Chicanonautica: Donald Trump, John Wayne, Mexican Food, and the Impending Election Year

by Ernest Hogan

My wife and I were playing hooky. We both had the day off, and we used it to drive out to our usual stamping grounds to investigate the place where she had a job interview. It was a sunny day after a week of atmospheric river-driven gloom. Took a hike, then decided to drive to Wickenburg for lunch.

We headed for the town’s best Mexican restaurant, and the first thing in the door was a shrine to Trump, Kari Lake, and other local politicians of similar leanings. A bit early for 2024, but . . .

It reminded me of the pictures of John Wayne in businesses on the Indian reservations. San Juan de Hollywood assuring the tourists that they were in a safe place.

This would cause some people to turn and run, but we were hungry, and it was a chance to observe these folks on their own turf without the defenses they have up when they stumble into what they see as hostile territory. How would they react to a six-foot tall Aztec leprechaun with a bandido mustache and his blonde wife coming in for some tacos, beans, and rice?

We got professional customer service smiles from the young white women who worked there. The customers were also white—mine was the only “of color” face in the joint—and they were an awful lot of them for a Wednesday afternoon. Wickenburg is a historic cowboy town, not much of a Chicano heritage.

I didn’t hear a word of Spanish while we were there.

Everybody was in a good mood, and they were, for the most part, in Wild West regalia. They looked like retirees from Back East and the Midwest, adapting to their new environment, going “native” in cowboy hats and boots. It was like a big party with so much talking I couldn’t sort out any particular conversation.

They didn’t seem to have gotten the news about how the election deniers were doing in the courts, but with the rift between Trump and Fox, they probably hadn’t been watching much news lately.

They didn’t seem to notice us, which may have been a good thing.

And the food, as usual, was excellent. Their hot salsa had my inner ears tingling immediately.

When I told our server that I never received the iced tea I ordered, she apologized and brought me one in a to-go cup.

As we were paying, a little brown woman wearing a T-shirt with the restaurant’s logo wandered out of the oddly quiet kitchen. 

Ah-ha! As it is with most restaurants in Arizona, they had Mexicans doing the cooking. Funny how folks who want to build the border wall and ship the illegals back to where they came from love their Mexican food.

I haven’t mentioned the name of this place on purpose. I don’t want anybody reading this and going there to start trouble. The world needs all the Mexican restaurants it can get. Our food has a way of bringing people together. 

It may be our best hope.

Besides, for all I know, the owner is what used to be called “of Mexican descent” as well as a life-long Republican, and pays the employees well, maybe even mentors them so they can start their own restaurants.

Also, this was their turf. And it was Arizona, where out in public somebody usually has a gun . . 

UPDATE: After I wrote the above, Trump announced that be would arrested "Tuesday" and encouraged his followers to protest. Tuesday came, there was no arrest, and more counter-protesters than protestors materialized. However, some AI deepfake photos of what the arrest would have looked like went viral, and he raised a lot of money--that would have been better spent on Mexican food--for his campaign. The weirdness has only begun, gente.

Ernest Hogan will be teaching “Papí Sci-Fi’s Ancient Sci-Fi Wisdom” to all the Chicana/o/x writers who enroll for the class at the Palabras del Pueblo Writing Workshop. Sign up, hermana/o/xs. Let’s change the literary world.

 

Chile Verde Quiche: Crustless, Meatless, Gluten-free

The Gluten-free Chicano Cooks

Chile Verde Gluten-free Meatless Tortilla Quiche 56g* 

Michael Sedano, The Gluten-free Chicano

 

Note well, this is the Ur- version of the dish. An experimental attitude, and a hielera full of left-overs, leads to wonderful eating. 

Add a layer of chopped Hatch chiles, or, zucchini for a modified green&gold casserole. Adding a layer of well-drained sausage or ground meat picadillo gives the dish an entirely new character. (Beware of ingredients that add liquid to the delicately balanced custard element. You will ruin your meal. Add more rice to soak up the liquid.)

