Michael Sedano
What does that mean, “like a man”? The question runs through a reader’s head throughout the eleven chapter title novella that Christine Granados opens with. It’s an arresting story about a pregnant woman caught in a pair of love and sex triangles, mother issues, other-woman troubles, and trouble in general.
People from both sides of the El Paso border will be coming to the funeral, politely looking the other way. Así somos, I guess, maybe a case of women will be women. Or is it Moni is acting like a man and turnabout is what it is? Again, that provocative issue.
Members of the second triangle will be crossing over for the funeral. The mourners will be Moni’s half-sister's mother. Half because Moni’s father had two familias. One on that side, the other on this side. There’s a lot of tension in this plot that readers will have to keep sorting out. Will Moni drink the curandera’s tea and abort? Will her father’s other wife like the daughter of her part-time husband? After all, Moni and her sister from another mother are compañeras. Can Moni defeat the anger that roils in her?
Is being tough and taking it—the pain, the angst, the guilt—‘fighting like a man”? Is having a husband and a lover “fighting like a man”? Is brazen treatment of a loving partner “fighting like a man”? Granados doesn’t spell it out and it’s up to her readers to figure it out. Or just sit there, read the words, and let stuff happen. Take it like a man, que no?
Much as that opening novella holds one’s perplexed interest, the short fiction comprising the book’s second half will enchant, delight, perplex, furrow brows. The rich variety of character and story in the novella and the book’s seven short stories make Fight Like A Man & Other Stories a rewarding addition to the corpus of chicana literature. Indeed, here is a gem of Chicana literature.
The woman voice of the writer rings with the timbre of silver bells, clean, distinctive, and memorable. My favorite is “stupids.” The story is not the strongest in the collection—Granados and her editor bury “stupids” in the middle of the seven story lineup. But “stupids” takes one's heart and thrashes it good.
Springing from Abelardo’s timeless masterpiece, “Stupid America,” the story introduces three special education students and a first-year teacher, a local product but of the westside, not the brown and poor part of town where the three “stupids” live.
Meet Turi, a hyperactive kid perpetually distracted by whatever grabs his momentary attention. Jimmy, who never talks and whom the first-person narrator, Jennifer, believes probably doesn’t speak English. He does. And Turi is curious and bright. Mr. Hernandez pulls that out of them.
Jennifer is six-foot-something, most gente would say, a big girl. The other kids call her manflora, dyke, Lurch. As a result—and a lot of other factors—Jennifer has a chip on her shoulder and no expectations of benefit from the classroom. She says she hates school. Then Mr. Hernandez asks her to get out of her uncomfortably confining schooldesk. Based on past experience Jennifer figures she’s being sent to the Principal.
Hernandez pulls the desk away and replaces it with a table and his teacher’s chair. For the first time in a long time, Jennifer has a comfortable seat that she’s not banging her shins on all scrunched up. Her attitude begins looking positive.
Go to college. Tactile learning. White people on teevee talking down to the brown gente of the city. White teachers in other classes talking down to the dumb kids. They learn the word “patronizing.” They learn about Oñate and the invaders from the south, that the first Thanksgiving was in El Paso, not back East. They learn. They have possibilities. These kids, if Mr. Hernandez can keep them moving in this direction, aren’t going “to die with one thousand masterpieces hanging only from his mind.”
Christine Granados has taken a line from another wondrous poem and made it heartfelt. I sure wish that abomination De Vos would read and understand “stupids” because she would see how beautiful they are, and be ashamed. Hernandez teaches the kids, the foreign reader, they--we--too, are America.
Order your copies of Fight Like A Man & Other Stories We Tell Our Children publisher-direct or have your local independent bookseller get your copies. For sure, get it into your local libraries. Fight Like A Man & Other Stories We Tell Our Children is a beautifully written work owing to its setting, characters, and interesting literary style, puro bicultural without half trying, and completely gratifying.
Route 66 Detour to Literary Fun in Historic Site
It was the kind of invitation to pique a person’s interest. Poet Karen Cordova, author of Farolito, and Andrea Watson, publisher of 3: A Taos Press, had organized access to a pair of historic properties, the Workman and Temple Family Homestead Museum, and the John A. Rowland House.
