Cesar Chavez Day and National Poetry Month Mañana

First Happy Cesar Chavez Day

Tomorrow is April Fool's and National Poetry Month Begins 

 Does anyone else hide from the pranksters? I've never been one for jokes and do not enjoy that we have a day dedicated to fooling each other. In the spirit of no fooling, one real event is Poetry Month. April is when event coordinators bring out the poets and for one month, there are more poetry events than usual. I have to admit, this is another custom I am not a fan of. I prefer celebrating poetry everyday, all yearlong. Since you'll be hearing more about poetry in April during my posts for April 14 and the 28, I'll only share a few events to start with. 

April 1: The Poetry Buffet, an online event to celebrate women poets. Zoom reading. No fooling. Saturday 2pm

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/82106457295... 

April 8: Poetry Without Borders. Poesia Sin Fronteras. A one-day Poetry Fest from 2-7pm, Cafe Istanbul, 2372 Saint Claude, New Orleans

In Santa Barbara, there's big Poet Laureate news. On the 18th at 2pm at Santa Barbara's City Hall, the city will proclaim its 10th Poet Laureate. 

On April 25, Santa Barbara welcomes the 24th United States Poet Laureate, Ada Límon to Campbell Hall, UCSB, 7:30 pm. 

April is also a month when I revisit poems I've written in the past. 

Our President Sings Amazing Grace

Melinda Palacio

For the slain Reverend Pinckney and nine 

of his flock. Bible study will never again

be sitting in the same room, breaking bread,

discussing all things of importance, faith

On the other side of the fence, a divided

nation, the crazies call an obama nation, an obamination, 

an-oh-not-my president nation. 

Since when is the President, not your President?

Will you move to Canada?

Oops. You forgot Canada allows equal marriage.

Will you move to France?

You forgot France will not tolerated your ignorance.

Parlez-vous français?

That's right. You don't speak the language.

Go back where you came from.

Is your solution a fence?

Because all of a sudden you notice the town you live in,

the street your house is on is not spelled in English.

English only. You voted for it. 

A Mexican told you. I will marry your daughter 

and you will eat nothing but burritos,

burritos three times a day.

Which flag will you fly?

Will you hold up stars and stripes,

rebel stars and bars,

or will a white dove help you

with a white handkerchief?

For your pain, for my pain, for their pain, for our pain,

President Obama Sings Amazing Grace.

Amazing Grace,

How Sweet the Sound...

You Can Never Return Home

 Melinda Palacio

Untitled Poem

Melinda Palacio

The day she returns home she

summons all of her imagination.

At least the two palm trees still stand tall, 

frame her childhood home in comfort.

She takes in the house on Albany Street,

a duplex turned single home, turned complex as

multiple units crowd skyward.

A gaudy iron-wrought black and gold gate

never was there to fence her in, nor were the window bars,

a tacky prison. She'll never forget her bedroom, the walls that shaped her being,

witness her transformation from girl to woman.

How the wood-framed window facing the neighbor's stucco wall held a death trap for ants, 

pill bugs and unspeakable roaches. How she feared those fast brown crunchy bodies,

or a brush of cucaracha's thin antennae ready to tickle and conquer the world. 

Today, the neighborhood is quiet, no kids running around,

no moms yelling orders, no fast tires or tricked out engines roaring rude.

Ah, but the outside of the house, the safety of the backyard,

away from the street's stray bullets, was a lush eden she took for granted.

Black and white figs, peaches, and the sweetest tomatoes turned salsa

in her grandmother's molcajete. 

Lines of laundry with wooden clothespins where all shapes of shirts, pants, and dresses flapped dry.

Does the concrete jungle miss having a fertile garden that feeds a family of thirteen?

Sherlock Homie and Three Reflections

Review: Manuel Ramos. The Golden Havana Night. A sherlock Homie Adventure. Houston: Arte Público Press, 2018. ISBN: 978-1-55885-867-1

Michael Sedano

Manuel Ramos hasn’t finished his newest Gus Corral detective novel, despite its publication date of 30 September 2018. And that’s half the fun of The Golden Havana Night, A Sherlock Homie Adventure. When you get to the end, the story hangs there.

The other half, of course, is the reader’s reunion with Ramos’ replacement character for Luis Montéz. Despite the character’s insistence on showing up in a plot line, Montéz is done. Age has a way of putting ‘finis’ to lots of things. It’s a fact that doesn’t escape Gus, nor the author.

Corral himself is resilient and able to take a beating and keep on going like a drug store wristwatch. It’s Gus’ connections that are taking aging hard. In a subplot a retired corrupt cop brings justice to an old murder because old crimes don’t get punished so the old guy does it himself.

Corral’s long-time associate, Jerome, has come down with Parkinson’s Disease. Jerome’s symptoms worsen over the few pages we last see him, no longer an active participant in the narrative but as a third person report. Perhaps it’s a symptom of the diagnosis, but Jerome becomes a valetudinarian, inquiring after a person’s health can wear them down after a while. For Gus, it’s age and the beatings and car wrecks and shootings.

Stop the world of the novel. Ramos brings the plot to a curve in the road of Jerome’s life. There is a full page of health information on Parkinson’s Disease. The topic of how raza approach health communication differently is important to Jerome, to the reader. Jerome almost missed useful therapies and knowledge. It’s not an author’s complaint, but a solution, “I had to dig into the Internet to make that connection. But once I did, it was all there. Class schedules, fees. Todo. Everything I needed to know.”
“Maybe you should spread the word.”
“Maybe. I’ll think about that.”

Old-time Chicano talk clues Gus to danger. Not that his alertness does him any good. The woman calling him “homie” and “ése” has Gus captive and nearly smashes his flesh con un martillazo. She was supposed to be an embassy operative, and that lo-tech torture instrument is a sly reference to the chic-old cars of Cuban local color.

Island complexities are familiar tropes from other novels and Ramos merely acknowledges the material benefits social advantage brings. If that disparity is what a reader seeks, Ramos’ title recommends further reading. Cuban detective author Leonardo Padura penned a superb “color” series, including Havana Gold. Ramos, like Padura, acknowledges the fact of disparity and moves on to tell his story.

Manuel Ramos is the “godfather of Chicano noir,” an honorific reflecting not only his longevity but a reader’s expectation for something more, beyond the “average” Manuel Ramos Chicano detective story. Golden Havana Night fulfills that in its explorations of identity and identification. If anything makes a novel “chicano, chicana,” it’s the theme of Identification.