 

375º 45 minutes

 

Whisk together vigorously:

2 eggs (medium) 7g 

Scant 1/3 cup whole milk 4g

2 TBS (¼ stick) salted butter melted .02g

Pinch coarsely ground black pepper .06g

 

½ can, 1 cup or so, Las Palmas green enchilada sauce. 3g

 

Grease a baking dish, bottom and sides:

Ladle a few TBS enchilada sauce on the bottom of the greased baking dish.

 

3 corn tortillas 33g

Tear corn tortillas into small chilaquiles-size pieces (1/3 the size of a storebought chip)

Cover the bottom of the baking dish with tortilla pieces, get them 2 layers thick.

Cover the tortillas with most of your enchilada sauce.

 

Add all the egg butter milk mixture atop the sauced tortilla pieces.

Scatter 1/8 cup leftover steamed rice into the custard blend. 6g

1/3 cup small curd cottage cheese.  2g

1/3 cup grated mozzarella or jack cheese .4g

1/3 cup sharp cheddar .4g

 

Distribute cheese across the top. 

Daub rounded TBS of cottage cheese in 4 or 5 spots;

Sprinkle lots of grated cheese across the entire dish;

Ladle a few TBS enchilada sauce across the cheese;

 

Decorate the top with sliced yellow cheese and black olives.

 

Bake 40 to 45 minutes at 375º. 

Give the Quiche a shake. If the top middle jiggles like jello, give it another 10 minutes.

Remove from oven and let sit five or ten minutes. 

Serve with a crisp green salad and a gluten-free dressing.

La Bloga-Tuesday: A History of Gluten-free Chicano Food

The Gluten-free Chicano has been a La Bloga-Tuesday Semi-regular Occasional feature since 2011, when Michael Sedano's Celiac Disease-dictated campaign against wheat / barley / rye ingredients in his food was in its fifth year. No: bread, soy sauce, beer, pasta, malted milk, and a host of suspicious ingredients best avoided than risk a few days incapacitation.

Just because you have a food allergy, and Diabetes, doesn't mean you have to find a cave and become a food hermit. Some food, like Mexican food, is naturally gluten-free, or mostly so. Other dishes lend themselves to gluten-free methods, and carbohydrate counting. Diabetics often limit each of 3 big meals to around 50g, and two snack meals at 35g.

Here are four columns where a click leads you to some outstanding comida Chicana, all of it Gluten-free. Menudo. Nopales. Helote Calabaza soup. Enchiladas. Mira nomás!

https://labloga.blogspot.com/2011/09/introducing-gluten-free-chicana-chicano.html

Puro Quiche

https://labloga.blogspot.com/2012/07/gluten-free-chicano-cooks-banned-books.html

Chile-Potato-Helote Bisque 

https://labloga.blogspot.com/2015/09/gluten-free-chicano-cooks-mission.html  

Multiple recipes 

https://labloga.blogspot.com/2019/01/the-gluten-free-chicano-looks-back.html

 

 

*Carbs estimated from values found at http://www.carbohydrate-counter.org/advsearch.php 

 

Venezuela In A Poet's Heart. Chicano Hot Dog, Origins and Development.

A Rosary for Venezuela
Lisbeth Coiman

I am a radical atheist relearning to pray.
Kneeling to conjure devotion, I hold my motherland between the palms of my hands, to protect her against all evils. My words, the beads of the rosary slipping through my fingers.

First Sorrowful Mystery – Agony

Lord, put the right words in my mouth.
I am not a journalist, just a scribbler who feels her native land between her rib cage and her seventh vertebrae. Not a refugee nor asylum seeker. A first generation immigrant with a peculiar diction. My identity contained in the expired passport of a country that no longer exists.