Cordova and Watson, under the aegis of The Taos Arts Council and the site, engaged poets from across the U.S. and historical chroniclers to "take a detour in time or space and create original work inspired by Route 66." Take A Detour From Route 66: Taos To L.A. engaged the poets and audience in just that.
On the first day of the festival, 22 presenters included poets, musicians, essayists, storytellers, and a chef. The second day, at the rarely open to the public Rowland house, nine performers filled the bill.
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| The readers take a tour of the grounds and house before their reading. Guests moved from reading to reading and got to enjoy a view of the entire property. |
The reading process was interesting and engaging. The guests gathered into small groups and docents led them to the rooms and lawns where panels of readers performed five times. Totally cool, doing five presentations, adapting to the audiences, assessing each performance and installing subtle changes in delivery.
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| Docent shares her excitement at the upcoming reading in the Center Room of the Workman House |
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| Madelyn Garner shares her work to an appreciative audience. |
After the two hours of peripatetic audience experience, guests and readers congregated in the shady walkway outside the security-fenced structures for tasting of diner chili by Cordon Blue instructor Chef Ernest Miller. I displayed a set of flora and nature portraits printed archivally--they will stay color-true for one hundred years. I was delighted that Melinda Palacio took home a memorable foto of flying Great Egrets. A sudden windstorm played havoc with the 13" x 19" prints.
I hope this can become a Springtime annual event. If the freeways cooperate, and Karen S. Córdova and Andrea L. Watson have the energy and ganas, gente across the region and nation will want to motor west and get hip to a place that’s oh so pretty.
On-line Floricanto: Writing On Water
On March 11 2011, the Tohoku earthquake devastated northern Japan and less than an hour after it hit, tsunami waves crashed Japan’s coastline. The tsunami waves reached run-up heights, which is how far the wave surges inland above sea level, of up to 128 feet and traveled inland as far as 6 miles. The tsunami flooded an estimated area of approximately 217 square miles. The number of confirmed dead surpassed 18,000. In addition to other very serious damage, the tsunami caused a cooling system failure at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant, which resulted in a level 7 nuclear meltdown and release of radioactive materials. About 300 tons of radioactive water continued to leak from the plant every day into the Pacific Ocean, affecting fish and other marine life.
With pipelines, fracking, and other forms of dirty energy dependency, the fresh and salt waters all over this planet are threatened. Tlazocamati.
“Fukushima Extinction” By Odilia Galván Rodríguez
“Clear Gold” By Dee Allen
“Water” By Jeff Cannon
“Trouble... the Water” By Edward Vidaurre
“Rupture” By Sharon Elliott
“Untitled” By Jasmin Garcia
“Water” By Lana Maree Haas
“In Solidarity with the Water Protectors” By Leah Wiegel
“Bless our Water” By JoyAnne O’Donnell
“Water Crossing” By Maurisa Thompson
Fukushima Extinction
By Odilia Galván Rodríguez
“Japan Declares Crisis As Fukushima
Reactor 2 Begins Falling Into Ocean”
March, 2017
2011
earthquake triggered
tsunami struck
700 miles of coastline
disaster at Fukushima
nuclear power plant
core damage
daily 300 tons
of radioactive water
flows into the ocean
Tepco, Fukushimi Daiichi’s
owners refused to build
sea walls to protect
the plant in the event
of such a disaster
walls to keep out death
too expensive
then their disaster
dealing with the disaster
while radiation
steadily continues
leaking into our seas
as pacific ocean slowly dies
mutant flowers and
plant life on the rise
massive die-offs
of marine life
spikes in cancer
along the Pacific Coasts
radioactive isotopes
cesium-131, 134, and 137
soluble in seawater
so radiation easily spreads
2017
death continues
it leaks and drifts
crippled Fukushima
not contained
its melted bones
continue to slip
into our sea
poisoned the Pacific
radiation levels up
from 73 Sieverts in 2011
lethal radiation
levels unimaginable
melted core damages
uncontrollable
fission unprecedented
now 530 Sieverts
per hour
An 8 Sieverts dose
incurable and fatal
gaping hole two square yards wide
caused by melted nuclear fuel
and no body knows where the fuel is
Clear Gold
By Dee Allen
Seventy-one percent of Earth.
Sixty percent of us.