Gus Corral is naturally inclined to question his place, his identity. A pinto has a tough time from the word “you’re released.” This struggle is the texture of the novel’s unspoken world. Throwing him into Cuba where parallel identity issues add to “it’s complicated,” with Island Cubans, exile Cubans, gusanos, revolucionarios, mirror issues back in Denver.

The weak brother who disavows his Cubanness, the ultimate subversion of identity, turns out to be a crook of near-fraticidal dimension. Maybe that’s because he is the worst kind of gusano. Back in Denver, Gus’ sister risks her movimiento credibility by reaching across social barriers to embrace a broken-down anglo ex-cop. Do real Chicana heroes do that?

There are amusing bits with Chicano speech readers should look out for. The two torturers who adopt old-style phrasing, a group of workers whose knowledge of Chicanos includes a few phrases but not how a Chicano says au revoir:

“The workers exuberantly wished us a good trip. When I shouted, “ay te watcho,” they looked at me like I’d spent ten minutes too long in the Cuban sun. I’d taken the Chicano thing as far as it could go on the road the Bay of Pigs”.

When those workers read this novel, they’ll also learn about Carlos Frésquez, a Chicano artist working at the Latinx fringes of la cultura. And there's a fleeting reference to an "Hispanic" philosophical outlook Chicanos and Cubans share.

Ramos’ metaphoric reflections on who and how we see one another, through language, through health communication, through aging, make interesting divagations from the crime and travel literature mission of the novel, but add immeasurably to the storytelling essential to the detective novel. The Golden Havana Night has everything a reader looks for. Except an ending. And that’s what, when all gets said and the last page done, makes this Sherlock Homie novel a real kick in the head.


Memories Are Made at Harry's Plaza
Michael Sedano

December 1968. The Selective Service allowed me to wrap up the teaching year, giving me until mid-January to report to the Army.

I could live with that, so as the year wraps up I busily conduct the business of being the Debate TA. Teaching speech and covering at no extra pay for a professor who’d fallen ill, I was having the time of my life, knowing all this was ending, this was it.

Getting that letter marks me. I walk the hallways to whispered glances, “He’s the one who got drafted." “Drafted” is a euphemism in these days for getting killed in Vietnam. 

I go about the business of visiting professors to say so long, it’s been good to know you. My Greek teacher slams his fist on his desk and screams, “God Damn It, they always take the good ones!” My M.A. adviser is glum, advises me to “go into krypto.”

My debate partner invites me to dinner at Harry’s Plaza. He’ll drive. We're getting the full treatment, could be the last time we dine together.

Harry’s Plaza means stylish elegance. Red leather banquettes in darkened interior, walls covered with period photographs and celebrity head shots. Red-waistcoated waiter seats you comfortably setting down a crock of red tomato relish another of sour cream, with warm Italian bread and crispy breadsticks. Pork chops or ground sirloin steak are affordable now and again, but penurious students love spaghetti and meat balls with garlic bread. Not like Mom’s Italian Village garlic bread--the world’s best—on the other side of Santa Barbara, but good garlic bread, one refill.

We walk into Harry’s Plaza and my debate partner leads my wife and me like he owns the place, past the maître through the saloon and into the back room. The entire Speech Department of UCSB, the baby debaters, the speech majors I didn’t know but came anyhow, the student-clerks, Flo Sears, the venerable Secretary. The professors make speeches. The room gives me an actual cheer, standing, hip hip hooray! 

They hated the war. They didn’t say it, but they were thinking it, "what if this is the last time we see this guy alive?”


So last week I had lunch at Harry’s Plaza. I ordered a steak because I can. 

Spaghetti’s on Special with meatballs for eleven dollars. I can’t eat wheat. 

My steak comes with a mound of steamed broccoli and cauliflower instead of spaghetti and bread. I eat all of it. 

I bask in the ambiente of times past, looking around the room, loud people at the bar fully present, quiet diners enjoying privacy's darkness, a festive party over there getting engaged. 

That some things never change, and that Harry's Plaza is one of them, brings me immeasurable comfort in the moment. 

I don’t tell anyone why I’m here, how I have never forgotten that farewell party, and how my memory of it means the world to me. 



Stop Reading And Fight

Michael Sedano

Overnight Duty, Mae Bong, Korea, 1969

You see, that’s the thing about accents. Everyone has an accent and where I come from the first marker of Foe from Friend is that accent behind me in the chow line. And this boy’s mouth is full of twang.

“Who the fuck do you think you are? Every time I see you, you have your face in a book.”

That’s true, the book part. I don’t know about “every time” because being the new guy, I don’t know anyone. I turn to look.

The Admin Area of Bravo Battery Seven Five sits at the bottom of the highest Army missile site in the world. Fifteen miles from the Korean DMZ, mile-high Mae Bong houses surface-to-air missiles waiting for the fifty men up there to connect cables, take cover, and be blown to small pieces by radar-seeking missiles. The twenty-five guys down here would hold the narrow pass until help arrives.

Short, stocky Metzgar, a Private E-2, stands red-faced and making fists. He wears his curly blond hair combed into a motorhead wave like Robert Mitchum running white lightning. A good ol’ boy, Metzgar.

Metzgar is what I grew up calling “Okies.” They called themselves poor white trash. This Okie has me in his sights, all worked up, and I go “Oh crap.”

I know the rules. I’m supposed to say something. He’ll be offended so he gets to punch me, then we fist fight.

I’d accommodate him, if I had a reason. But reading a book? I’m still the new guy, and kicking this guy’s ass—or getting mine kicked which I doubted—didn’t strike me as a good way to begin a year surrounded by a shitload of white southern accents.

“Where are you from, Metzgar?” Soldiers wear our names on our clothes. I like his answer. The guy is from Kentucky. I’m reading Faulkner, The Reivers. Faulkner’s from Mississippi and the story is heading to Tennessee.

“Huh?” Metzgar is dumbfounded, a good word for the daily Metzgar, who is about to become my friend. People like Metzgar aren’t dumb. This guy took a moment to squint and figure out what I was saying about being here at Bravo, nine thousand miles from anyone you know, and being somewhere else at the same time.

This book is about going to Memphis. You know Memphis? Metzgar doesn’t know Faulkner. I tell him he’s one of the most famous writers in the world. I call to mind a Eudora Welty story. Metzgar has dived into cold, green rivers like in the story.

