"Farewell, Joan," was the subject line of Ron Arias' simple announcement. What more is there to say, when one's wife crosses over, but a tender, sad "farewell"?
Joan Arias passed away the night of August 18, after a brief battle with cancer. She died without pain, surrounded by loved ones.
La Bloga extends our sympathy to husban Ron, son Michael, and Joan's transition. QEPD.
The Gluten-free Chicano Cooks Calabacitas
Michael Sedano
For gardeners and farmers markets, there's an abundance of squash and tomatoes right now. These delicious vegetables make the basis of numerous naturally gluten-free meals. Ingredients can be decided by what's ripe.
Preheat the oven to 350º.
Grease or not-stick spray a casserole dish.
Slice the squash into interesting shapes. This crookneck turned into rounds. I have a spiralizer and whirled a few half moons and a couple of long strands.
Make a savory custard. Hand beat two or three whole eggs to a froth, add a ¾ cup of milk or half-and-half. Stir in a cup of cheddar cheese, grated, and some sliced onion.
Chop two tomatoes, some chiles and peppers. I had left-over corn. One could use left-over rice or leave it out altogether.
Here is where a host of options presents itself. Make it chiloso with chopped chiles. Add a meat, use three or four cheeses, add sliced fresh garlic or other herb. Make a roux with that milk, blend in the eggs.
Mix the custard and vegetables, fill a casserole, and bake for an hour at 350º.
I had left-over tomatoes so I cooked them with the squash and made salsa later.
The custardy base is rich and has lots of liquid. Save it and let it soak into the leftovers overnight. Lunch tomorrow will be wonderful.
I served small pork steaks on the side. The whirlly yellow crookneck squash demanded attention.
Specular Reflections: Jaime Guerrero in "Broken Dreams" Exhibition
Three figures wear blindfolds, the sculpture in the storefront window covers his eyes, little kids do that so no one will see them, look right through them. Admirers look into the gallery where two figures face toward a figure and a piñata.
Inside, a blindfolded niño holds a palo in readiness to strike the colorful piñata. This figure stands in open space, viewers walk around the piece for views toward the window and the glowing figures aligned toward the light.
Two figures stand behind a chain link fence. They are walking through a landscape of shattered glass. You know these kids are going to be hurt. And on they come.
Letters from immigrants cover a wall. Most are Spanish, a right-aligned language, plain English. In their own voice, immigrants relate their satisfaction, their journey, their existence here. The glass kids crossing those cutting obstacles want to hang their messages, too.
Writers are happy they are here, despite what's on the page and maybe between the lines. You'll want to allow time to read and think about what kids like these have been going through. Don't look through them.
Guerrero's work process is the subject of a PBS documentary BORDERS and NEIGHBORS episode, premiering on PBS September 29, 2017. Photographs and videos of Guerrero at work in the studio will usually have Tyler Straight involved.
Straight is Guerrero's dependable assistant. The artist and budding craftsman met when Guerrero ran a glass workshop in Watts. Straight took to fire and has the scars to prove it. He earned a grant to attend the glass worker institute at Corning Glass Works and now teaches beginning glass-blowing at the Watts studio under auspices of Watts Labor Community Action Committee.
Guerrero's sculputre installation, “Broken Dreams,” is on view through October 7th at:
Craft in America Center
8415 W. Third Street
Los Angeles, CA 90048
Tues – Sat, 12:00pm – 6:00pm
Jaime Guerrero will be a busy artist in September. Concurrent to the run at Craft in America, Guerrero has an exhibition at Skidmore Contemporary Art gallery, in Bergamot Station complex. Guerrero hosts an opening, Contemporary Relics: A Tribute to the Makers, on September 9, 2017 (and a second on September 16) from 5 to 7. The gallery is at 2525 Michigan Ave, Santa Monica, California 90404.
Subdued lighting inside the back gallery at Avenue 50 Studio suggests a coolness that eludes the gente gathering for a literary reading. The last-Sunday of the month La Palabra Reading Series hosted by Karineh Mahdessian invariably draws readers and listeners from near and far.
West Anaheim, Garden Grove, and Santa Ana were the starting points for the three featured readers, Jesus Cortes, Marilynn Montaño, and Sarah Rafael García. One Open Mic reader from far reaches of the Valley recently migrated from Corpus and made her reading debut among the encouraging circle of listeners.
