DDLM On-line Floricanto

On-line Floricanto for el Día de los Muertos
Guadalupe González Pérez, Sonia Gutiérrez, John Guzlowski, Ramón Piñero, Jabez W. Churchill, Jolaoso Prettythunder, Edward Vidaurre, Betty Sanchez, Sharon Elliott, lia elides

Presented by Michael Sedano and the Moderators of Poets Responding to SB 1070: Poetry of Resistance, A Facebook Poetry Community

“Muerte desarraigada” Por Guadalupe González Pérez
“Notes on the Holy Ghost and Her Atheist Daughter” By Sonia Gutiérrez
“the dead are breathing” By John Guzlowski
“All at Once” By Ramón Piñero
“Voces/Voices” By Jabez W. Churchill
“untitled” By Jolaoso Prettythunder
“Leaving the Candle On Overnight” By Edward Vidaurre
“LA CATRINA” Por Betty Sanchez
“Alas para los fallecidos” By Sharon Elliott
“Insomnia” By lia eliades


“Muerte desarraigada”
Por Guadalupe González Pérez

Horrenda pesadilla
aurora ensangrentada
desgarras lentamente
la fuerza de mi alma

Me abraza la nostalgia
hoy amanezco ausente
extraño sus presencia
la fuerza que me daban

Pasajes de mi historia
mi corazón se quiebra
como follaje seco
hoy se los lleva el viento

Te he visto vacilante
armada de temores
pasar frente a mi casa
muy mal intencionada

Rondaste nuestro lecho
temida y esperada
te vencimos oh muerte
aun no te esperaba

Recordatorio absurdo
su piel has mutilado
mas no sus intenciones
extiende hoy sus alas

Dejaste una misiva
carta que marca mi alma
vivir para contarlo
sin que me quede nada

Baluarte a nuestras vidas
lección en piel grabada
vida te tengo en vida
muerte desarraigada



Notes on the Holy Ghost and Her Atheist Daughter
By Sonia Gutiérrez

“Amá—promise me when you die you will return and talk to me,”
I request months before a tall Seqouia tree with long emaciated branches
elongates her last breaths.
I.

When I am finally ready,
I call out, Mamá,
and the laptop turns on.
I talk with you, floating electrical current,
who flickers lights.

We talk for about ten minutes—
I say my goodbyes.
Gracias Mamá por tomarte el tiempo
para hablar conmigo.
Mother always on point; the laptop turns off.

II.

You are looming, emitting soft gentle tinkers
above the glass bulb holders.
Who knew your presence could make
such sweet sounds even in spirit?

How do you that? Are you holding an invisible fork?

III.

You are already in the room when Father returns
to celebrate you.

He opens the guest room,
and you turn off the lights on a whim.
I tease Dad, “Es mi Amá.
¿Qué hiciste pa’ que te apagara la luz?”

IV.

Queen of the Cempasuchil, on your day,
family comes from distant places to be with you,
our Holy Ghost.

The tamales and champurrado are ready.
Come and eat. Oh, please don't hide behind
the white columns. We are all here waiting
with our bony faces.

V.

Around here, in front of your bedroom window,
your green thumb is still present in the earth.
Outside, a thorny rose bush blooms the heaviest of reds.
Mother, you look so majestic dressed in deep green foliage.

In dreams, wearing a crown of flowers and an obsidian face,
you tell me, your atheist daughter, Dios te ilumine, Mija.




the dead are breathing
By John Guzlowski

you can hear them
in the night
when your body
gathers into sleep
& your breath
becomes all
that’s left of you

listen




All at Once
By Ramón Piñero

time is this illusion
we buy into;
a loop interrupted
by accidental
explosions of
stars and self
awareness

we live together
all at once
crying and
singing
a la misma
vez

we love and
hate each other
all at once
at the
same time

there is no
yesterday
just things
we've said
and things
we've done

no hay mañanas
no tomorrows
just things left
unsaid
things left
undone

we live life
together
all at once
sometimes
kindly
other times
not

we love
together
all at once
sometimes
softly
other times
bravely
with little
regard
to who
we are