We chow together. He doesn’t want to fight anymore and he agrees to join me in the USO library where it’s as if a buyer walked fiction and poetry shelves at City Lights Bookstore and put the books here at Bravo. I pick a Mickey Spillane story. Metzgar never did read it, but it had a place in his locker, the only book Metzgar ever owned. Poor kid.


Andrea Mauk Reflects
The Night We Parked Too Far from the Fair (and Nothing Happened)
By Andrea Garcia Mauk

At the time of the harvest moon,
when night’s cold air stubbed out summer’s heat,
when a schoolgirl’s year still rang with newness,
we went to the state fair,
Mary Janes on our feet and trench coats
round our shoulders.
The parking lot was full, so we did what our
parents told us not to do:
parked my friend’s dad’s car
on a side street, very far.

The blur of caramel apples and funhouse mirrors,
tossing coins for stuffed animals never won,
carnies hawking voices tempting, “Just once more try.”
Riding the roller coaster and the Tilt-a whirl,
until it turned colder, and the five of us
knew, we had to walk back to the car.

We met four boys, one in a letter jacket,
last name proudly embroidered on the back,
and David, who kept looking at me,
while I turned my gaze down.
They offered us a ride,
so we piled in on their laps,
And quickly, we were
back at my friend’s dad’s car
parked on the side street, very far.

It could have ended there
but my friend reached under the seat
and pulled out an object…shiny and metal.
Three girls in the front seat bolted,
and my friend in the back wriggled out of her coat,
to an ingenious escape,
but I felt barrels, one at each temple,
and I wanted to cry, eyes blind with fear,
as I heard my friend’s tires squeal away.
I was always too slow.

The guy riding shotgun,
(I now know why it’s called that,)
Said, “Look at the bum on the corner.”
BANG! I watched him fall.
“No!” I shrieked. As their laughter ricocheted,
I began bargaining
with God.

“I’m sorry I didn’t read the entire
To Kill a Mockingbird for class. I won’t lie again. I…
I want to be an actress, go to college,
get married, have a family,
hear the bells at Saint Catherine’s
on Sunday morning, go home to my mom
and my dog.
What will my dog do without me?
Please, don’t let me die. They can have me,
they can rape me, then I’ll be good
for nothing, but don’t let me die…
not before I’ve lived.”

The harvest moon was my flashlight,
honed on the driver. “Your mom’s name is Jenny.
She works at the high school.”
The driver stiffened, then David insisted,
“Don’t do this to her. Take me to my dad’s house.
I’ll borrow the car and take her home.”

Along the outskirts, on Baseline, David pulled over.
“My friends made me promise…”
I told myself to do the math.
One is better than four.
He ripped at my shirt. I took the razor
blade that I carried
from my pocket and wondered
where to cut and how hard
so that he wouldn’t chase me.
He unzipped his pants, he
yanked my head back, and then…
he let go. “I don’t want to do this.
Promise you won’t tell.”

“I won’t tell. I won’t tell.”

In the morning, the phone rang apologetically.
My friend asked my mom, “Did she get home?”
“She did, no thanks to you.”
In the background, my mom heard their voices
Saying, “She’s so lucky. Nothing happened.”

Guest: Thelma Reyna. News 'n Notes. Hallowe'en Stories

Guest Columnist: Thelma Reyna
FAILURE WITH PUERTO RICO
With Poem from New Book by Pasadena CA Indie Publisher

Thelma Reyna

In the wake of historic consecutive hurricanes slamming our nation’s Gulf Coast and the Caribbean—Irma, Jose, Maria—and their unprecedented destruction, our collective anguish has turned to rebuilding and rescue efforts that are expected to last for years. Much has hinged on the U.S. president’s responses to the disasters: his mobilization of federal resources and oversight of FEMA, as well as commiserating with the suffering of the people.

"Hurricane hitting the Island" foto:msedano

Sadly, the current office holder’s report card on handling disasters falls short. His own rave self-reviews aside, the man’s tardy outreach to console the stricken people and his lack of authentic compassion in his demeaning tweets and visits to the storm areas have reinforced the public image of him as self-congratulatory and out of touch with real people’s suffering. Nowhere can this be seen more starkly than in his response to the nation receiving the least of his attention and the brunt of his disparagement: Puerto Rico.

Today, 41 days after PR was struck by Irma, conditions on the island are only slightly less dire as on day one: the death toll has risen; potable water is still unavailable for all; people struggle with insufficient food, power, and communications; patients in hospitals continue to die. Carmen Yulín Cruz, the mayor of Puerto Rico’s largest town, San Juan, appeared regularly on TV for weeks, weeping in frustration, begging aid from anyone in the world, criticizing our federal response to their life-and-death struggle, and generally sounding like a broken record: We need drinking water, food, and medicine! People are dying.

But as the world now knows, Mayor Cruz’s reward for caring about Puerto Ricans’ survival was surrealistic: The American president publicly called Cruz a bad leader, depicting the disaster victims as lazy and wanting to “have everything done for them,” which was far from factual. He did not visit P.R. as readily as he did Texas and Florida, both large red states with huge electoral votes. Instead, P.R. had to wait 13 days before their nation’s president went to “the island in the big ocean very far away,” as he referred to it while he golfed and relaxed on his resort, tweeted slanders at Cruz, and Puerto Ricans perished.

"Hurricane damage" foto:msedano   

My new book about life in the United States of America since the election of this president includes the poem below about Puerto Rico’s fate thus far in the hands of the man who—when he finally, reluctantly made it to P.R.—scolded island officials for putting the federal budget “out of whack” because of funds channeled to assist them; implied that the deaths of 16 Puerto Ricans (the death toll at that time) was insignificant, unlike the “thousands” who died in Katrina, “a real catastrophe”; and all but ghosted Mayor Cruz while he praised himself endlessly and praised his FEMA team hyperbolically. He topped off that disastrous visit by throwing paper towel rolls at anxious recipients of aid, instead of taking that opportunity to meet them face-to-face, shake their hands, embrace them, or console them. He “toured” the island for less than half an hour, then departed quickly. He failed in attempting to be human.

Yet, in his callous charade, he continuously gave himself an “A+” for his work and required, as has become typical of him with large groups, that officials in the room praise him lavishly in round-robin fashion, much like “Dear Leader,” Kim Jong Un. In the days since this fiasco, “45,” as some refer to him, threatened to pull all FEMA assistance and complained that the U.S. cannot continue providing aid and military assistance to the island for much longer. So, while Texas is favored with thousands more boots on the ground providing relief, though their situation is not as dire as is Puerto Rico’s, 45 continues his inhumane marginalization and cruelty toward our fellow Americans in P.R.