Second Sorrowful Mystery – Washing of the Hands

Allow me Lord to reclaim the ownership for my people’s uprising, to validate the courage of twenty years of struggle against the impostor hiding behind an outdated ideology, acting like the emperor he claims to fight in his robinhood fiction.

Let me write of Bachelet washing her hands in the pool of the Secretariat Building.

Third Sorrowful Mystery – Crowning with Thorns

Lord hear my prayer. End the usurpation of power, give us an interim government, call for general elections, and allow the release of political prisoners. Sacred Auyantepui watches in silence while the guardians of Angel Falls bleed to death in the jungle.

Fourth Sorrowful Mystery – Via Crucis

Lord be the witness. From a palace on a hill, the caricature of a man executes his only job, make martyrs of those attempting to survive.

Fifth Sorrowful Mystery - Crucifixion

Peace medicine burns inside trucks at border crossings of hope and despair.

Litany – Mercy
May those who have eyes see, those who have faith pray, those who have art create awareness.
May the hungry be fed, the sick be healed, and the desperate be comforted.
May Maduro leave to avoid more bloodshed.
May a period of reconciliation follow.
May Venezuela be free.

==

I am a bilingual writer and adult educator living in Los Angeles. My work has appeared in La Bloga, Entropy  Acentos Review, Lady/Liberty/Lit, Hip Mama Magazine, Rabid Oaks, Cultural Weekly, la and elsewhere online, and recently in print in the Altadena Literary Review, and Accolades: A Women Who Submit Anthology. My self-publish debut book, I Asked the Blue Heron: A Memoir, (2017) explores the intersection between immigration and mental health.

On controversy and one's patria...via email 
"The truth it’s difficult to take a political stand without touching somebody else’s sensitivity. My point is I don’t believe in ideological dialectics, but in humanity. A dictator is a dictator whether it stands on the left or on the right.

But on social media, which seems to be a no man’s land without behavior rules, I have received vitriol from both sides: the communists supporting Maduro and the Trumpzuelans supporting Trump for fear of the communists, some in private messages insulting me really bad. I have both been accused of being a communist and a fascist. Some Venezuelans call me Chavista."

The Gluten-free Chicano Invents the Chicano Hot Dog.
Michael Sedano

10-year old Miguel de las Costillas decided he’d had enough school this week after a long Monday with the awful teacher and the Times tables. "You have to wait for someone to catch up so just sit there," she commanded.

On Tuesday, February 2, 1956, Miguel opened the refrigerator and surveyed his prospects. The freezer compartment had Camp Steaks, breaded pork cutlets, and best of all, crispy breaded abalone steaks. For Tuesday lunch, Miguel fried one Camp Steak using two of the four pats of butter frozen to the top. Wednesday, Miguel fried one of the pork cutlets. He ate it with catsup. Thursday was his best day. Abalone.



Frozen abalone steaks in the waxy box fried up crisp and delicious. Miguel cooked all six wafer-thin steaks, doused them with juice from a lemon and salted the hell out of them. Miguel tilted the empty plate to his lips and let the salty lemon juice and abalone crusts slide into his mouth.

“Hooray for Hollywood,” Miguel sang along to the opening words of the Dorothy and Dick Show on channel 5. Irritated by Sheriff John's Bosco cartoons--no one saws logs to make sandwiches of nails and wood, then chews with their mouth open--the 4th grader's mood changed with the music.  Miguel relaxed singing the words he knew, “where any office boy or young mechanic, can be a panic, with just a good-looking something or other." The boy looked forward to lunch and today's movie.

Miguel didn’t panic when he looked into the freezer. Empty. The cold part had corn tortillas from Tommy’s market, machine-made instead of las de mano from Quatro Milpas in Berdoo, where little abuelita made tortillas for as long as Miguel could remember. There was mantequilla. Miguel was not that desperate. The only tortilla-with-butter worth eating was his mother’s hand-made tortilla de harina, or his gramma’s from the wood-burning stove. Miguel found weenies.