Jesus Cortes, who performs as Stay True, brought a niece and nephew, the peripatetic García attended with her significant other, a Ph.D. candidate from Texas. It’s one of the best kinds of audiences for a reader. Not only do friends and familiars bring a special vibe, but a lot of goodwill rubs off on the other readers.
In the Open Mic segment, returning after a long hiatus, Eddy Bello celebrated reawakening to love after widowhood. Kathryn read in public for the first time. Anabel Ramirez joined the readers with a bit of urging from Karineh.
Mahdessian is the spark who warms the air with effusive energy. In her fourth year hosting Los Angeles’ most engaging literary readings series, La Palabra has been engaging poets and storytellers since 2001.
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| Jesus Cortes |
Marilynn Montaño "aged out" of the SanTana Barrio Writers Program. For García the reading marks Montaño's going from mentee to colleague.
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| Marilynn Montaño |
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| Sarah Rafael García |
That subdued lighting leads to photographic adjustments. Digital cameras have good low light sensitivity. These speakers are exposed between 1/8 and 1/25 second at f/5.6. That’s awfully slow. Gestures and head shakes blur. I don’t mind blur if it works, but I want mouth forming a word, eye contact, dynamic posture, and focus. Eye contact today is fleeting and unpredictable. In dim lighting especially, but as a general practice, printing the text in 16 point type promotes improved moments of eye contact and the directness, perhaps intimacy, that grows out of the eyes.
The traditional group portrait turns out to be a memorable photograph. The readers had circulated among the crowd and were floating high on the satisfaction of an audience-pleasing experience. Then the photographer pulled them away to pose. They took stiff and dour postures, their friends were out there watching. I reclamared them about being dour. Show me bad and baddest.
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| "bad" |
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| "Baddest" |
Part II in a Series
No Border Wall Video On-line Floricanto
Jose Antonio Rodriguez, Nayelly Barrios, Stevie Luna Rodriguez, Cesar Leonardo De Leon, Erika Garza-Johnson
La Bloga proudly shares this space with gente from Tejas directly affected by the border wall of hate, the second of a series of video On-line Floricanto we plan to share weekly. The readings originate from a reading organized by Emmy Pérez, Alejandro Sánchez, and Arnulfo Segovia, called Floreciendo Resistencia en el Valle / Flourishing Resistance in the Valley. You can view the full line-up who read at the Old Hidalgo Pumphouse World Birding Center at the event site, here (link).
Resist! means don’t stop until there’s no reason to resist. Reasonable poets know there are as many reasons to resist as there are poems in their plumas. That’s why the Floreciendo gente will read anew, this week, in McAllen, Tejas.
Resistenica en la frontera: Poets Against Border Walls Reading
Yerberia Cultura, downtown McAllen, Tejas
Wednesday, Aug. 30th, 2017
Doors open at 6:30pm Reading starts at 7pm
Poets Reading:
Nayelly Barrios , Roberto de la Torre , César de León, Odilia Galván Rodríguez, Erika Garza-Johnson, Celina Gomez , Rodney Gomez, Rossy Evelin Lima, Stevie Luna Rodriguez, Carolina Monsiváis, Emmy Pérez , Santa Ramirez, Brenda Nettles Riojas , José Antonio Rodríguez, Alejandro Sánchez, Arnulfo Daniel Segovia, Priscilla Celina Suarez
In these videos, each poet responds to la frontera, immigration, the wall of hate, in personal ways of noticing and expressing. Running through each poem is a global consideration posed by organizer Emmy Pérez, "What do you want the world to know about your home?" #poetsagainstwalls
“Open House “(an excerpt from House Built on Ashes: A Memoir) By Jose Antonio Rodriguez
“You Bring Out the Border in Me” By Nayelly Barrios
“A Love Letter to the 956” By Stevie Luna Rodriguez
“My Words” by Cesar Leonardo De Leon
“Trump” by Erika Garza-Johnson
Open House (an excerpt from House Built on Ashes: A Memoir)
By Jose Antonio Rodriguez
It is a strange sight, the school at night, aglow with light emanating from all its open doors. Amá, Luis, Yara, and I walk toward it, together. Amá begins to lag behind. We slow our pace and she catches up but eventually lags behind again, like she prefers to walk one step behind us.