Here is a look at the heroic P.R. mayor, from my new book of sociopolitical commentary in poetry and prose about the era of the man who would be king. The book is due for release later this year or early next.


MAYOR CARMEN
By Thelma Reyna

“When it bothers someone that you’re asking for drinking water,
medicine for the sick and food for the hungry, that person has much
deeper problems than what can be discussed in an interview.”
--Carmen Yulín Cruz

He called her “nasty woman,” so she wore “NASTY” like a medal on her T-shirt on TV.
He called her a bad leader, so she focuses like hell’s laser on saving her people’s lives despite him.

He thinks he can tweet her into silence, degrade her into turnabout.
She’s a Latina after all, poor, homeless, with a heart that feels every cut the broken branches make on her people’s hands when they clear roads.
She feels every parched breath pushed like knives into old people’s throats in a nursing home when generators sighed and died.
She feels brittle bones of people she helps pull from waters toxic and putrid.
She feels men’s pain when they cart sisters and mothers and fathers from splintered homes sodden and deadly.
She feels the abyss of grief when she sees toddlers and children muddied and still.
She feels the rumbles and stabbings of hunger and thirst of people stranded alone.

Mayor Carmen wears glasses, rubber waders thick and heavy to her hips, wears her outrage and pleas on her face and lips like Melania wears de la Renta with heels.

Mayor Carmen knows no vanity, like him and her.
Mayor Carmen knows no rest, like him and her in their resort when he lambasted her.

Mayor Carmen knows death and fear, desperation and tribulation, isolation and abandonment every day that breaks.
We don’t have time for her political noise, Trump’s team says.*
Mayor Carmen knows he doesn’t care.

It’s not politics, she said to him.
We need water, she said on TV for the thousandth time with the death toll 39.

But for him it always is,
and they’ll have water when he gets around to it.

*Three weeks into the natural disaster, Mayor Cruz asked again on TV for water for her nation. 

The Director of FEMA, Brock Long, replied: “We filtered out the mayor a long time ago. 

We don’t have time for the political noise.” 

THELMA T. REYNA, Ph.D. Thelma’s books have won 8 national literary awards. She has written 4 books and, as Poet Laureate in Altadena, CA, has edited 2 anthologies showcasing the poems of about 100 local and regional poets.

The title of Dr. Reyna's new book is:

READING TEA LEAVES AFTER TRUMP. Pasadena, CA: Golden Foothills Press. ISBN 978-0-9969632-3-7

Thelma's fiction, poetry, and nonfiction have appeared in literary journals, anthologies, textbooks, blogs, and regional media for over 25 years.

Thelma Reyna is an editor with her writing consultancy, The Writing Pros; and Chief Editor at her indie publishing venture in Pasadena, CA, Golden Foothills Press. Dr. Reyna holds a Ph.D. from UCLA.

Visit her website at www.GoldenFoothillsPress.com

News 'n notes
Alburquerque Gente Can Sponsor a Piñata At NHCC
Click here for more piñatas

Email link: Tey.Nunn@state.nm.us


Poli Marichal Animated Gem At Latinopia

Multi-talented artist Poli Marichal discusses her interests in digital and animated art. A noted printmaker, Marichal's stop-motion animation, Sin Fronteras, is visually arresting, an especially useful way to involve audiences in the ideas threading through Sin Frontera's visual and aural delights. And, being digital, a viewer is free to start and stop, rewind and look again, before moving on, then repeating the experience as many times as one clicks.

Be sure to visit Latinopia for the full interview with the Los Angeles-based artist. 





It Happened Along the Old Road
Michael Sedano

I didn't want to stop, in fact my pace picked up but then I stopped. The joke has a lot of truth in it, though the gente in that house have no idea how their tableau unnerved me with its faint then insistent recall of one of those life's scariest moments.

The road from Redlands to Hemet winds along the eastern edge of the cemetery where Alessandro Road descends into San Timoteo Canyon. In those days, the road fords the creek near the forgotten indian graveyard to cross into San Timoteo Canyon, where the two-lane blacktop hugs the bluffs of the broad creek on its way to Live Oak Canyon and the pass to the Moreno Valley.

The young man drives his Model A with practiced ease. He's made the trip to Hemet every weekend since the chavacanes got ripe and his girlfriend's family went to la pisca. He started work earlier than usual that morning, to be able to work a full day and still get away early. As it happened, that day the foreman assigned him to prune deadwood from a neglected row of yellow limones, the tree with thorns.

His arms itched from hundreds of needlepoint wounds and he wasn't paying close attention to the switchbacks along the rising road. But he realized it and slowed. Approaching "dead man's curve" he downshifted into second gear against the climb to the top of the ridge, and prepared to brake and let gravity wheel him around the series of "S" curves at the summit.

He is thinking of his girl. Only fifteen, her father insists that the two chamaquitos keep the enamorados in their sight. The young man doesn't mind, just being near the most beautiful woman in the world is his only pursuit in life.

At the final "S" curve, his foot off the gas, the Model A's headlights leave the pavement to swing across the open space above the valley floor. Into the curve, the headlights find the gouged walls of fossil-bearing ancient mud. He loves the sight of the beams sweeping across open space until the first salt bushes appear at the right of his vista that beams across bushy sage and flowering buckwheat and in a flash across the final curve, a horrible sight.

Here, at the most treacherous curve, at the highest point of Live Oak Canyon Road, a shiny black Phaeton hangs over the precipice. The young man's lights had swung across the chrome hood ornament, a rampant eagle, claws deployed in the act of killing. His headlights caught the driver's door, hanging open. A figure sitting on the running board, a figure, a woman cradling a baby. Then his headlights swung out into open space, the Phaeton and the mother a burning afterimage in his vision.

The young man carefully pulls out of the curve onto the shoulder. He stops and sets the handbrake. His flashlight batteries are old but able to cast dim yellow light giving a ghostly cast to its world. The beam finds the rear bumper first. As he moves closer, the beam shows the left rear wheels planted firmly on earth but the Phaeton's right-side wheels disappear into the blackness waiting to claim its next victim.

He speaks English as he approaches, shining the light at the rear passenger door, not in her face. The shadowed woman hums to calm the swaddled form. Her elbows rock slowly. The young man stops ten feet from the teetering Ford. "Let me help you," he says.