Miguel de las Costillas regretted his Thursday lunch. Fish was for Friday, but today he has only weenies for lunch. And tortillas. De maíz. Miguel fell into reverie.

The ancient Purépecha woman looked into her cocina and found only tortillas and meat. How will she feed her familia with only these ingredients? Miguel understood.

Automatic hands strike the blue tip match on the burner which springs into bright blue yellow flames. Reflexive hands slide the crusted black cast iron sartén over the flames. He pulls a single tortilla from the pink butcher paper and refolds the bundle. When the tortilla grows soft and flexible, the boy rolls the tortilla around the weenie. A dab of mustard and it's ready to eat. Not yet.

He gouges a tablespoon of lard from the red box and lets it melt across the bottom of the frying pan. Smoke starts to rise from the hot oil. Two fingers place the Chicano Hot Dog into the pan. The boy has patience and allows the aroma of toasted corn to join with the hot lard smell. He pushes the rolled weenie. Gravity lets the offround roll settle comfortably where it toasts in place. A third rollover and the Chicano Hot Dog has crisped all around and needs to cool.

Ten-year-old Miguel de las Costillas dipped the steaming Chicano Hot Dog directly into the squat jar of yellow mustard. He burned his tongue on the first bite, juggled the morsel on his tongue to cool. He burned his tongue on the second bite, too. And the third. The fourth bite was just right. The last bite left mustard on his fingers and Miguel de las Costillas licked them clean. 

On teevee, Wallace Beery was an ugly sloppy Pancho Villa. Miguel de las Costillas hoped the movies would be better next week.

The Gluten-free Chicano Hot Dog*

One kosher all-beef weenie
One good quality machine-made tortilla de maíz
Non-stick spray
Peanut oil/vegetable oil

Soften the tortilla in the pan, just a spritz of non-stick spray. 
A fast method is wrap the tort in a cloth towel and microwave 6 seconds. This works for bulk, too, when making enchiladas.

Wrap the weenie in the tortilla.
Set the roll on its flap on a plate.

Heat ¼" or more oil in the heavy frying pan. Let the oil smoke.
Place the roll flap down in the hot oil. Use a finger or fork or tongs to hold it for a few seconds to "set" the shape.
Roll and cook to brown crispiness.
Roll and cook to brown crispiness.
Serve with white and yellow cheese, pico pica or El Pato hot sauce, a dab of mustard for that All-American touch.
 
Garnish with pickles, fritos or potato chips optional.
Water or cold leche.

*Any dish cooked by a Chicano for that Chicano's consumption is Chicano Food. The Chicano Baloney Sandwich, for example, differs little from the Okie or Anglo Bologna Sandwich. The Chicano Hot Dog has a little less controversy to its status, what with the crisped tortilla and its origins now revealed, innovated by an habitual truant.

GF Company's Coming. Dominic's Dialect Dispensation. Mexican Schools Baroque. Tet

The GF Chicano Cooks
Gluten-free Chile Relleno Casserole-Company Style Because We Have Good Eggs
Michael Sedano

Farm-to-table eggs taste better, they really do.

Crustless vegetable custards, aka Quiche, get put together licketysplit and make an elegant setting after suitable baking in a hot oven. Fast, easy, elegant--just what the cook with other things to do looks for in nutrition. The Gluten-free Chicano is no exception, especially when his daughter's McDonald's Urban Farm (link) this season features uniquely colored hen fruit. These beautiful eggs deserve special treatment, so company wasn't coming but the Gluten-free Chicano made the just-layed eggs fancy-style by beating them to a hard fluff and baking a faux cheese souffle con chiles.

There's no requirement to beat the egg to a hard fluff then diluting with cream. Fast, fast, fast, use a fork to break up four to six whole eggs, proceed.

For company-style, I used extra egg whites because i kept three yolks for Hollandaise sauce the next morning.