we die together
all at once
reborn
together
all at once

we fool ourselves
everyday
believing the lies
we tell
all at once
to each other
expecting
something
different

pero todo
sigue igual
it's all
the same

we'll make
this trip again
or perhaps
wait for the
train to come by
once again

we are
here together
all at once
occupying
the
continuum

we are
the prince
the lackey
the hero
the coward
the lover and
killer extraordinaire

understanding
who we are and when,
is the key to
understanding
life

© Ramón Piñero 10/15/16

Voces/Voices
By Jabez W. Churchill

Echo de menos
el sonido de sus voces
tanto tiempo alejadas
que sólo las discierno
en sueños muy profundos,
ecos marchitos
que apenas me alcanzan
por escencias medio olvidadas
de visiones amarilleadas.
?Adónde van?
que la mía
tan rala como las suyas,
las siguiera y se colmara
para que las oyera
una y otra vez
claramente por la noche
y tocarles las caras
que tanto yo amaba,
sentirme sus dedos
acariciandome la mía,
no cerrarme los ojos al besar
luego sólo a despertar
sino recorrer el cielo de su mirada
deleitandome al amanecer
en su reflejo.

Voices

I miss the sound
so long, so far away
that I may only hear
in rarest dreams
the memory of their voices,
echos soft and sweet,
that faintly reach,
carried on forgotten
half-remembered scents
and yellowed visions.
Where do they go?
That mine, like theirs
grown thin and tired,
may follow and be made whole.
That I may plainly
hear them as before
time and time again,
full upon the night.
Touch with eager hands
faces that I've loved.
Not close my eyes to kiss
and wake alone.
That I may walk the heaven in their eyes
reveling at dawn
in its reflection.




Untitled
By Jolaoso Prettythunder

i married the dark pines
and mycelium//renamed
the soldier moon into grief then praise
120 seasons saw me turn
from human to animal
then back again
it was too much, i walked
out of that skin

the night is naked and bows down
to greet the red badger
i no longer try to see hear smell you
i know what sorrow is and does
i am drinking the fermented dew
this odd mist
and can't remember desire
this side of the hour




Leaving the Candle On Overnight
By Edward Vidaurre

I.
Invites the dead

I wait for the hands
of my dead father to hold mine.
There’s plenty of room in my home now
for his visit, his luggage, his disease, his dead suit.

Leaving a candle on overnight
Invites roaming spirits that walk
in the shadows of the moon’s smile.

II.
She waits for her father to visit and sit on our couch
She bakes a chocolate cake in her dreams with strawberries,
just as he loved it. She has a place mat that’s been empty
for too long now. I see him with his long fingers to his mouth
telling me to not wake her. He loves her silence and sound sleep.
He cries into her hair and walks slowly through the walls.

Leaving a candle on overnight

Invites the dead men we love and miss

III.
She goes to bed most nights not knowing:
one man sits at her side feeding her mangoes
while she sleeps and dreams of dance class and storytelling

the other man sits at her feet
trying to communicate in a language that was forced back to
the jungles of his country.

He begs to be called abuelo




LA CATRINA
Por Betty Sanchez

No se si lo habrán notado
Me fascina el buen vestir
La catrina me han llamado
Que mas les puedo decir

El nombre no me molesta
Me han llamado de lo peor
No me digno a dar respuesta
Pues soy un ser superior

Calavera garbancera
Me apodaba un tal Posada
Me trató de mal manera
Su opinión estaba formada

Me usó para criticar
A indígenas y mestizos
Cuyo origen intentaban disfrazar
Llevando adornos postizos

Encuerada me pintaba
con un sombrero de plumas
Con eso representaba
A los que vivían en brumas

Querían lucir Europeos
Mas su piel los delataba
Pero se veían mas feos
El disfraz no les quedaba

Mas tarde un tal Rivera
Se compadeció de mi
Me incluyó en La Alameda
Y elegante aparecí

Pase a ser la catrina
Enredada en una estola
Junto a Frida me fascina
Ya no me siento tan sola

Hay un dicho que recita
Cría fama y échate a dormir
Aunque me digan maldita
No escaparan de morir

No se confíen de su suerte
Ni desperdicien la vida
La visita de la muerte
Llega desnuda o vestida

Aprovechen el momento
Pues tengo una larga lista
Para otorgarles tormento
No importa que sean poetas
O que presuman de artistas.