The darkness beyond swallows his voice as completely as it swallowed his headlights. The words fall flat yet he remembers them as booming in his ears. The woman stops humming.

In the moonless night of Live Oak Canyon, alone on the old road, his eyes lock on her head. In the silence she looks up. A gloved hand pulls aside her mantilla. When she makes eye contact with the young man, he flees in terror from the skeleton face that glowed out of her hood.

In Hemet that night, the teenager wonders about his absence. Had her father scared him away?

The old road is gone now, a lot of years. When motorists speed along the sleek blacktop into Moreno Valley from Live Oak Canyon now, not many of them look up at the ridge, where the curves are tighter and here and there, patches of the old pavement still hold their ground and their memories.

The Gluten-free Chicano Cooks Chile Colorado. Art Fest in Santa Fe Springs. On-line Floricanto.

The Gluten-free Chicano Makes Chile Colorado
Michael Sedano

The Gluten-free Chicano was all antojado for chile colorado, and in his zeal to eat some, he forgot most restaurants thicken the dish with harina de trigo. It was a Saturday matinee at the theatre so given the timing he planned to stop at northeast LA’s best Mexican cocina, El Arco Iris restaurant in Highland Park.

There are three quality standards for restaurants, in the Gluten-free Chicano’s mouth. First, cocido. It’s his second-earliest memory of food. If the cocido is at least acceptable, he will return for a second meal, when he applies the second test: beans and chile colorado.

It used to be the other way around, before he became afflicted with Celiac disease. Beans and chile colorado, then cocido de res. But that is the Gluten-free Chicano’s remote past and nowadays, cocido is the only safe option in unknown restaurants.

El Arco Iris had been his go-to place since shortly after his discharge from the U.S. Army when he and his wife lived in the area. He’d never had a bad meal there, and beside that, Arco Iris had the best cocido in town and cocido was his usual order nowadays.

But that afternoon, all antojado for beef in red chile sauce, driven by yearning, he thoughtlessly ordered chile colorado without consulting the menu, nor quizzing the order-taker about wheat ingredients. He didn’t regret the decision. Yet.

Arco Iris made a mean chile colorado; tasty, full-flavored, generous. He contemplated licking the plate. Instead, The Gluten-free Chicano wiped the plate clean with a final bit of tortilla. He sat back, satisfied, until the first pangs of doubt raised tiny beads of sweat on his back. Was that chile safe? He drove home, fearfully.

Sure enough, like clockwork, 59 minutes later he grew violently ill and was down for the normal two days of misery. Never again. Double never again because El Arco Iris closed at the end of April after 53 years of operation. Ave atque vale, el Arco Iris restaurante.

That hypnotized by antoja nightmare happened several years ago, 2011, in fact. Last week, the antoja struck again, hard. When life serves you gluten, the only solution is to cook it at home. And that’s just what The Gluten-free Chicano did. This is a simpler variation of the recipe La Bloga shared in 2011. The Gluten-free Chicano is simplifying everything these days.

Ingredients

Beef cubes.
Gluten-free flour, salt, pepper, dried garlic granules.
Gebhardt’s chile powder, or a good mix of New Mexico and California chile powders.
Cornstarch.
Water and/or chicken stock.
Coconut oil or olive oil.
Salt.

Use a plastic bag like the vegetable bags from the grocery store.

Dump in a ¼ cup of gluten-free flour. The Gluten-free Chicano prefers King Arthur brand, but any gluten-free flour mix will do (not pancake or baking mix). Add a pinch of garlic, a pinch or two of chile powder, a sprinkle of salt and pepper, and shake to mix.

Add the beef cubes to the bag. My grocery store's least expensive beef is trimmings, usually large cubes. That's what are pictured here.

From a roast or a steak, cut 1” cubes or slightly larger, though meticulous tipas tipos will cut ½” cubes or short, thin slices. Shake the bag and beef so the beef turns white and there is only a little flour at the bottom.

Heat over high-medium flame the coconut oil and just before it starts smoking, empty the bag into the oil.

Stir vigorously for a few minutes and let the meat brown on all sides. Lower the flame cook the meat for five minutes.

While the meat is cooking, put a couple tablespoons water in a separate vessel and sprinkle in two tablespoons of corn starch. Stir in ¼ cup or more of stock. Stir in half a bottle of Gebhardt chile powder. Gebhardt chile powder is tasty without much heat. Add ground cayenne to make the sauce chiloso.

Add this thin liquid to the beef cubes and stir to wet all the meat chunks. Get the sauce to uniform consistency, no lumps or clumps. Cook until the liquid begins to boil gently. Now it starts thickening.

Lower the flame. Stir completely. Add chicken stock to produce the volume of sauce you want. The more you add, the more time required for the cornstarch to thicken. If you need more thickness, dissolve cornstarch in cold liquid then add to hot.

Lower the flame, cover, and cook for five minutes or until the meat is cooked through (and probably tender, depending on what kind of beef selected), and until the sauce is viscous but still clearly liquid. If it’s gotten too thick, add stock or water a little at a time, stir to desired consistency: the sauce coats the meat.

Serve with frijoles refritos and tortilla de maíz. A small salad of pepino and jitomate adds a refreshing crunch to the meal, and if aguacates are on sale, slice one up.

Eating Chile Colorado

There’s only one way to eat chile colorado: taquear with your hands and a tortilla.

Tear a piece of tortilla that fits between your thumb and index finger. Pinch the tortilla around a chunk of beef, slather across the plate to gather sauce and refritos in the tiny taco. Pop the delectable morsel into your mouth. Lick your fingers and repeat.

¡Provecho!


Santa Fe Springs Arts Festival


Driving the 210 freeway heading east at 2 in the afternoon offers a test of patience amid congestion and tolerance for cars that slalom in and out of lanes seeking an imagined advantage on everyone else. These drivers are commuters, they do this every day. I’m on my way to the 605 and a quick jaunt toward Whittier for the 3:00 opening of SFS Arts Fest in Santa Fe Springs. But it’s 2:30 and I’m just passing Duarte.

Back in February, Pola Lopez happily announced at a pre-Zoot Suit dinner that the SFS Art Fest named her this year’s Feature Artist. I hadn’t known the city of Santa Fe Springs held an art Art Showcase/Family Art Day. This would be the fifth.



The city-owned Clarke Estate comes with spacious grounds and a cement promenade encircling the mansion. Tented booths line the walkway, in places two deep. A sound system energizes the crowd with rancheras and jazzy rock performed live on the main stage. Santa Fe Springs knows how to throw an outdoor art gallery happening.