Get the oven to 375º or 400º.

You can use canned whole chiles; I had a bag of Hatch mild from Alfredo Lascano's La Pelada (link). 

Grease a presentation-quality shallow dish. Lay the stemless chiles whole on the bottom. Chop if you must, or use canned and chopped chile.

Grated cheese makes a flavor difference. Tillamook sharp yellow cheddar is the Gluten-free Chicano's preference, though adding some Vermont or Irish cheese makes good sense, if there's on-hand inventory.

Those beaten egg whites get mixed in with the yolks, a cup of half and half or a combination of whole milk and whipping cream. Melt ¼ stick butter and stir it in.

Add pinches of salt, black pepper, ground cayenne.

Pour the eggs onto the chiles and cheese. Dust the top with Paprika.

The Gluten-free Chicano cooks for two. Increase the volume of milk and eggs and fill that pie pan to the top to feed four. 

Put the assembly on a pie pan and slide into the oven. Neglect it for 45 minutes.

Test then allow to sit for five minutes or more. Servings will be steaming hot.

The custard is ready when the jiggling stops and a blade in the middle comes out shiny and uncoated. Don't open the door. Leaving the casserole to cook in there without spilling heat out an open door ensures the eggs fully cook. The biggest trouble people have with custard dishes is a soggy middle. (Microwave that to fix it.)

Ingredients (carb counter):
¼ lb or 2" off a chub or 1 loose-pack cup grated good cheddar cheese.
4-6 farm-fresh eggs from McDonald's Urban Farm or a local farm-to-table producer.
1 cup milk or half-half or cream plus milk. Add milk if you need more volume to feed more people. (carb advisory-check)
¼ stick butter.
Options:
Chopped spinach, sliced onions, minced or slivered garlic, bacon crumbles, diced good ham. Bake a sliced tomato on top.

400º
40-45 minutes.

Note
Mastering the basic savory custard with cheese is a gateway to fine, fast, easy elegance. Next you'll be making Spanish Tortilla and wowing your dining guests and finicky eaters. 

Reheat leftovers for a few seconds in the microwave, covered.


Review: Veteran, Poet, Collects Disconnected Memories.
Michael Sedano

Dominic Albanese. Disconnected Memories, poems by Dominic Albanese. Port St. Lucie, FL. Leaky Boot Press, 2019.
 ISBN: 978-1-909849-69-3


“Sure, ay bin comin’ to touwn…” I said in my best Norwegian bumpkin dialect. Mrs. B’s eyes grew wide as she rose from her desk. As nonplussed as possible she suggested I find something closer to home for the monologue contest. I selected Barnaby Conrad’s The Death of Manolete, did it in SAE. I got the point. Don’t do dialect that ain’t your’n. Especially if you don't know the lingo.

My oral interpretation must have been funny peculiar, not funny ha-ha. Printed language and oral representations are langue et parole apart. Print cannot make the sounds of someone saying the words. Countless writers have done dialect text, a few successfully in English, magnificently successfully by raza poets. But I speak the language, I'm not held back by the text itself.

For some readers, text written as dialect distracts even as it calls attention to the bridge between speech and language, writing and talking, them and me. Others will see the line and hear the sounds back on the block and in the word savor their own compressed moments. Dialect does that, too.

Dialect writing possesses a distinct aesthetic that touches innate gregariousness for those who speak the dialect, that creates interest in exogenous readers looking for the "smell of the crowd." 

For some poets, not writing dialect, i.e. "straight" composition, could muck up their connection to their muse, that's the way they learned to write English. That's not the case for the writer of Disconnected Memories. Read the poet's biography in "straight" prose and note he's capable of clarity, spelling, coherence, all that shit.

This Critic reminds not just Albanese, because he's not alone in electing the dialect style. Alurista's most recent collection (link) offers a glaring example of dysfunctional spelling that can dilute the poetry in the syllable. Meaning resides in the reader despite the poet’s intent. Orthography represents a writer’s best chance to get their own meaning across. 

