

Those lawless quick towns, the fabricated.

Once there were prospects, now there is sky, and elsewhere

desire has moved on.

Desert your expectation. A ghost town is nothing less.

The wallpaper frayed, the stamped tin

Corroded. Boredom and its reflection in glass.

I fill it up with muttering but still I am alone.

Except for heartbreak. Sometimes a hunger

Means chewing your own cheek.

Monotony, monotony. What I call gold.

My California

By Lee Herrick

Here, an olive votive keeps the sunset lit,

the Korean twenty-somethings talk about hyphens,

graduate school and good pot. A group of four at a window

table in Carpinteria discuss the quality of wines in Napa Valley versus Lodi.

Here, in my California, the streets remember the Chicano

poet whose songs still bank off Fresno’s beer soaked gutters

and almond trees in partial blossom. Here, in my California

we fish out long noodles from the pho with such accuracy

you’d know we’d done this before. In Fresno, the bullets

tire of themselves and begin to pray five times a day.

In Fresno, we hope for less of the police state and more of a state of grace.

In my California, you can watch the sun go down

like in your California, on the ledge of the pregnant

twenty-second century, the one with a bounty of peaches and grapes,

red onions and the good salsa, wine, and chapchae.

Here in my California, paperbacks are free,

farmer’s markets are twenty four hours a day and

always packed, the trees and water have no nails in them,

the priests eat well, the homeless eat well.

Here, in my California, everywhere is Chinatown,

everywhere is K-town, everywhere is Armeniatown,

everywhere is a Little Italy. Less confederacy.

No internment in the Valley.

Better history texts for the juniors.

In my California, free sounds and free touch. Free questions, free answers.

Free songs from parents and poets, those hopeful bodies of light.

  

 Blind Date with Baudelaire

By Pamela Davis 

He gallops to a stop in a silk-plumed carriage, cravat loose

at throat. I’m a party dress craving ruin. We careen mad

crooked streets. Down to the Seine. Up to Montmartre’s

butte. Charles unbuttons my skin to sniff my bones.

Summoning our future by moony lamplight,

his absinthe whisper, we'll twine side by

side. Pilgrims will come, read odes to _

our stones. Leave roses. Red

granite kisses.

The night we wed, Charles

Gives me his spleen.

Pourquoi pas? Two

poets—one dead,

one buried alive—

in the same

plot.

*****

Martin Espada

It's always exciting news when Martín Espada has a new book. Listen to an interview with Grace Cavalieri and hear this fabulous poet read from his new book, Vivas to Those Who Have Failed. Brought to you by the Library of Congress. 

Martín Espada

Click here for Martín Espada's audio: https://www.loc.gov/poetry/media/avfiles/poet-poem-martin-espada.mp3