Eight- or ten-foot booths line the cement walkway that surrounds an early 20th century mansion. 3D painter Julio Cesar Jimenez works on a side plaza. A body painter pulls a brush across the chest of a woman. A live mannequin wrapped in videotape moves silently protesting her bindings.

Dress store dummies and a supply of ink markers invite any with an interest to tattoo torso and hips. Fashionistas offer ideas and couture as a like-minded photographer poses elegant models to create a photographic happening throughout the groundss.

Ariana Rodriguez on left

Andy Sanchez of Backyard Sol Music makes four- and 5-string instruments
from license plates and cigar boxes.

Food trucks and tents sell crepes, popcorn, tacos, Caear salad, slurpy drinks, and beer. Three burley cops stand near the drinks ticket booth in nonverbal advocacy for temperance.

Art is the raison d’etre of SFS Arts Fest and feature artist Pola Lopez shows why, when all is said and done about singers and mariachi, performance art, crafts, public service booths, expensive snacks, people come to the fest for the art.

Ignacio Gomez created the iconic el Pachuco poster and works in bronze.

The organizers built their 2017 event around Chicana Chicano art and they provide lavish space for each artist to showcase their work and tempt buyers to take one home today. Much of their work hangs in museums and collector walls, but that's less important than finding art you like and can live with.

The exhibition area is spectacular. Pola Lopez’ Feature Artist space fills half the courtyard, hundreds of square feet. Two guest artists, East Los Streetscapers Wayne Healy and David Botello, have generous but slightly smaller spaces.

Pola Lopez gives visitors a guided tour of her canvases and mixed media work.
Each work offers complexities of color, symbol, history, culture. Hers is an art of Identification and Peoplehood.

Angel Guerrero staffs the tees and prints booth and helped hang the show

Lopez hangs dozens of paintings and mixed media wonders. She mounts a fabulous exhibition of her inspired blending of symbol and color, adding interest with work on hanging textile instead of stretched canvas. She has draped a garment across one painting. Organizers found the figure’s bare midsection not family-friendly. Chacun a son impure thoughts.

No objection to the nalgas but the other figure required a cover-up.

The organizers provide each key guest with a commercial booth where they can offer giclée and related art treasures. In hers, Lopez, and Angel Guerrero stand eager to help people buy deluxe screened tee shirts with Lopez’ unique vision. The tees are an ideal Mother’s Day gift for my daughter, granddaughter, wife, and son-in-law.

Pola wears one of the tee shirts on sale today. Debbie Valenzuela is taking this canvas home.

David Botello

In the tee shirt tent, Lopez hangs smaller acrylic canvases. A visitor from near-by Pico Rivera buys a painting. She stops next door to chat with David Botello in his tent. If she was lucky, she took home one of Botello’s paintings, too. And maybe a Healy to round out the collection.

Wayne Healy

Santa Fe Springs doesn’t make the news much. Neighboring towns like Pico Rivera and Whittier make a lot more noise down the 605 corridor leading to Orange County. The SFS Art Fest has to be the region’s best-kept arts secret. That’s probably a good thing. The intimacy of today’s festival would evaporate from jostling throngs and the lawns would take a beating. Next year, I’ll look eagerly for it, in case there’s another stellar line up, and I’ll tell all my friends about it, too.

The SFS Arts Fest is managed by an organization dubbed Uptown Crawlers, under the aegis of the City Council and the Heritage Arts Advisory Committee. They should be flying high at the success of the event. The combination of infectiously high spirits with the sublimity of the art here makes me regret the necessity to split the scene. Hopefully traffic won’t be so punishing.

As I wend a path toward the sole entry gate, I spot a couple wearing name badges, beaming at the energies flowing out of the fair. They are the organizers. I thank Larry Oblea and his wife, Amparo, and congratulate daughters Kristy and Felicia on being part of the accomplishment.

Kristie, Larry, Amparo, Felicia Oblea. Thanks for a successful event!

Librotraficante Update

Link: librotraficante.com


On-line Floricanto for the Middle of May
Kris Barney, Barbara Peña, Betty Sanchez, Sonia Gutiérrez/Translation by Francisco J. Bustos, Edward Vidaurre

“ride out the storm with me” By Kris Barney
“My Life” By Barbara Peña
“Indignación” por Betty Sanchez
“Poema Giver” By Sonia Gutiérrez/Translation by Francisco J. Bustos
“Where I Grew Up” By Edward Vidaurre



ride out the storm with me
By Kris Barney

4.13.17

Images flash of bombs
coming down
an Amerikan patriots wet dream
forget the cries of children
the blood of atonement
the rage and fever of men with
erections over the thought of
playing call of duty war games
prepare for each day and the worrisome
looks of passerby's and folks too weak
to mask their fear
it's also this springtime come upon us
a laugh and dance to the delights of
PTSD memories and broken hopes
and as always Natives hunker on
shoulders bent and or on a journey
prayer feathers touching the skin
I have a brother out there
running for his people
I have a sister out there
nurturing her babies
I am here
In the sunset
thinking of you again
and it never gets easy
it never leaves you at peace
a thrust of the wind
I wish many things
I wish I could take you in my arms
I wish I could love on you
I wish I hadn't fucked it up
Look at me again
dress me and undress
me with a kiss and
we can watch the fires
together....



My Life
By Barbara Peña

My life is a Flambeau parade
Neon-charged and rowdy
A Selena song played by a high school marching band
I've spent almost forty-four years under this Texas sun
A part-time poet and full time dreamer
I'm famous only for my insecurities
I love like I'm On The Road
More Kerouac than Kerouac
I showcase my indiscretions like it's an art form
And, these wounds of mine that refuse to heal
Bleeding all over the page
Weeping over Feast days and birthdays
My face is a calendar of freckles and fault lines
A reflection of perfection, indecision, and secrets
This is where I find myself now:
Midlife and still burning like a Roman candle
Broadcasting my personal geography of resistance
Admitting I have occasional bouts of madness
My heart can't fight it
My brujería won't hide it
Love-drunk and loca
I've celebrated humiliation and liberation in equal measure
I've arrived at the middle of my life to discover
I am my own midwife
This is my autobiography
Birthing this story that God and my Mama gave me

Barbara Peña is a graduate of the University of Texas at San Antonio with a degree in English and a minor in Art History. She's passionate about social justice issues and the healing of trauma through writing and the creative arts. Her current project focuses on the practice of folk magic and the study of the official and unofficial Saints of the borderlands. Barbara currently resides in Selma, Tx, with her niece, Sophia, and their dog, Marley.