Dominic Albanese does dialect poetry the right way. Recently, he's brought forth a collection that earns respect for the poet qua poet and makes it worth the effort to decipher, overlook, or forgive his printed representations of oral communication. For all I know, this is how the vato talks and he's not writing, he's quoting.

I think I got his language OK, but I’m not going to endeavor some explanation of stuff like this one time I was writing an explicacion du texte on a line from e.e.cummings, “my jaws all gone”. I reasoned the persona must have been punched-out or had gum disease, pobrecito. My professor gently corrected my misunderstanding. Cummings is broke, his “jack’s all gone." Anglos say "jack" for "lana."

if only
I had not been
so ready to go mad
be bad
n have wild adventure
(still pissed off over Vietnam)
I would have got that shop
n been
a grumpy ole guy like he was
looking back… no telling

Albanese closes the 131-page collection with those lines. Spelling doesn’t distract, much, although the poet could go to extremes to catch the sound of that voice. Aurally, one spelling could go “be badnhave wild” more closely copying elisions natural to speech, but “badnhave” or “nbeena” would stop a reader in her his tracks like an arroba in a line of Chicano literature. The spelling conventions Albanese pursues with grammatical consistency fashion an “eye dialect” that shapes the page, bringing a visual coherency to a page on its white space.

Eye dialect aside, Dominic Albanese writes vitally important words. The young guy went through the Vietnam war and writes poetry about it. This poet has done something few people did and it’s time for Unitedstatesians to read about it. Some a ya will cry yr eyes out.

Albanese probably speaks the English of Brooklyn and Coney Island. It’s the sound of where the kid grew up among unmeltable ethnics; Italiano settlements, internal colony cultura with bilinguals living with monolingual immigrants. Albanese’s youthful recollections tell of wise guys, blueberries, ethnic expressiveness. Mother. Father.

never had a company
or a Enterprise
for me to
inherit… no wage slave… day by
week paycheck
survival
truthfully I was
ashamed of his
honesty… acceptance
was way more attracted to
wise guys… steal it… fuck it…
what they gonna do
put ya in da Army n send ya to Vietnam
bet yr ass they would
then some years of rebellion

Vietnam. Novelists have the luxury of developing the intense terror and landscapes of combat—the helicopter scene in Mexican Flyboy (link) leaps out of memory—Poetry's economy is the perfect language for the unspeakable.

That war he fought inhabits this soldier’s mind, it hits him even retroactively, he remembers the past against what happened later.

When the poet was a kid not knowing it, Vietnam was already digging into his psyche, moments distilled and stored away until he needed their succor. In “Sleepwalk,” an old man relives fondly a boy's record hops, slow dancing to Santo and Johnny in adolescent heat. The poet's innocence is offered as an antidote to Vietnam and its ravaging aftermath. 

“don’t dance, float… I will show you”
that and Anny had a baby
uhuu uhuu
kept me alive
in Vietnam
I met her again we were both in
our twenties… she remembered tole
me “you were so sweet”
SLEEPWALK BACK TO BROOKLYN
50+timeless years ago

The note of chagrin at the end illustrates the humor that offers another good reason to read Disconnected Memories. "Sweet" is just what a horny guy doesn't want to hear, it's like saying let's be friends. Irony's many faces permeates Albanese's poetry, adding a dimension most readers yearn for and get in ample measure.

