"Ante el río / Before the River" by Xánath Caraza

Ante el río por Xánath Caraza

 

¡¡¡Ay mis hijos!!!

 

¡¡¡ Ay jucheeti uachecha!!!

 

¡¡¡Ay mis hijos!!!

 

¡¡¡ Ay na noconehuaj!!!

 

Como llorona estoy ante el río

lamentándome por ti

niño perdido

 

¡Ay de mí! ¡Ay de mí! ¡Llorona!

 

Como lagarto estoy sobre las piedras

esperándote

en el río

 

Ave negra que nace del agua

que abre sus alas

y deja su historia salpicada

en el cauce del río

 

dejando surcos en su vuelo bajo

con su vientre pegado al río

trinar sobre mis oídos

rumor del agua

 

Bugambilias anaranjadas, fucsias, rosadas y blancas

que están en mis sueños y

me llenan la garganta

 

¡Ay de mí! ¡Ay de mí! ¡Llorona!

 

Eres tú el brujo y hechicero

que se mete en mis sueños

Con el agua te lavo

y te canto ante al río

 

¡Ay de mí! ¡Ay de mí! Niño perdido

 

Como Llorona estoy

ante el río

llévate mi tristeza niño hermoso

lava mis penas en el río

 

 

Before the River by Xánath Caraza

 

¡¡¡Ay mis hijos!!!

 

¡¡¡ Ay jucheeti uachecha!!!

 

¡¡¡Ay mis hijos!!!

 

¡¡¡ Ay na noconehuaj!!!

 

As Llorona I am before the river

moaning for you

niño perdido

 

¡Ay de mí! ¡Ay de mí! ¡Llorona!

 

As an alligator I am on the river stones

waiting for you

in the river

 

Black bird born of the water

opens its wings

and leaves its history sprinkled

by the flow of the river

 

leaves tracks in its low flight

with its underside close to the river

singing above my ears

murmuring of water

 

Orange, fuchsia, pink and white bougainvilleas

are in my dreams and

fill my throat

 

¡Ay de mí! ¡Ay de mí! ¡Llorona!

 

You are the wizard and sorcerer

who enters into my dreams

with water I wash you

and I sing to you before the river

 

¡Ay de mí! ¡Ay de mí! Niño perdido

 

As Llorona I am

before the river

take my sadness with you beautiful niño

wash my sorrows in the river

 

Xanath Caraza

“Ante el río / Before the River” is part of the collection of poetry Conjuro (Mammoth Publications, 2012). “Ante el río / Before the River” was featured at the Smithsonian Latino Center in 2018. Listen to my Spanish (Purepecha and Nahuatl) and English version of the poem here, and also Son Jarocho singer Silvia Santos’ interpretation of my poem.

Focus on an Independent Press

Today's La Bloga is a quick look at an independent and highly regarded publisher -- Seven Stories Press.  A thorough summary of the history of the press can be found here.  Below is information about two recent books published by Seven Stories.  The books are quite different, one is historical nonfiction and the other is art criticism, but they share high quality presentations and a revolutionary world view.  Seven Stories has been publishing similar books for more than thirty years.  Thank you, Seven Stories.

____________________________________

Latin America Diaries
Ernesto Che Guevara

Seven Stories Press - May 12

[from the publisher]
The sequel to The Motorcycle Diaries, this book is Ernesto Che Guevera's journal documenting the young Argentine's second trip through Latin America, revealing the emergence of a committed revolutionary.

These letters, poetry, and journalism document young Ernesto Guevara's second Latin American journey following his graduation from medical school in 1953. Together, these writings reveal how the young Argentine is transformed into a militant revolutionary.

After traveling through Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, and Central America, Ernesto witnesses the 1954 US-inspired coup in Guatemala, which has a profound effect on his political awareness. He flees to Mexico where he encounters Fidel Castro, marking the beginning of a political partnership that profoundly changes the world and Che himself. Includes a foreword by Alberto Granado, Che's companion on his first adventures in Latin America on a vintage Norton motorcycle, and features poems written by young Ernesto inspired by his experiences along with facsimiles of pages from his diary.