In every room, we find a corner to stand in, Amá wringing her hands like she owes the room money. I tell her about how crowded the school is, built for half the number of students that now live a third of their lives in it. The teacher walks to us. In every room I translate for the teacher. In every room I translate for Amá. In every room I am a gran estudiante. The Spanish reminds me of church. The Spanish sounds foreign—talk of literature, talk of math, talk of science. In every room the white students marvel at my perfect Spanish, my Spanish without an accent, avert their eyes from my mother’s lack of English.
In every room they harbor the suspicion, hear the language, my first tongue, the telling sign that I could not be from here, that I could not be American. How they look at me, see someone they didn’t imagine.
José Antonio Rodríguez was born in Mexico and raised in South Texas. His books include the memoir House Built on Ashes and the poetry collections The Shallow End of Sleepand Backlit Hour. His work has also appeared in The New Yorker, Poetry, The New Republic, The Texas Observer, and other publications. He holds a Ph.D. in English and Creative Writing from Binghamton University and is an assistant professor of creative writing at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley.
You Bring Out the Border in Me
By Nayelly Barrios
after “You Bring Out the Mexican in Me” by Sandra Cisneros
You bring out the border in me.
You bring out the Rio Grande in me.
The nameless, cracked bones on the riverbed in me.
You flood that river that connects two countries
in me. Run it from a palm tree in El Valle to the plazita in Reynosa.
You bring out the border tongues in me,
the huarache, comal, parqiadero, cenizas, and calla lilies
in me. You bring out the Spanish, Spanglish, English, and Nahuatl in me.
You unfurl the coiled tongues in me.
You pray the rosary in me. Each beady eye a different gasp
for confessions to sink in. You bring out the Hail Mary,
the cold baptisms. You consecrate the sins
within me, pray to my crosses and robed saints. You bring out
the accordion in me. Stretch it out like a spine,
bent and breathless, in me. Braid its moans
through my hair. You bring out the corridos in me.
You bring out the chicharra in me. Make my wings tremble,
send that hum through my bones.
You bring out the mesquites in me.
Those tired limbs, dirty and freckled with chicharra casings.
You bring out the sin-vergüenza in me.
You bring out the hija de la chingada in me, scoop the earth
between my breasts. Light pyres
at the intersection of two lands within me.
Nayelly Barrios is a Rio Grande Valley native. She is a feminist and immigrant who earned an MFA in Creative writing and an MA in Literature from McNeese State University. She is currently a lecturer at UT-Rio Grande Valley. Nayelly is a CantoMundo fellow.
A Love Letter to the 956
By Stevie Luna Rodriguez
Do you want to know what I think is beautiful?
Aside from the intricacies that go into your braided velvet hair, or your brown voice and the melting of its notes on everything you sing and speak or, the dedication of your hands and spine, aside from your nopal resiliency, I love all of this and more.
It's breathtaking the way you all move like the palms trees and bougainvilleas, vast and steady, vast and steady, despite the constant pruning and tearing of you. You are not just the standing still in lines of offices where people get paid to dehumanize you. You dance like infinity was your stage. I've never seen anyone move like that. Remember that.
And listen, the ocean of South Padre calls us back to our very inception every day. The waves rolls their R's, we hear it even if they don't. and I love that you smile a Xochiquetzal type of smile when the tides roll right up to meet your busy minds with colchas of their unconditional acceptance. You are not still waters. Don't ever forget it.
I admire how you nurture yourselves with these South Texas sunrises, taking in a cafecito in the morning, kissing yellow school buses goodbye. I adore you taking hands with neighbors and building solidarity together. Like weaving a rug. You've all made something strong but you are not to be stepped on. Do not let them.
I love how you tear down walls within to your own hearts, despite your wrists in chains and how they can both still ache long after you've been freed. You are not a holding center, you are not greed. I've never encountered anyone so free like the way you cruise down 83. One day, with our hearts full of pink leche and poder and si se puede, we'll cruise here and tear down that wall, too.
Hear me out, I know there are silenced notes of us that we can never hear again. But we can compose corridos until the bottles run dry, make no mistake. We are infinite and no imaginary lines can contain the deafening songs of our Chicano cries.