Indignación
por Betty Sanchez

¿Qué hago con estas palabras
que aletean furiosamente
en mi interior
como un cuervo cautivo?

Intentan escapar
para denunciar
los males de la humanidad
que se han esparcido
como un virus maligno
sin vislumbre de cura

Capitalismo
globalización
consumismo
tiranía
armas químicas
intolerancia
odio racial
ignorancia

Caos
     desolación
                muerte.

Norma Beatriz Sánchez, poeta mexicana. Miembro activo del grupo literario Escritores del Nuevo Sol. Sus poemas se han publicado en las antologías Voces y Cuentos del Nuevo Sol, The Border Crossed Us, Poesía en Vuelo, Soñadores; Mujeres de Maíz Zine 10 y 13, y St. Sucia VI edición. Ha contribuido en La Palabra, La Bloga, y Poetas Respondiendo a la Ley SB1070. Participante del XIX Congreso Internacional de Literatura Hispánica, llevada a cabo en Buenos Aires, Argentina.



Poema Giver
By Sonia Gutiérrez/Translation by Francisco J. Bustos

para mi Literary Saint Francisco X. Alarcón

In my waking
sueños,
Poema Giver,
you rise
sobre sábanas
blancas de papel
ready, as always,
to write,
donde el cielo-sky
is filled with
luminous
letra-words,
y con tus manos
las amasas
y haces cielo-clouds
made of poemas
y después,
descansas
y subes los escalones, up-up-up
of a gigantic
capital letra A
y te vas down-down-down
its slide
con open arms,
riendo y sonriendo.
And that is how, así pasarás
los days de January,
los days de February,
y los days de March
meanwhile, por las mañanas
mis lágrimas, they run down
my face,
luna-moon-mirror,
pero happy
porque huele
a poetry.

Sonia Gutiérrez’s teaches English composition and critical thinking and writing. Her bilingual poems have appeared in the San Diego Poetry Annual, Konch Magazine, and Poetry of Resistance: Voices for Social Change, and forthcoming in Tidepools: A Journal of Ideas. Her fiction has appeared in the London Journal of Fiction, Huizache, and AlternaCtive PublicaCtions. Sonia’s bilingual poetry collection, Spider Woman / La Mujer Araña, is her debut publication. She is a contributing editor for The Writer’s Response (Cengage Learning, 2016). Her poetry collection Legacy / Herencia is seeking publication. Currently, she is moderating Facebook’s Poets Responding, working on her manuscript, Sana sana colita de rana, and completing her novel, Kissing Dreams from a Distance. Francisco J. Bustos’s “Poema Giver” Spanglish translation appears in Legacy / Herencia.

Francisco J. Bustos: Bilingual poet and musician, grew up in Tijuana and San Ysidro and now lives in San Diego, is professor of English Composition at Southwestern Community College (Chula Vista, CA, ) where he is a coordinator for the literary series "SWC Guest Writer Series". Forms part of the poetry/music group Frontera Drum Fusion where he plays guitar, bass, indigenous percussions, digital music and performs bilingual poetry in English and Spanish, with some Spanglish, and Ingleñol.
Francisco Bustos: Poeta y músico. Vive en San Diego, es profesor de literatura y escritura creativa en Southwestern College (Chula Vista, CA, EU). Forma parte del grupo de poesía y ritmos la Frontera Drum Fusion donde integra poesía, música digital y percusiones precolombinas. Escribe poesía en Ingles, Español, Spanglish, e Ingleñol. fronteradrumfusion@gmail.com
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Frontera-Drum-Fusion/104911159610430?sk=app_2405167945&ref=page_internal (Facebook Band Profile)
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL4A7CC7652EEB8E58 (Youtube Playlist)
http://www.reverbnation.com/fronteradrumfusion



Where I Grew Up
By Edward Vidaurre
after Wanda Coleman’s “Where I Live”

at the hip of a brown woman
is where I grew up
torcido con holy socks
todo chorreado from the tierra
en el aire, walking up the hill
through sureño barrios and
velvet curtain cantinas where ficheras danced and
flirted with the deadbeats.

In the conflict between black and brown
skinned people, dealt with by bullets and
knife fights, suicides and incarceration.
En la melting pot de Los Angeles.
There was this girl who threw herself
off the second story window to prove her love,
ended up in a body cast and regret.

El Pato tomato sauce factory filled
the air during the day,
at night we spilled cerveza on the ground
for our deceased homies and blessed
our lungs with yesca barata.

at the hip of a big brown woman
is where I grew up
playing down the line with the cholos
of East LA Trece and other pandillas hoping
not to get caught in the crossfire of
stray bullets that always came
with an orchestra of slow singing and sadness

Where rucas gave you their virginity and a promise
to kill you if you ever broke their heart. In house
parties where we slow danced and left home with
hard-ons and hickeys. West of the Mississippi,
beat, uninspired, just taking up space.

I grew up on frijoles con arroz and arroz con frijoles
and casamiento and huevos and tortillas and vecinas
that looked out for each other's kids and chisme
and abuse and hand me down ropa
and hope in Sunday scripture.

at the hip of a big brown woman
is where I grew up
neighbors with old black man Curtis who
kept his Cadillac looking fresh, his pants
perfectly creased, and his hat tilted just right
for the grouchy old lady across our flat keeping
us bola de cabroncitos off her manicured grass

On welfare and minimum wage
is how we grew up
No money for new shoes just Budweiser
and money for the races, where I got lost
while Spectacular Bid being led by Bill Shoemaker
finished off a perfect season

I grew up
across the street from my elementary school
where my favorite teacher was born in Louisiana
and died of the same disease that took my dad’s life
thirty years later, where cops walked the beat handing out
Baseball cards of our favorite Dodger players and the billy
club was the only menace if we shit-the-stick.
The best burgers were sold by a Korean restaurant &
our family doctor smoked cigarettes while listening
to our heartbeats.

at the hip of a big brown woman
smog filled skies, broken down cars,
pit bull fights in the back near clay hills,
With fist fighting chicanos, and posadas lead by
activist women and a white priest that
would soon bury hundreds of youth
praying for redemption and peace.

