Poetry Connection: El Salvador Edition

Melinda Palacio

a version of this column was originally published in the Santa Barbara Independent

Alexandra Lytton Regalado
 

 

Last Sunday, poet Alexandra Lytton Regalado gave a salon style reading and discussion at the Ridley Tree House where she is in residence for the week, thanks to a collaboration with Santa Barbara City College and the Santa Barbara Museum of Art. I’ve had the opportunity to connect with Alex over the years, first at a writing conference and later through Swwim Everyday, an online journal for women-identifying poets where she is an editor. 

 

It is no coincidence that her last name sounds like a regalo. As much as she is honored to reside in a home overlooking the mountains, during one of Santa Barbara’s many good weather weeks, she is a gift to the city. Don’t miss her free workshop on Thursday. I didn’t have much advance notice either or else I would have talked up her reading in previous columns. The salon’s intimate setting allowed the poet to speak to us candidly with what she called, confianza. She said Sunday’s event was like a gathering with friends.

Alexandra Lytton Regalado, Melinda Palacio, Michelle Detorie, Emma Trelles

 

Alex describes herself as a double agent because she was born in El Salvador, left for Miami as a child during the country’s civil war and moved back to El Salvador as an adult. She has spent 24 years in Miami and 23 years in El Salvador. Now, she finds herself the matriarch of her family. As the adult in charge, she says she is comfortable being displaced. 

 

Her words carry the weight of being the matriarch of her family as well as the eldest sister. With this responsibility comes a grit that Regalado says is natural for Salvadoran women who must have the quality to aguantar. She says being the keeper of memory is the hardest. When her sisters want to throw away old photographs of unknown people, Alex feels compelled to dig into memory and name those unknown faces. She says she has rescued many photographic memories from the garbage. As the matriarch of her family, she is sensitive to the fact that those saved photographs represent a grief for those who are only with us in photographs. For Regalado, grief is always expected. She describes grief as a way of life, an inheritance.

Alexandra Lytton Regalado

 

Photography and the visual arts are dear to Regalado. She has a degree in visual art and photography. She is still fascinated by visiting museums. I loved the way in which she discussed how we translate a poem or song in the same way we might ascribe meaning to a painting in a museum The idea of honoring personal interpretation makes poetry more accessible to people, yet another form of poetry connection. 

 

Alex said this isn’t her first residency, but her third; however, it is her first in California. “The house is full of light and has amazing views of mountains I can see from my desk window,” she said. It also helps that the Ridley-Tree House is in the same neighborhood as her sister-in-poetry, Emma Trelles, previous Poet Laureate of Santa Barbara. Alex has had a long-standing connection to Santa Barbara via Emma Trelles and the Mission Poetry Series, offering translations for the winning chapbooks for the Alta California chapbook prize; and this year she has served as judge for chapbook contest. “I’m honored that three Santa Barbara poet laureates attended the reading,” she said, “I’m looking forward to Thursday’s free workshop at SBCC from 3 to 5 pm at the Multimodal Lab—I’ve developed writing exercises centered around wonder and loss and a great reading packet of poems to share with the group.“  

This week’s Poems feature Alexandra Lytton Regalado.

 

EL PUENTE QUE NOS UNE

 

I left red gladiolas on the altar.

Patrón Santiago Apostól, your horse is spattered with mud.

San Alejo, your shoes are worn.

Acompáñanos y líbranos de todo mal.

This bridge is long and rickety.

Rotten planks, rusted nails moan every step.

Who built this?

We’ve had to leap across all that collapsed.

I have no choice.

Can’t stop to ask why.

Can’t rest.

There are people in front of us and people behind us.

The way back would be just as long.

Best to keep going.

We must get to the other side.

Con cada paso mi sombra pierde color.

The dark water offers my face and I say to it:

This is my one and only life.

Already others are pressing up behind me.

And others have moved too far ahead.

When someone falls I cannot stop to help.

Even though some look like papá, but younger.

Mamá, but mixed with my daughter’s face.

An old friend who died long ago.

Patrón, who will save us?

Will I turn into a fish if I fall?

Will I be jolted awake?