____________________

Theory of the Rearguard:
How to Survive Contemporary Art (and Almost Everything Else)
Iván de la Nuez, translated by Ellen Jones
Seven Stories Press - May 15

[from the publisher]
Theory of the Rearguard examines how contemporary art is in tension with survival, rather than in relation to life. In the twentieth century, Peter Bürger’s Theory of the Avant-Garde was a cult book focused on the two main tasks that art demanded at the time: to break its representation and to destroy the barrier that separated it from life.

Forty years later, The Theory of the Rearguard is an ironic manifesto about contemporary art and its failures, even though Iván de la Nuez does not waste his time mourning it or disguising it. He argues that our times are not characterized by the distance between art and life, but by a tension between art and survival, which is the continuation of life by any means necessary.

In the twenty-first century, Iván de la Nuez examines art in relationship to politics, iconography, and literature. This austere and sharp book—in which Duchamp stumbles upon Lupe, the revolution upon the museum, Paul Virilio upon Joan Fontcuberta or Fukuyama upon Michael Jackson—wonders if contemporary art will ever end. Because if it were mortal—“just as mortal as everything it invokes or examines under its magnifying glass”—de la Nuez argues would be worth writing an epitaph for it as he has done in this sparkling book of art criticism.

Later.

___________________

Manuel Ramos writes crime fiction.

Chicanonautica: Notes on a Xicanxfuturist Spring

by Ernest Hogan

Once again, we got a whole lotta transmogrification going on. And it’s not just the loco-in-chief in the White House. All kinds of changes are happening.

We’re talking way beyond future shock here. As if just being a humble Xicanxfuturist sciifista trying to survive in a world that never was sure about what it should do with me wasn’t enough.

I don’t know what to do with my new novel. Or all the short stories that weird circumstances keep squeezing out of me.

An abandoned shopping mall is undergoing a transformation into . . . What? A metaphor for a new world?

Things I experience keep sending my grotesquely overactive imagination off into bizarre tangents.

It’s better than any drug.

I don’t need AIs to hallucinate for me.

Who’da thought that hallucinating algorithms would be a thing?

Tezcatlipoca, Tezcatlipoca, do you read?

Is there a Mission Control?

What is the mission?

Just a Chicanonaut reporting in to . . .

Who? Us? Them? The entire universe?

So I keep going. I can’t help it. I can’t turn the monster in my brain off . . .

Besides, I believe that we need all this weird shit, now more than ever. 

Sure, I feel like the guy in that meme with the world in flames, screaming, “Hey, anybody want to buy a book?” But it’s books, art, music . . . La Cultura! That gets us through this.

It’s not the cozy escapism that gives us the inspiration to do what we have to do to survive, it’s the rasquache kicks in the head that shatter the living nightmare and make better things possible.

Really.

So here I go.

This has been a pep talk from the Father of Chicano Science Fiction.

Ernest Hogan is feasting on the madness that surrounds him, getting ready to teach a class on what he does, so he has to analyze it, which leads to astounding revelations . . .

¿Qué es un poema? / What Is a Poem?

Text and illustrations by Jovi de la Jara

ISBN: 979-8-89375-016-4
Publication Date: May 31, 2025
Format: Hardcover
Pages: 32
Imprint: Piñata Books
Ages: 4-8

Whimsical bilingual picture book shares the wonder of poetry

In this playful bilingual picture book for children, the author describes all the things a poem can do, like: “Puppies can be / planets / and flowers / can be kittens” and “the moon can be / square / and rain can be / laughter.”

Simple text describes the endless possibilities available in writing poetry; words can rhyme, run off the page or even be invented! Poems can be very long or super short. Jovi de la Jara’s fun black-and-white illustrations cleverly depict the humorous ideas: a dog’s face looks like a planet with a ring around it, flowers sprout cat faces and a cloud cries laughter. These original and sometimes abstract images will surely ignite kids’ imaginations!

This entertaining book is perfect for sharing the joy of writing poetry with young readers. Kids will be encouraged to explore the world around them and come up with their own inventive creations as they realize, “The poem is a mirror inside your head.”