The next time you say, "Let the sun pull us apart with it's rays, I'm done with these ways, I don't want to be afraid, I'm tired of being so fucking afraid" remember-
Our ancestors did not create rope out of the magueys for us to hang ourselves with.
We do not burn ourselves in with the sugar cane.
We take what we have harvested ourselves and make wine and honey and holy water and paved streets and smart kids and we write books with seeds, we are not just the picking of the fruit. We are simply the sweetness of its flavor.
Read my RGV love letter and write back later, because we are all too many shades of brown to let anybody else bleach the beauty of each and every hue. I love all of you, I really do. Love yourselves and each other too.
Stevie Luna Rodriguez is a mom first, cry later type of bitxh. Influenced by local poets/artists/friends, heartache as much as love, farmworker parents, existentialism, heauxism, and rap/hip hop, they continue to question and cry about everything from brownness to capitalism to PTSD that they experience alone but also collectively with El Valle. Their poetry is new, a work in progress, yet always ready to be devoured by anyone who is hungry. Reach them at st.luna.6@gmail.com or visit their site: stevieluna.wordpress.com.
My Words
Cesar Leonardo De Leon
You say my words have no power
no meaning
that they are not worthy
that is because you
only perceive them as words
but my words are more than words
My words are roots
like the roots of the mesquite
that grew in my back yard
the one that fucked up my back
when grandpa and I dug it up
because it fought hard to hold on
to the black soil and caliche it grew in
or like the roots of the huisaches
that grow twisted along the Rio Grande
and drink blood along with water
My words are more than words
Son palabras
and they are old and proud
like the cerros in Nuevo León
que todo lo ven
and then tell their stories
when the sun sets
orange and pink on their rocky peaks
My words are stars
that illuminate the dark
brighter than the gold paper ones
given to me in elementary school
when I finally learned the pledge of allegiance
not knowing what it meant
not knowing that it is only
liberty and justice for some
My words are magical and holy
like the smell of the curanderas hierbas
that penetrate
your clothes, your skin, your soul
and cleanse you
My words are futuristic
and they have been moving forward
from the day that Cortez set foot on Veracruz
to the day I crossed the border as a child
to the day when there are no more words to say
They are my mother's struggle
they are Malinche's struggle
they are her victory and her legacy
My words are more than words
my words are seeds.
César L. de León is a student in the MFA program at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley. His work has appeared in journals such as Pilgrimage, The Acentos Review, Yellow Chair Review, PublicPool, La Bloga and the anthologies Imaniman: Poets Writing in the Anzaldúan Borderlands, Texas Weather Anthology, and the upcoming Pulse/Pulso Anthology among others. He has received awards from the Texas Intercollegiate Press Association and the Columbia Scholastic Press Association. An active participant in the local literature scene, he lives and works in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas.
Trump
By Erika Garza-Johnson
I made a nest of pillows.
The orange dictator won't find me here.
I am not his type, either way.
Woman of color, frizzy hair, bilingual.
Not a blonde bombshell he seems to favor
that he can't refrain
from kissing.
There is business to do today.
Get grabbed.
Appease a man.
Lose weight.
There is so much I need to do today.
I can't get up from here for fear of losing my life.
I can't let my emotional life be run by CNN.
A Beat taught me it makes madness.
Shut off the lights. He might see me.
I write this with fear.
I write this with urgency.
I don't want my daughter
to leave her room.
I teach my son
more than manners.
That he needs to see women as human.
Not an object bejeweled,
bedazzled for his eyes.
Not just a set of legs.
So much work to do
and I can't get that word out of head.
"Don't be such a pussy.” I tell myself.
Don't be such a pussy, orange dictator.
Don't be such a pussy, America.
The nest is swallowing me hole.
I can't fly away from this.
Erika Garza-Johnson
Closer to Crazy Cat Lady status than award winning poet, Erika Garza Johnson, coven of one, writes and lives in McAllen. Author, editor, instructor, mother, wife, daughter, sister, friend, frenemy, local loca, xicana, tejana, word witch y fideo enthusiast, Garza Johnson is working on her second book but mostly trying to balance it all while keeping sane and pain free.
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