 

 

 

 

 

THE GIANTESS

 

After Leonora Carrington’s painting

After Tracy K. Smith

 

Daughter, you need to grow into your body,

understand its dimensions,

how to move in this world.

I tell her this as she mops up water

from a glass she’s knocked over.

She is constantly bumping, tripping,

leaving frames askew.

She hides in hoodies & sweats,

but the girl is all legs, taller than me

at thirteen. I want her to live in her body,

not padded in layers of fabric, shoulders

hunched, veiled in long hair, behind

glasses. Push it back, I tell her,

I want to see your pretty face,

in the voice of all women, telling all

other women how to be seen.

She talks of feminism, tells her brothers

Mami will disown you if you are not

a feminist; quick to bark, quick to snap,

to claw, to sink in a tooth.

Arrows & daggers at her feet

& her moon head overcast, as she watches

wide-winged geese circle her body. A family

takes refuge between her ankles,

us or her future family. A lumen cape

hangs from her shoulders, but the egg—

all sun—she holds close to her chest.

How to be a tower, a pillar

of confidence, to inhabit that body

at thirteen, still surprised to be on this earth—

how is it that things work? Do you want to play

a game with me? She wants to skate on smooth

streets, go out into the world without someone

shadowing her. She wants to live in her skin.

I bite back my anger at her awkwardness,

show tenderness for the fawn stumbling

to find its legs, mewling kitten. She is far from

these helpless animals. Wolf at the foot

of her bed, she draws or reads, curtains drawn

in a freezing room. She doesn’t belong to me

as much as her body belongs to her.

I look up to her, rising stories

above me, rising above her own body

&—haven’t I seen her

elsewhere & before—she

is what waits to be said.

 

 

 

 

Alexandra Lytton Regalado is a Salvadoran-American author, editor, and translator. She is the author of Relinquenda, winner of the National Poetry Series (Beacon Press, 2022); the chapbook Piedra (La Chifurnia, 2022); and the poetry collection, Matria, the winner of the St. Lawrence Book Award (Black Lawrence Press, 2017). 

Book launch of “To the North/Al norte: Poems” by León Salvatierra: February 10, 6:00 p.m.

The University of Nevada Press is pleased to publish its first dual-language (Spanish-English) book of poetry, To the North/Al norte: Poems, by the Nicaraguan poet León Salvatierra. The work is rooted in the Central American diaspora that emerged from the civil wars in the 1980s. The poems are tied together through the experiences, memories, visions, and dreams of a 15-year-old boy who embarked on a journey to the United States with a group of forty other migrants from Central America. After being undocumented for eleven years, Salvatierra established himself in the United States, first becoming a naturalized citizen and then obtaining a university education.

Salvatierra mixes lyrical and prose poems to explore the experience of exile in a new country. His powerful metaphors and fresh images inhabit spaces fraught with the violence, anxiety, and vulnerability that undocumented Central American migrants commonly face in their transnational journeys. His vivid memories of Nicaragua tie the personal experiences of his poetic subjects to the geopolitical history between the Central American region and the United States.

Praise for To the North/Al norte

“By combining prose and poetry, and blurring the boundaries between genres and nations, Salvatierra manages to assert individual agency and wrest control of his own story.”

—Diego Báez. Poetry Foundation

“Largely translated by Javier O. Huerta, it is simultaneously heartbreaking and hilarious — even more so if you can read it in both languages.”

—Daniel A. Olivas, Los Angeles Times

“The collection chronicles the poet’s journey from Nicaragua to the U.S. as he faces obstacles as an undocumented teenager and as he adjusts to the demands of life in a new land. To read this book is to get is poignant and poetic look at what it means to be marginalized in the U.S.”

—Jose B. Gonzalez, Latino Stories

“The poetry here is at once intimate and public, which makes for a complex and rich alchemy. León Salvatierra’s range of registers is breathtaking.”

—Francisco Aragón, poet, editor, director of Letras Latinas at the Institute for Latino Studies, University of Norte Dame, and author of After Rubén
 
“To the North/Al norte makes poetry feel essential, that without it, Salvatierra’s speakers would become unmoored, losing everything that they have tried so hard to recover. Salvatierra clearly revels in language. . . . This collection is a significant contribution to the growing body of undocumented literature as well as Latinx literature.”