“Effectively minimalist, it’s a creative multilingual exploration of the possibilities of line and verse.”—Publishers Weekly

JOVI DE LA JARA was born in the south of Chile, but lives in Houston where he is completing his PhD in Creative Writing in Spanish at the University of Houston.

Review: YA book of the dead

 Review: Ghost Brother by Sylvia Sánchez Garza. Piñata Books/Arte Publico, 2024.

Michael Sedano

Sylvia Sánchez Garza gives her YA readers a lot to think about in their personal lives as the reader watches Garza’s characters struggling with emotional depths familiar to numerous teenagers—an absent father—and events a kid doesn’t want to consider: the kid’s own death. There’s also young love, not to mention trouble with bullies who include a gun-toting sheriff.

The story begins with a traffic accident and what seems a kid’s out-of-body experience. It’s not. The kid, Carlos, has been killed instantly. Carlos is the dead brother of the title. Cris, the victim’s brother, was driving and has survived.

Garza uses the two brothers’ voices to spin the story of Cris falling in love with a troubled girl, Selena, and a story of children learning their father’s identity. 

None of this happens in orderly 1,2,3 fashion. For a few chapters, readers suspect the worst—that Selena and Cris are long-lost brother and sister. There’s also a hint of incipient police brutality, that big gun-toting sheriff, whose son also died in that car accident.

School is, of course, a major element in a teenager’s life. Cris is a reader but not a teacher’s pet kind of kid. Selena is a new kid in school, bringing those complications to her daily troubles, already complicated by mother-daughter strife and the presence of outsider men in the mother’s life and the daughter struggling with not knowing her father’s identity.

The author’s tactic using the dead brother narrating from the other side with the prescience of that dimension opens numerous opportunities for deeper investigations into spiritual themes. There’s a child who sees the ghost matter-of-factly. The boys’ mother responds without actually hearing her son’s wishes. Eventually, Carlos’ spirit makes itself known to this world, offering some kind of succor to the living. 

Garza chooses not to delve into the mysteries of spirits trapped in limbo, whose role is serving the concerns this world, of helping kids work through family struggles of desperate children, depressed mothers, absent fathers, and finding ways to live happily beyond the last page and a looming future. In the end, that’s enough, and if it’s not, it will have to do.

Poetry & Cookies: Altadena Laureates' Annual Spring Event

Over twenty years ago, the Altadena Library held a "poetry & cookies" (link) event sharing cookies and poets reading their stuff. That event grew into California's most active community poetry program, the Altadena Poet Laureate program that now features a pair of Co-Laureates and a two-year program of readings and publication.

Sarwar and Lennon

This Saturday, April 17, in the library's main space, the Altadena poetry community and co-Laureates Sehba Sarwar and Lester Graves Lennon, invite all to the 4 p.m. event. Rumor has it there are even gluten-free cookies to be had.

“Con poesía / With Poetry” por Xánath Caraza

“Con poesía” por Xánath Caraza

 

Con poesía disipamos

los tiempos oscuros.

 

Palabras que sanan

los aislados corazones.

 

Fluye, poesía, entre

las nubes cibernéticas.

 

Trae pensamientos curativos,

pequeñas dosis de alegría.

 

Sé la medicina para este corazón sin luz,

para esta sangre que aún palpita.

 

Artificiales pulsaciones como

flores se tatúan en la pantalla.

 

Como dulce música que nos baña,

que nos trae dorada felicidad.

 

Xanath Caraza

 

With Poetry

 

With poetry we disperse

times of darkness.

 

Words that heal

isolated hearts.

 

Flow, poetry, amidst

cybernetic clouds.

 

Bring healing thoughts,

small doses of joy.

 

Be the medicine for this heart devoid of light,

for this blood that continues to flow.

 

Artificial pulsations like

flowers are tattooed across the screen.

 

Like sweet music that bathes us,

that brings us golden happiness.