Gathering grey clouds
Streaks of lightning
Followed by thunder-roll-----
Gaia takes another shower
Cleansed each time, refreshed by this-----
Absorbing into leaves from rain
Deer lapping it up from woodland streams
Pathway to the safety of the river bottom
for swimming fish
Cities’ steel veins flow it through our faucets
Matrix of life, sated by this-----
Corporations
Monopolise
Keep private
What was formerly free-----
Sold back to us, plastic bottles of this-----
Fear lingers in hearts
In some who care
That in future wars,
Soldiers or drones will fight
To the death, final prize: this-----
Clear gold.
Seventy-one percent of Earth.
Sixty percent of us.
OF GREATER VALUE
THAN ANY
SOLID GOLD.
Water
By Jeff Cannon
water, I run you, splash you, drink you, wash with you
swim in you, pee in you, brush my teeth with you
flush you, sprinkle you,
know you, forget you, abuse you
leave you turned on, use more of you than i need to
hear about what people dump into you that sickens you, kills you
makes me an accessory to your murder
the pillage that destroys your liveliness for my children and theirs
I‘ll try to save you
sometimes i forget
i'll respect you more, though, since so many don't, just take advantage of you
i'll tell others to remember you, take care of you
recognize how dear you are for us to live, and never take myself or my kind so seriously
as to forget you, your life and the life you afford other creatures not
just those of my kind that take themselves as supreme beings
entitled to do whatever they want to each other, other creatures, you
our water
Trouble… the Water
By Edward Vidaurre
When a poor kid sees clean clear water
he envisions a treasure, a hope
have you ever seen a murky
opaque wishing well?
When a woman kneels
along rivers edge to wash her sheets,
she thinks, a new beginning, a cleansing,
when was the last time you washed your clothes in oil?
When a thirsty stray dog walks for miles
along the gutters of this nation
wishing to quench his thirst
where does he find relief?
When have you seen
dogs or cats, blood dripping
from their jaw hair
laying on your front porch content?
It happens, blood and oil mix with mother earth’s tears, and
we watch as it happens. Soon we'll be drenched in oil
or blood, and water will be what we search for
at the bottom of our wishing wells.
Rupture
By Sharon Elliott
water
can fracture stone
a slow drip drip drip
incessant grief
marked by tears
and offerings
no longer pure
she has not been cared for
defiled
by abuse and neglect
rock
is prepared to receive
embraces
the rupture
bears water on its back
filters her through
impenetrable membranes
of memory
and longing
agrees
to go on as two
Untitled
By Jasmin Garcia
If you love me, do not love me.
I am not somebody to love.
I am undeserving of kisses and warm hugs.
I am undeserving of dinner and a movie.
My mother is a Hurricane,
She birthed a Tornado.
I know what I am capable of doing.
I am a strong person
Because I have to be.
Nobody will be my strength.
Nobody could give me strength.
I am winds.
Powerful winds that drown men
Every so often
With a glare and if that doesn't work
Then I smile.
I am youthful but toxic.
My soul is old but wise.
I am the rain.
Do not overdose on antidepressants,
I told you not to love me in the first place.
I will drown you
And everything that matters most.
I have a tendency
Of filling lungs with smoke and dust.
Do not breathe me
Thinking I am a cigarette to pleasure you
For 10 minutes.
I am not the smoke you crave.
I am a tornado.
If you love me, do not love me.
I am not somebody to love.
My spirit shows no mercy to your bones.
Water
By Lana Maree Haas
I saw you in the river,
when ripples of green
were humming and singing,
they moved like glass,
unencumbered and laughing!
I knew it was you,
because when I knelt to touch you,
my fingers were blessed
and my face was caressed.
In Solidarity with the Water Protectors
By Leah Wiegel
After you put the mace and hose down
After you followed orders
After you did your job,
and did it well
After you raise the taser to the face
After the shock leaves your grip
After the dogs are unleashed
and the flesh pierced,
and and the skin burnt, and the eyes red
After they fell down, hard, and you leave, proud
After your trucks roll away
and you take off the holster,
and hang up the vest, and lay down the gun
Do you go home to a wife?
Does she ask how your day was?
How do you answer her?
What do you say?
Bless Our Water
By JoyAnne O’Donnell
Holy is our water
sparkling life
flowing with waves of truth
cleansing our swim
on the joy of a wave
bringing angels of blue light
shining so tender and bright.