—Maceo Montoya, professor, University of California, Davis, author of Preparatory Notes for Future Masterpieces

“The memory and humanity that Salvatierra reaps along the way are ultimately challenged, and subdued . . . What we’re left with is the impression of autonomy; and its anatomy of longing.”

—Delphic Reviews

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You may read my Los Angeles Times interview with León Salvatierra here.

Three Poems by Emma Trelles, SB Poet Laureate 2021

   

Emma Trelles

The city of Santa Barbara has appointed its first Latinx Poet Laureate, Emma Trelles. Born in Miami, she is the daughter of Cuban immigrants and now calls Santa Barbara home, where she teaches at the City College. Enjoy three poems by Emma Trelles. Read all about Emma and her plans in the Santa Barbara Independent.

Sonnet for Mark

by Emma Trelles

Now wakes a path between the oaks, now

falls a spell of dove and frog, and stones

dream of their mountain clans and each stick

breaks to hear its name. Now light edges creek

and water appears as a quick coin trick or 

silk pulled from a funnel of months, now

behind us, at last, and shade and sky fill

the mirror moving from next to next. Now

do you see there is no stillness to this world?

Even in sleep a seed is knitting its breach 

from the dark and the body hums 

on the march to becoming less and right

now, words depart then arrive, like a brush

returning to a well of color.

                                                                                            Published in Spillway and Verse Daily

Fable of Frogs

by Emma Trelles

We were all dozing and floating in the night waters of the Redlands, where stars bent light to the ground as if they were still new. 

We were plain and cold to the touch, and we liked it that way.

Routine was our god and so were the winged beads we snapped into our mouths with the speed of pink lightning. We were long years past wishing for what we wanted. We ate and crapped and loved and slept. One evening, there was more.

The dark room of the pond shivered and crickets ceased their one-note demands and knives of sawgrass shook with longing. We began to levitate.

Up into the indigo we opened each juicy eye with care and looked beneath at the peat, at crows smudged on wires that chain words together and roofs like two hands pressed in supplication and signs the color of summer hissing three-thousand promises.

Then, higher, sailing on the heart-shaped rafts that once kept us pinned to what we knew, and were now a promise we were not finished yet.

Below us were children killing minutes, or tracking lilac moths in the hedges, and dogs with little use for flying frogs, and the cats who noticed us and kept silent, as always. We passed over farms and mist and the worn skin of cities, the poisoned land still hanging on.

Some of us dropped into towns where we lived in peace or fell with the rain and disappeared down grates into the kingdoms of refuse and silence.

Some died on the tarmac by the motion that never ceases over this earth. A few slipped away into the broken choirs heard at night, somewhere, beyond sight and even knowing what a thing is despite all the times its voice is heard.

Another way this ends is two of us together, in the farthest away, where the light is hazed and the salt-stripped grasses keep singing, yes, there is life between cliffs and stones huddled in the small and grand forests.

Who knew flight could peel the verve right from you? Or that the crescent moon could find you home, and maybe there is hope anywhere you go, if you take it with you through the cloud of years, it must be carried, it must be carried.

Published in the Miami Rail

The nearest way

by Emma Trelles

Would I consume what I really wanted

only nothing would be left. I am many pigments 

maybe you should figure them out, I’m spent from shining

except when I depart, then my antelope heart sends me 

north to the high lands, where I glow unseen among the pines.

Published in the South Florida Poetry Journal and Salt

Building Bird Forgiveness, the Book

Melinda Palacio

Preview of my new poetry book, Bird Forgiveness

            Over the past four years, I've been working on two writing projects at the same time, a new novel, which remains in progress, and a new poetry book, Bird Forgiveness. Although I've been working on the novel longer than the poetry book, the poetry book won out and is in the final stages of editing and production. I wouldn't recommend working on two different books at the same time. I somehow always give into the myth of multitasking. Perhaps, multitasking is a genuine way to get more done at the same time. I don't really know anymore. Sometimes life forces you to get excited about more than one thing. The downside is rooms with piles of books and paper and other scraps of projects left undone because it's challenging to work on multiple items and get them all done to my satisfaction. Add to that a family tragedy like your grandmother dying a slow death to make all of your projects seem overwhelming.