When the poet gets back from the war, in 1966, he sees loveliness on the San Francisco streets of the summer of love. He connects with a hippie chick and he’s ready to whatever, head over heels horny GI still struck out of his wits by the tours in the jungle. She looks into his eyes:

pain blood tears… a fear that she
said scared her… then she kissed
me before I could kiss her
we spoke of future… she said to me
I recall tone intent vibrations of words
“you will need a lot of time. more time than I
am willing to spend, but only love can let those colors
come out”
I never saw her again

Regret weaves in and out of Albanese’s life, things that never happened or almost, as well as what that 18 year old kid got put through. Every Veteran knows this—everyone who put on the uniform and absented themselves from home will never get back those 13 or 18 or 24 months. But only 7% of United States Americans have ever served in uniform and know what it feels like to step off that transport and admit you made it back, you're home.

ok I was 18 in Vietnam
let me see if I can just run
this waka noddle down
in 56 a bit longer en that ago
under duress… from Dulles
Ike sent Iron Mike n 600 troopers to
that swamp… for to defend economic policy
nothing more nothing less
as a “workers paradise” drank em self dead
Never forget 911 (I know I jump around)
Nixon killed 30.000 people a week
in Cambodia… (who cares?) right
be glad for Jerry Ford… he only hurt ya
with golf balls
then comes Ronny Ray gun
at about nine times a number a week

This soldier recognizes he was part of an unending war, nothing to regret, that’s how it is, fifty years on after his war, United States wars have never stopped. Vonnegut’s tag line, after living through the Dresden fire-bombing in World War II, completely encompasses the Veteran's lot: “so it goes.” 

For poet Albanese, there’s no regret, the old soldier has hope.

an old Ford Falcon drives by
with
better days written in blood on the side

Dominic Albanese lied in his title, Disconnected Memories. These poems are connected to the hearts and minds of the Vietnam generation. Us old people, the Love Children of the sixties. All of us.

But not solely. You few who pulled shock & awe against those hapless Iraqi conscripts, you Reservists who got extended time and again, read Disconnected Memories, you'll connect your time with your comrades across time. Kosovo. Ethiopia. Not South America, please.

Too bad those freaked out PTSD homeless guys can’t read these poems. They, too, have stories to connect, but this isn’t about them, it never is. 

Old Soldiers aren’t going to be alone getting hooked on Disconnected Memories. People who read poetry, who seek commanding expression and arresting ideas, will tell their friends to order the collection from Leaky Boot Press. Everyone knows poetry doesn't sell, so prove everyone wrong and buy Disconnected Memories.

Distribution is the bugaboo of all modern publishers, bookstores stock only limited publishers. Fortunately, mail and UPS narrow the distance with the flick of a virtual plastic card. Ordering from Leaky Boot is Poetic Justice:

Kris Haggblom
Poetic Justice Books & Arts
1774 Port St. Lucie Blvd.
Port St. Lucie, FL 34952
772.249.5678

Website ordering: www.poeticjusticebooks.com

Email order/inquiries:
poeticjusticebna@gmail.com

Dominic Albanese Bio from Publisher Website
On the whole I would rather be in Philadelphia - W. C. Fields on his tombstone - I have been writing poetry since I was twelve years old, and within sight of where I am sitting at the moment are more than seventy-five notebooks full of poems. When I returned to the United States from Vietnam in March of 1966 I spent at least fifteen years--in the words of Bryon--being "mad and bad and dangerous to know." I suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder, a malady that could not then be named--for a few years I had an almost terminal case of it. Crime, drugs, chopped reality, fast motorcycles, women, rum and cocaine, all of these just about killed me. I went to prison for a while. Through all of that I never stopped writing poetry, even if some of my poems from those times are as dreadful as the years themselves were. - I live a life now I could once only dream of, I got and stayed sober, I stopped being a thug and a lout. I have been mentored and taught what it is to be a man--and to be a good man at that. I have long known that it's not what we say we are that makes us who who are, but what we do. - Each poem in Disconnected Memories is a response to something that happened in my life, so you could say, in a way, that they are autobiographical. Some of the poems are quite old, some are quite new, but that's unimportant. What matters to me is what you, the one reading my words, makes of these fragments of a life. - Dominic Albanese is an American poet, mechanic and Vietnam War veteran. He has published five previous books of poetry: Notebook Poems (Finishing Line Press, 2014), Bastards Had the Whole Hill Mined (Les Éditions du Zaporogue, 2015), Iconic Whispers (Les Éditions du Zaporogue, 2015), Then n Now (Les Éditions du Zaporogue, 2016), Only the River Knows (Les Éditions du Zaporogue, 2018). Dominic lives in Florida



Beyond Baroque Site of Four Mexican Schools Literary Events • 2/10/19  4 to 6 p.m.