 

“Con poesía / With Poetry” is part of the collection Corazón de agua / Heart of Water (Somos en escrito Literary Foundation Press, 2024). “Con poesía” was originally written in Spanish by Xánath Caraza and translated into the English by Sandra Kingery. “Con poesía” is also part of the Anthology Somos Xicanas.

On Good Citizenship and Two Poems by Mona Alvarado Frazier

Laguna Blanca Elementary student Mirabel S. and Melinda Palacio

 

 Melinda Palacio, Santa Barbara Poet Laureate 2023-2025

Two months ago, I had the pleasure of being interviewed by a 4th-grade student, Mirabel S., from Laguna Blanca Elementary. Through email her mother explained that her daughter’s class held a citizenship breakfast to honor community leaders and role models. The program is in its 15^th year, Of course, I agreed. I was honored that Mirabel had chosen a Poet Laureate. In addition to being poised and eloquent, Mirabel is an impressive nine-year old. She is also a poet. The Independent featured her poetry in this column last month. Here it is in case you missed it.

Program leader and Fourth Grade Instructor Susanne Richter explained that the fourth graders are the oldest students in Laguna Blanca’s lower campus in Montecito. As older students on campus, they are leaders to the younger students and they look to the community for role models and good citizens. “You have elevated the lives of these children,” she said to the eighteen community models of good citizenship.

The array of good citizens included police officers, firefighters, doctors, veterinarians, Environmental Defense Center Chief Counsel Linda Krop, Santa Barbara Mayor Randy Rowse, Carey Bradshaw Executive Director of Therapy Dogs, Dojo Master Alex Rodriguez, and Jennifer Rudolph Walsh, Godmothers Bookstore Cofounder to name a few. Students either had a personal connection to their chosen citizen and/ or an admiration for the work they do. Each student gave a speech about their chosen role model.

Of me, Mirabel said that I had an amazing quality of citizenship. “She has good citizenship because she helps other people express their feelings in their poetry,” Mirabel said. “She also inspires young poets.” Mirabel did not share her speech with me or her parents ahead of time. It was a lovely surprise to hear all her kind praises. When a child understands what you’re passionate about, it’s extremely gratifying. I am touched and honored. All of the speeches were thoughtful and well delivered, thanks to Associate Teacher Ademola Oyewole-Davis who worked with each student and was on hand to make sure their mic was at the right height and to offer some encouragement.

I was somewhat surprised that there were no parents at this event, but it was during school hours when most parents are at work. The citizenship breakfast offered an impressive spread, including quiches and pastries, coffee, juices, and fruit. Students also displayed what they’ve learned about citizenship through their art. Their posters provided a perfect backdrop for their thoughtful speeches.

This week’s poem comes from novelist Mona Alvarado Frazier who is shining a light on Oxnard with her award-winning young adult novels, set in her hometown: The Garden of Second Chances and A Bridge Home.

  Sunrise 

Mona Alvarado Frazier

Beneath wet lashes

the moon, round with longing,

floated towards heaven

a luminous orb

An arc against an indigo sky,

embroidered with crystals,

radiance ascended, a soft glow 

caressing a night of sighs

Ardent light beckoned

to the miracles of hope

until the tears dried 

and the sun rose again

Good Girls Don’t Wear Red Panties

Mona Alvarado Frazier

Voices ebb and flow

Hello? Mom?

Nurse?

Sweat puddles

into a damp swamp

of twisted sheets

Harnessed by machines

Fluids drip, drop, 

bloody crook of arm

Free me 

from this web

Please

My armpits stink of panic

A twist and a yank

The gown gapes

 

 

Mom appears,

frowns

“Good girls don’t wear red panties.”

Mona Alvarado Frazier is the award-winning author of "The Garden of Second Chances" and "A Bridge Home," winner of the 2025 Southwest Book Award in YA and the Paterson Prize for Young Readers. A proud Californian born and raised in Oxnard, she writes with heart and humor, seeking to amplify the voices of young Latinas while celebrating their resilience and stories. Mona came to writing later in life but brings all the richness of lived experience to the page—proof that it’s never too late to follow the story that’s been waiting inside you.

*an earlier version of this column also appears in the Santa Barbara Independent