Your daily dose of Chicano poetry
"I write poems on walls that crumble and fall
I talk to shadows that sleep and go away crying.”
Luis Omar Salinas (1937–2008)
Daniel Romo
Fun
The world’s longest Slip n’ Slide extends from Mexico to Southern California. This is also the world’s most dangerous Slip n’ Slide. Every year, 400 people die as a result of belly-gliding across a patchwork of plastic from poverty into opportunity. Injuries occur frequently, and participants usually take part at night. Often the father is the first to go. Says his goodbyes, sprints from the front lawn, and charges into the darkness head-on, through stagnant water and past border agents that await him. Even if he slides from one end to the other, he must hide from deportation. Sometimes the whole family travels together. One by one, they ease onto the plastic, often lead by a man they’ve never met, but whom they paid to navigate them safely to the other side. The fun occurs when the ride is over and sliders are allowed to start new lives. Limp bodies sprawled across the land like lost carcasses equals failure.
Daniel Romo is the author of Romancing Gravity (Silver Birch Press, 2013) and When Kerosene’s Involved (Second Edition, Mojave River Press, 2014). His poetry can be found in The Los Angeles Review, Gargoyle, MiPOesias, Hobart, and elsewhere. He teaches English and creative writing, and accepts and rejects prose poems as the Poetry Editor for Cease, Cows. He lives in Long Beach, CA and at danielromo.net.
Claudia D. Hernández
Claudia D. Hernández was born and raised in Guatemala. She’s a photographer, poet, translator, and a bilingual educator residing in Los Angeles. She writes short stories, children’s stories, and poetry in Spanish, English, and sometimes weaves in Poqomchiʼ, an indigenous language of her Mayan heritage. Claudia is currently pursuing an MFA in Creative Writing for Young People, with an emphasis in poetry, at Antioch University, Los Angeles. Various online literary journals and anthologies throughout the United States, UK, Canada, Mexico, and Spain have published her work.
José Hernández Díaz
Moroleón, Guanajuato; Summer 2010
I remember waking up to rooster cries
at my Abuelo’s house, d.e.p., my Abuela’s
house. I drank a lot the night before;
I ate a lot, traditional. The cobblestoned
streets were greyish-blue; The salmon clouds
had veered with dawn. On a white-plaster balcony,
I smoked a filter-less cigarette; $2.00 a pack in México.
Behind the cathedral’s bell tower, mesquite trees,
My father’s ranch. I took a drag, then two, exhale.
Q’ Viva Día De Los Muertos
Eres piel moreno, that cancion was da shit
Brown is beautiful except if you’re too brown inside or out
Besides I’m peddled vows that “I don’t see people in terms of color so sit”
I think to myself “ain’t that some bull shit,” so I shout
q’ viva día de los muertos
The living dead run the streets por la madrugada
preyed upon by the balla balla saving up for his Miata
Whatever happened to the boy who had no fada?
q’ viva día de los muertos
I drive the streets and think, “Oh what a man am I”
Ay there’s the rub… that’s some guy named Shakespeare
The rub… LOL… rubba dub dub I once was told they clean meth in a tub
Many rubs later I’d be reviled or revered for being an aztlan queer
q’ viva día de los muertos
The envious live their lives and cheat on their wives
vowing to chase the American dream; “Life is but a dream”
You’re feeling sleepy, the technocrat hypnotists prioritize our lives
Those oppressed in their waking lives dare not dream so they scream
q’ viva día de los muertos
I pray to El Santo Niño
with dirty thoughts of some vato named Nino
singing “I’m too sexii for this shirt.”
Scared?… then go to church while I do my dirt.
q’ viva día de los muertos
They stone me as a damned cultural Catholic
they stoned my pa a lazy no good spic
maybe what I need is an ol’ fashion ass kick
q’ viva día de los muertos
A life lived on one’s rodillas, says Pancho Villa, isn’t worth our time mi raza
still we mimic the powers that be and take our turn preaching del bully pulpit
shouting over the huddled bottom who whisper to one another, “Ain’t dat some bullshit?”
Slumbering nightmares and waking dreams of tamales q’ no son de pura masa
q’ viva día de los muertos
La Llorona del Longoria Affair haunts the vaulted halls of Yale so we yell
“LA LUCHA SIGUE, SIGUE!!! ZAPATA VIVE, VIVE!!!”
“Wait a cotton picking minute, all is well at Yale so please don’t yell.