Water Crossing
By Maurisa Thompson
where would you go if you had to run?
through the canebrake, machete leaves
that draw less blood than the lash—
run from those that steal children
run, would you wade in the water
wade in the water children
god’s gonna trouble el agua, las fábricas
pockmarking the land like plantations
the two shirts on your back worth
10 cents per day—
run, on the snake-back of a train
burnish your footprints
from the earth with leaves
from the sand with wool
because they are always behind you
smelling for your blood your body
they would pick from their teeth, run
where would you go to find your mother?
because they think you hold a different god
on your tongue—run from the vice grips
from the armies who twist bayonets in your womb
who forge hells of fire falling from the sky
from bullets that blistered the walls
like tracks of heroin needles on arms
where would you run to?
what possible death
would you choose?
would you dare to ask whatever angels
for safe passage and water to cross
would you set your compass, your eyes
on a star tilting in your vision
and run, run, run, run, run—
and if you could finally stop running
if your heart for a day a week a century
pulled back from throttling your lungs
and rested, and rested, and rested
would you still shroud your own face
would you boil the seas to lethe
clutch guns at the doorway
or would you leave the door open
offer sweet water and maize
to strangers
at your hearth?
--first published in Poetry in Flight | Poesía en vuelo: Anthology in Celebration of El Tecolote.
Meet the Poets of Water On-line Floricanto
“Fukushima Extinction” By Odilia Galván Rodríguez
“Clear Gold” By Dee Allen
“Water” By Jeff Cannon
“Trouble... the Water” By Edward Vidaurre
“Rupture” By Sharon Elliott
“Untitled” By Jasmin Garcia
“Water” By Lana Maree Haas
“In Solidarity with the Water Protectors” By Leah Wiegel
“Bless our Water” By JoyAnne O’Donnell
“Water Crossing” By Maurisa Thompson
Galván Rodríguez has worked as an editor for various print media such as Matrix Women's News Magazine, Community Mural's Magazine, and Tricontinental Magazine in Havana, Cuba. She is currently, the editor of Cloud Women’s Quarterly Journal online; facilitates creative writing workshops nationally, and is director 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 and encouraging people to take action. Her poetry has appeared in numerous anthologies, and literary journals on and offline.
As an activist, she worked for the United Farm Workers of America AFL-CIO, The East Bay Institute for Urban Arts, has served on numerous boards and commissions, and is currently active in Women’s organizations whose mission it is to educate around environmental justice issues and disseminate an indigenous world view regarding the earth and people’s custodial relationship to it. Odilia Galván Rodríguez has a long and rich history of working for social justice in solidarity with activists from all ethnic groups.
Active on the creative writing & Spoken Word tips since the early 1990s.
Author of 3 books [ Boneyard, Unwritten Law & Stormwater ] and 12 anthology appearances [ Poets 11: 2014, Feather Floating On The Water, the first 4 Revolutionary Poets Brigade, Rise ] under my figurative belt so far. Currently writing a potential 4th book & seeking a publisher.
E-Mail: deeallen415@gmail.com
Webpage: http://www.poormag.info/static/dee/index.html
Leah Wiegel.
Maurisa Thompson was born and raised in San Francisco, and is a proud alum of June Jordan’s Poetry for the People and VONA/Voices of Our Nation. “Water Crossing” is part of the new anthology Poesía en Vuelo: Poetry in Flight—Anthology In Celebration of El Tecolote, released March 2017. More of Maurisa’s poetry can be found in La Bloga, The Pedestal Magazine, The Black Scholar, Cosmonauts Avenue, the anthology A Feather Floating on the Water: Poems for Our Children, and The Haight-Ashbury Journal, which nominated her for a Pushcart Prize. Maurisa is proud to have a home in the arts in the Bay Area, where she has worked with various organizations and actions, including Librotraficante Bay Area Califas and Richmond’s RAW Talent. When she is not teaching high school in San Francisco or reading her students’ own poems, she is working on her first poetry manuscript that combines history and folklore with her grandparents’ stories from Louisiana and San Francisco, and a middle-grade novel exploring police brutality, for which she was honored to receive a Walter Grant from We Need Diverse Books.
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