Edward Vidaurre is the author of Chicano Blood Transfusion (FlowerSong Books), Insomnia (El Zarape Press), Beautiful Scars: Elegiac Beat Poems (El Zarape Press), and I Took My Barrio on a Road Trip (Slough Press). His new collection, Jazzhouse, is forthcoming from Prickly Pear Press. His work appears in Bordersenses, RiverSedge, Brooklyn & Boyle, La Bloga, Voices de la Luna, and Poets Responding to SB1070, among many other venues. He is the founder of Pasta, Poetry, and Vino, an ongoing poetry reading series in the lower Rio Grande Valley.

Happy New Year 2015/ Feliz año 2015

EL BRINDIS BOHEMIO

Guillermo Aguirre Fierro (Mexicano)
El Paso, Texas 1915

En torno de una mesa de cantina,
una noche de invierno,
regocijadamente departían
seis alegres bohemios.

Los ecos de sus risas escapaban
y de aquel barrio quieto
iban a interrumpir el imponente
y profundo silencio.

El humo de olorosos cigarillos
en espirales se elevaba al cielo,
simbolizando al resolverse en nada,
la vida de los sueños.

Pero en todos los labios había risas,
inspiración en todos los cerebros,
y, repartidas en la mesa, copas
pletóricas de ron, whisky o ajenjo.

Era curioso ver aquel conjunto,
aquel grupo bohemio,
del que brotaba la palabra chusca,
la que vierte veneno,
lo mismo que, melosa y delicada,
la música de un verso.

A cada nueva libación, las penas
hallábanse más lejos
del grupo, y nueva inspiración llegaba
a todos los cerebros,
con el idilio roto que venía
en alas del recuerdo.

Olvidaba decir que aquella noche,
aquel grupo bohemio
celebraba entre risas, libaciones,
chascarrillos y versos,
la agonía de un año que amarguras
dejó en todos los pechos,
y la llegada, consecuencia lógica,
del "feliz año nuevo".

Una voz varonil dijo de pronto:
- las doce, compañeros;
digamos el "requiescat" por el año
que ha pasado a formar entre los muertos.
¡Brindemos por el año que comienza!
porque nos traiga ensueños;
porque no sea su equipaje un cúmulo
de amargos desconsuelos.

- Brindo, dijo otra voz, por la esperanza
que la vida nos lanza,
de vencer los rigores del destino,
por la esperanza, nuestra dulce amiga,
que las penas mitiga
y convierte en vergel nuestro camino.

Brindo porque ya hubiere a mi existencia
puesto fin con violencia
esgrimiendo en mi frente mi venganza;
si en mi cielo de tul limpio y divino
no alumbrara mi sino
una pálida estrella: Mi esperanza.

¡Bravo!, dijeron todos, inspirado
esta noche has estado
y hablaste bueno, breve y substancioso.
El turno es de Raúl; alce su copa
y brinde por . . . Europa,
ya que su extranjerismo es delicioso.

Bebo y brindo, clamó el interpelado;
brindo por mi pasado,
que fue de luz, de amor y de alegría,
y en el que hubo mujeres seductoras
y frentes soñadoras
que se juntaron con la frente mía.

Brindo por el ayer que en la amargura
que hoy cubre de negrura
mi corazón, esparce sus consuelos
trayendo hasta mi mente las dulzuras
de goces, de ternuras,
de dichas, de deliquios, de desvelos.

-Yo brindo, dijo Juan, porque en mi mente
brote un torrente
de inspiración divina y seductora,
porque vibre en las cuerdas de mi lira
el verso que suspira,
que sonríe, que canta y que enamora.

Brindo porque mis versos cual saetas
lleguen hasta las grietas
formadas de metal y de granito,
del corazón de la mujer ingrata
que a desdenes me mata.
¡pero que tiene un cuerpo muy bonito!

Porque a su corazón llegue mi canto,
porque enjuguen mi llanto
sus manos que me causan embelesos;
porque con creces mi pasión me pague.
¡vamos!, porque me embriague
con el divino néctar de sus besos.

Siguió la tempestad de frases vanas,
de aquellas tan humanas
que hallan en todas partes acomodo,
y en cada frase de entusiasmo ardiente,
hubo ovación creciente,
y libaciones, y reir, y todo.

Se brindó por la patria, por las flores,
por los castos amores
que hacen un valladar de una ventana,
y por esas pasiones voluptuosas
que el fango del placer llena de rosas
y hacen de la mujer la cortesana.

Sólo faltaba un brindis, el de Arturo,
el del bohemio puro,
de noble corazón y gran cabeza;
aquel que sin ambages declaraba
que sólo ambicionaba
robarle inspiración a la tristeza.

Por todos lados estrechado, alzó la copa
frente a la alegre tropa
desbordante de risa y de contento
los inundó en la luz de una mirada,
sacudió su melena alborotada
y dijo así, con inspirado acento:

-Brindo por la mujer, mas no por esa
en la que halláis consuelo en la tristeza,
rescoldo del placer ¡desventurados!
no por esa que os brinda sus hechizos
cuando besáis sus rizos
artificiosamente perfumados.

Yo no brindo por ella, compañeros,
siento por esta vez no complaceros.
Brindo por la mujer, pero por una,
por la que me brindó sus embelesos
y me envolvió en sus besos;
por la mujer que me arrulló en la cuna.

Por la mujer que me enseñó de niño
lo que vale el cariño
exquisito, profundo y verdadero;
por la mujer que me arrulló en sus brazos
y que me dió en pedazos
uno por uno, el corazón entero.

¡Por mi madre! bohemios, por la anciana
que piensa en el mañana
como en algo muy dulce y muy deseado,
porque sueña tal vez que mi destino
me señala el camino
por el que volveré pronto a su lado.

Por la anciana adorada y bendecida,
por la que con su sangre me dió vida,
y ternura y cariño;
por la que fue la luz del alma mía;
y lloró de alegría
sintiendo mi cabeza en su corpiño.

Por esa brindo yo, dejad que llore,
que en lágrimas desflore
esta pena letal que me asesina;
dejad que brinde por mi madre ausente,
por la que llora y siente
que mi ausencia es un fuego que calcina.

Por la anciana infeliz que sufre y llora
y que del cielo implora
que vuelva yo muy pronto a estar con ella;
por mi madre bohemios, que es dulzura
vertida en mi amargura
y en esta noche de mi vida, estrella.

El bohemio calló; ningún acento
profanó el sentimiento
nacido del dolor y la ternura,
y pareció que sobre aquel ambiente
flotaba inmensamente
un poema de amor y de amargura.