Alas para los fallecidos
By Sharon Elliott

humo de
un tabaco grueso
entre labios pintados rojos
regalo de la calle sagrada




Insomnia
By lia eliades

Insomnia wrests my sheets
breathes on my neck
I am on fire.
In the stand of trees, scarlet flickers.
But why wake me now
birds sleep still.
Woodpeckers rest their weary red heads
how their necks must ache.
Mother Doe with her haunches curled
beneath the towering rhododendron.
Cream spotted fawn tail wriggling
nestling into mother for nourishment.

Ahh perhaps that is it.
She is gone.

I attempt to squeeze the thought out.
My eyes closed so tight
cheeks rise up forming a grimace.
I never wanted to remember
her body going by conveyor to the fire
in the middle of the night.
That would be too much to bear.
Smokestack coughs
bits of my mother.
The letting go
I can handle,
but not the crisping of her bird bones
and fragile filo skin.
Rose, arose on her way
but her remains remain
The day we lay her to rest
I held her one last time
not around shoulders
or with her head in my hands
or bodies pressed together in an attempt to hold her up.
No
a simple square box
of smooth veneer
no nicks
no scratches
in upturned palms
fingers spread wide
She weighed nothing
Not burdensome at all
She weighed nothing.

The weight of this world
those final years
sparked and popped away in a funeral pyre
Pointed sun pierces through
irises wide
to face the day
I never wanted
to remember
the fire.



Meet the Poets
“Muerte desarraigada” Por Guadalupe González Pérez
“Notes on the Holy Ghost and Her Atheist Daughter” By Sonia Gutiérrez
“the dead are breathing” By John Guzlowski
“All at Once” By Ramón Piñero
“Voces/Voices” By Jabez W. Churchill
“untitled” By Jolaoso Prettythunder
“Leaving the Candle On Overnight” By Edward Vidaurre
“LA CATRINA” Por Betty Sanchez
“Alas para los fallecidos” By Sharon Elliott
“Insomnia” By lia eliades

Guadalupe González Pérez. From the generation of 1971, Guadalupe was born in Brownsville, Tx, raised and educated in Matamoros, Tamaulipas Mexico.
Graduated and certified from Law School in Mexico. She became a Bilingual Certified Teacher by the State of Texas.
Daughter of Agapito Gonzalez and Martha Perez, union and community leaders in Matamoros, grew up learning the impact and importance of community service as a factor for change.
She migrated with her children, Marcelo and Natalia Huerta-Gonzalez, to Brownsville, Tx. Looking for an opportunity to improve their lives.
She found a voice to share the essence of her greatest passions, reading, writing and telling stories, stories that reflect moments of struggle and light, narrating the beauty of everyday life.
Her writing reveals her interests, the work and history of her land and people, reality often raw and always changing.


De la generación del 71, Guadalupe es originaria de Brownsville Tx, criada y formada en Matamoros, Tamaulipas Mexico. Graduada y certificada de la Escuela de Derecho en México. Se acreditó como Maestra Bilingüe por el Estado de Texas. Hija de Agapito González y Martha Pérez, líderes obreros y comunitarios en Matamoros, creció aprendiendo en casa el impacto y la trascendencia del servicio comunitario como factor de cambio. Migró con sus hijos Marcelo y Natalia Huerta-González a Brownsville, Tx. buscando una oportunidad para mejorar sus vidas. Encuentra en la escritura una voz para compartir lo fundamental de sus más grandes pasiones, leer, escribir y contar historias, historias que reflejan momentos de lucha y luz, reflejo de la belleza de lo cotidiano. Su escritura revela su interés por el quehacer y la historia de su pueblo, realidad muchas veces cruda y siempre cambiante.