            The moment when finishing what you've started seems overwhelming, Anne Lamott's 1995 book, Bird by Bird: Instructions on Writing and Life, still holds true. The big takeaway from Lamott's book is the scene when she describes her ten-year old brother having a meltdown because he had put off a report on birds that was due the next morning. He knew he didn't give himself enough time to finish the project and her father helped him out, sat down beside him and put his arm around her brother and said, 'Bird by bird, buddy. Just take it bird by bird'. I'm sure glad Anne Lamott shared that story with the world. The concept is about taking baby steps, breaking a big project down to smaller, more manageable chunks. Take the writing of a novel, for example, and look at it scene by scene, chapter by chapter, sentence by sentence, word by word. This is how a book comes to those traditional lovely last words, The End.

With my book, Bird Forgiveness, the idea of finishing the collection bird by bird doesn't apply only to the writing of the poetry collection, but to life in general. I wasn't concerned with taking on poems about the many different birds. This is a collection of poems that is as much about doing right by birds and the environment as it is about people and human relations, as the title poem suggests. And what has made all the difference is having an editor and publisher, Andrea Watson from 3: a Taos Press, champion this book without putting pressure on me to have a certain amount of poems finished by a particular deadline.

Being passionate about multiple types of writing and projects is a good thing. Once a book is finished, you simply can't shelve it and move onto the next project without giving the book another thought. There is still marketing, readings, and workshops to offer in connection with the last book, all the while working on the next book, as well as new poems and stories. However, I can shuffle my tortillas and get my novel to a stage where I am proudly displaying a cover and endorsements. For now, I'd like to share some of the words from three poets who were kind enough to send in their reviews for the book while the manuscript was still in progress and on its way to becoming the forthcoming book, Bird Forgiveness from 3: a Taos Press, coming soon to an independent bookstore near you (alert your favorite bookstores).  

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Endorsements for Bird Forgiveness:

As a lover of birds, I am a lover of Bird Forgiveness.  As a lover of poetry, I love these poems because though beaked and winged, in pain and in joy, they also take flight out of their occasion. With a focus on birds, the world is renewed, and the poet reminds us it is we who need forgiving. Melinda Palacio's birds touch us everywhere they fly: from the drowning of a homeless woman in Audubon Park to the oil spill damage to a duck. Like the birds she loves and mourns, Melinda Palacio migrates her songs between two coasts, Gulf and West, Latino and Anglo—and she asks for the poetic freedom birds have. Sometimes the poems appear as near sonnets, sometimes in utterly free shapes, but always this is a book of fierce mourning for the birds that fall at our feet and for a grandmother who dies under her watchful care while caged birds quarrel. In the end Melinda Palacio sets all her birds free, and we remember what birds and poets have most in common—their wild song.  

—Rodger Kamenetz, To Die Next To You

How wonderful to think that Melinda Palacio is writing poems so delightfully human, so unexpected in their movements  from wit to profundity, so uncompromisingly honest. Who else would recognize a bluebird as Elvis? Who else ask birds for forgiveness? Her finest book yet, Bird Forgiveness is a work of great modesty, invention, and abiding respect for all the living world.

—Rodney Jones, Village Prodigies

Bird Forgiveness is a deeply nourishing and exquisite book about living. Melinda Palacio

masterfully explores confinement, liberation, freedom, and flight. Abundant joy and wonder run through the poems—from the harpy eagle, to a bluebird named Elvis, to instructions on how to wash a duck—and they examine human behavior and relationships with wisdom and grace. This is a delightful, unforgettable book from a marvelous talent at the top her game.

—Lee Herrick, Scar and Flower

*****

Where I'll be tomorrow: Beyond Baroque, February 24 for the Nasty Women Poets anthology reading at 4pm. If you're in Venice, say hello. Peter J. Harris follows at 8pm.