Beyond Baroque
681 Venice Blvd, Venice, California 90291

First of four in Narratives of the Southwest Series at Beyond Baroque: 
Mexican Schools: An Evening of Resistance Featuring Poetry by 
Angelina Sáenz, Fernando Salinas, 
Irene Sanchez, & Matt Sedillo
With narration by Sean Arce 
February 10, 2019
4-6pm


The fight for tomorrow has always started with the struggle for education. History past and present comes to meet in an explosive evening of poetry, prose, and narration grounded in historical research and educator/parent/student testimonios. The fight for tomorrow will be won in the struggle for the past. We are not just teaching history, we are making it.

Year of the Pig

Promote local Mexican food, not Chipotle Mex Grill

America acts like its minorities have chingos of spare time to keep correcting the U.S. government, corporations and organizations. This week it's the corporate-officer dregs of Chipotle Restaurant who call their food "Mexican."

Ask A Mexican's Gustavo Arrellano has good updates on the Chipotle/Latino Author fiasco. Put simply, for a series of plastic cups, the list of American authors who contributed 250-word stories, qué chingaus, failed to include any Latino author. Like Gustavo says, a "Mexican" restaurant couldn't find one Mexican-American writer, though they claimed they tried.

The fiasco is all over the Internet, for example on the Huffington Post, Mona Alvarado Frazier's Chipotle's "Thought-less" Idea, and a clearinghouse called Cultivating Invisibility:Chipotle's Missing Mexicans.

I proposed a different strategy to put pressure on Chipotle and facebooked the following:

#LatinoStory4Chipotle
How to answer Chipotles' exclusion of latino writers--
1. Make up our own story (250 words, max)
2. Use your favorite LOCAL latino restaurant's logo or slogan
3. Identify your city, and share your piece across the country.
4. You can use the LatinoStory4Chipotle tag
I'm working on mine. Even if you're not, spread the word, por favor.

I'm still working on my story and cup that will highlight Mexican-owned Santiago's in Colorado, which is selling burritos and great Mexican food, like to upstage Chipotle. I can't say they treat their staff better than the Rice-Makes-A-Chingón-Burrito Chipotle place, but at least they're local and Mexican owned.

Somebody took me to Chipotle's right after they opened in Denver, and I hated the food, but kept the friend. A burrito with rice! I understood how trendy rice is and that the place was attempting to appeal to the gentry. But that didn't make the food genuine.

Other gente's experience may be different from mine, but the only time when I was growing up that my impoverished family ate rice was when there was nada else to fill it with. Refritos, mashed frijoles is the proper thing to put in a burrito, other than meat that didn't always appear on our table.

Chipotle expects me to celebrate my cultural heritage by eating a rice burrito. What will they think of next? Mashed lima beans or garbanzos instead of beans? (Those were always the last two cans in our cupboard, back then.)

I can't trash other food at Chipotle's because I don't care to taste anything more from the place. That's just me. Whatever you do, if you're thinking about stopping there, you might want to first read about how they treat their workers.

And if you want to REALLY let them know what you think about excluding Latino writers, Facebook or Tweet your own story and cup about your favorite local puertoriqueño, dominicano, mexicano, Tex-Mex or Chicano restaurant. Promoting Chipotle's competition might make them never again forget to put Mexicans (latinos, too) on their literary menu.

Es todo, hoy,

RudyG, ex-tejano connoisseur of la comida mexicana