Sonia Gutiérrez’s teaches English composition and critical thinking and writing. Her poems have appeared in the San Diego Poetry Annual, Konch Magazine, and Poetry of Resistance: Voices for Social Change. Her fiction has appeared in the London Journal of Fiction, Huizache, and AlternaCtive PublicaCtions. Sonia’s bilingual poetry collection, Spider Woman / La Mujer Araña, is her debut publication. She is a contributing editor for The Writer’s Response (Cengage Learning, 2016). Her manuscripts, Kissing Dreams from a Distance, a novel, and Legacy / Herencia, her second poetry collection, are seeking publication. Currently, she is moderating Poets Responding to SB 1070 and working on her manuscript, Sana sana colita de rana.

John Guzlowski was born in a refugee camp in German after WWII. His writing has appeared in Garrison Keillor’s Writer’s Almanac, Ontario Review, North American Review, Rattle, and elsewhere. His memoirs of his parents’ experiences as slave laborers in Nazi Germany appear in his book Echoes of Tattered Tongues: Memory Unfolded. Of Guzlowski’s writing about the war, Nobel Laureate Czeslaw Milosz said, “He has an astonishing ability for grasping reality.”

Ramón Piñero is exiled in Central Florida

Jabez W. Churchill, poet laureate of the City of Ukiah, emeritus, was born in Northern California. Educated in the U.S., Argentina, and Cuba. Publications include two chapbooks and two books with Kulupi Press: Durmiendo Con Fantasmas/Sleeping With Ghosts and El Velo/The Veil, as well as in numerous journals in both English and Spanish. Poetry tours include Spain, Cuba, and British Colombia. Civilly disobedient since 1971. I have two muses. Dos musas tengo yo. One speaks to me in ingles. La otra en espanol.

Edward Vidaurre is the author of four books. I Took My Barrio On A Road Trip, (Slough Press 2013), Insomnia (El Zarape Press 2014), Beautiful Scars: Elegiac Beat Poems (El Zarape Press 2015), and his latest collection Chicano Blood Transfusion (FlowerSong Books) was published this year. Vidaurre is the founder of Pasta, Poetry, and Vino--a monthly open mic gathering of artists, poets, and musicians. He resides in McAllen, TX with his wife and daughter

Norma Beatriz Sánchez, poeta mexicana. Miembro activo del grupo literario Escritores del Nuevo Sol desde 2003. Finalista del concurso de poesía en español, Colectivo Verso Activo. Sus poemas se han publicado en las antologías Voces y Cuentos del Nuevo Sol, The Border Crossed Us, Poesía en Vuelo, Soñadores; Mujeres de Maíz Zine 10 y 13, y St. Sucia VI edición. Ha contribuido en La Palabra, La Bloga, y Poetas Respondiendo a la la Ley SB1070

Sharon Elliott has been a writer and poet activist over several decades beginning in the anti-war and civil rights movements in the 1960s and 70s, and four years in the Peace Corps in Nicaragua and Ecuador, especially in multicultural women’s issues. She is a Moderator of Poets Responding to SB1070, and has featured in poetry readings in the San Francisco Bay area. Her work has been published in several anthologies and her poem “Border Crossing” appears in the anthology entitled Poetry of Resistance: Voices for Social Justice, Francisco X. Alarcón and Odilia Galván Rodriguez, eds. She has read it in Los Angeles at AWP and La Pachanga 2016 book launch, in San Francisco and at the Féis Seattle Céiliedh in Port Townsend, WA. Her book, Jaguar Unfinished, was published by Prickly Pear Press, 2012. She was an awardee of Best Poem of 2012 by La Bloga, for The Day of Little Comfort.

Jolaoso Pretty Thunder is a common earth-woman. She lives in the woods of Northern California with her family and two dogs Rosie Farstar and Ilumina Holy Dog. She’s a practitioner and student of herbal medicine (Western, Vedic, TCM, and Lukumi). She is also an ordained minister of the First Nations Church, and founder of The Cloud Women’s Dream Society. She is a well-traveled though reluctant poet, who loves southern rock, porch swings, pickup trucks, cooking, campfires, lightning, steak, gathering and making medicine, and singing with friends and family.

Lia Eliades - A creative heart from the lower east side of New York City, left to explore the world and has lived in Thailand, Indonesia, China and now Western Australia. The past 20 years have been spent working the land and writing on a broad acre farm on the edge of the Outback.