P.S. you beaners smell,” dice el gringo guey.
q’ viva día de los muertos
Assimilation conquered away mis antepasados culture-of-poverty fears
neo-social Darwinists of today whisper sweet nothings in their ears
a sacred procession of hitos march hacia la pinta, violating rears
too many beers begets sixty years and tattood tears.
q’viva día de los muertos
Mateo Montoya is a Xicano originally from Cheyenne, WY, now living in Salt Lake. He “grew-up” in L.A., earned a B.A. in International Studies (Latin American focus), and currently researches patrilineal genealogy, urban education, philosophy of education, whiteness theory, post-colonial theory, semiotics, educational psychology and sociology of urban education –preparing him for further research on how hegemonic institutions disparately impact the socialization and racialization of urban youth of color. He blogs at http://xicanosblog.tumblr.com/
Mateo Montoya
Alliterations of Allegorical Authority
Microagressions of material existence
Transcend temporal transitions
Enlightening essences eloquently enunciate
Silenced by the semantics of solitude
Empowerment ensures emancipation
Treks through terrestrial transgressions
Poles of positionality pervade
Attempts of authenticity aggregate
Regrets of reification render
Vehement validation of versed voice
Resistance against racialized representations
Beauty buttressed by boisterous benevolence
Preemptively patronized by paternalism
Denigrated by dominance of deficit discourse
Warrants of western wizardry
Disgraced by daunting daemons
Ancestry of assimilations annihilate
Ethnic epistemological existentialism endures
Countless counter-narratives collide
Indentured ideologies of intent
Haunted houses of hierarchical hypocrisy
Impart imperial intelligences
The only in a family of three chavos to graduate H.S.. Mateo Montoya is currently pursuing an M.Ed. in Education, Culture and Society. His current academic research interests include urban education, philosophy of education, whiteness theory, post-colonial theory, semiotics, educational psychology and sociology of urban education — particularly, how hegemonic institutions disparately impact the socialization and racialization of urban youth of color through the many forms of whiteness and how that impacts racialized student’s academic- disposition, self-esteem/efficacy, performance, stratification, tracking and outcomes. Montoya was born in Cheyenne, WY and currently lives in Salt Lake. Visit his blog at xicanosblog.tumblr.com
Lillian Pittman
browngirl poem
Yeah, this small world
is cut loose by unlovingness.
It’s Abuelita knitting blankets
and us staying safe as we please,
or keeping no home at all
and mother proving her tenacity once more.
We can only pretend this is what it’s like
to be loved.
It’s learning in college
what they won’t let you teach,
or no education at all—
cutting us or coining us.
Nope, ain’t no different for browngirls neither.
It’s a fist like a hoof to the eye,
or a bullet in your heart.
Or it’s mama calling you “¡Pendeja!”
once the jackass is gone (before you know’t),
provin’ once more, she’s right.
It’s a doormat if you’re a Harriet,
(with or without an Ozzie) and no passion,
or passion and no commitment if you’re Ozzie himself.
Dye blond, get thin browngirl! Be a porn star,
stripper, used thing, just nothing lovely
—housekeeper, mule woman, river swimmer,
man eater, drug taker, baby popper,
cock teasing, husband pleasing browngirl.
You see, love’s the one thing you’re supposed to reserve
and save for another day, daydreams
sure, su madres y hijas,
yes, even your little boys that will grow
to be men with open hearts instead of closed fists
(just not other people).
Save it!
For your tomorrows—your next-times-Papi’s
—we’ll give love a shot.
Tequila Gold
with a slice of lime on the side.
¡Ban This! Anthology
Visit Broken Sword Publications for more info.
Julian Lopez
2nd City
sirens, sound cannons,
the camera’s in your face,
feeding inflated tax rates,
undebated totalitarianism,
unsated cronyism,
modern day colonialism,
helicopters and humvees,
while the homeless freeze,
clinics close due to
insufficient funding,
who watches who?
eavesdroping acts,
protecting the boys in blue
quick to shoot unarmed youths
and the education system is daycare prison,
“more schools to open” in the charter system,
14 mill for the war monger’s weekend
chants.. drums.. listen:
the people are speaking
it’s labeled indecent, in a town that’s sleeping,
where material consumption is like a second skin,
and the media spins their only outlet for information,
the city of wind where nothing ever changes…
Julian Lopez has been writing for 13 years and his poetry can be found at http://blotsofthegreyblog.blogspot.com/. He’s currently working on a book. Lopez resides in Summit, Illinois.
Award-winning poets Roberto Tejada and Aracelis Girmay read from their acclaimed poetry collections in the auditorium of the Student Activity Center on the University of Texas campus. Roberto Tejada and 12 CantoMundo poets will read their poems from 8:00 pm to 10:00 pm on Friday, July 13, 2012. Aracelis Girmay and 12 CantoMundo poets will read their poems from 8:00 pm to 10:00 pm on Saturday, July 14, 2012. The events are free and open to the public. A reception and book signing will follow each night.
This free event is hosted by CantoMundo, a national poetry workshop dedicated to supporting and developing Latina/o poetics. CantoMundo provides a space where Latina/o poets can nurture and enhance their poetics; lecture and learn about aspects of Latina/o poetics currently not being discussed by the mainstream publishers and critics; and network with peer poets to enrich and further disseminate Latina/o poetry. The Center for Mexican American Studies of the College of Liberal Arts of the University of Texas at Austin is the primary sponsor of CantoMundo.
Biographies
Roberto Tejada is the author of several poetry collections, including Mirrors for Gold (2006), Exposition Park (2010), and Full Foreground (2012). He founded and continues to co-edit the journal Mandorla: New Writing from the Americas. He is the author, as well, of art histories that include, most recently, National Camera: Photography and Mexico’s Image Environment (2009), and Celia Alvarez Muñoz (2009). He received his Ph.D. from the State University of New York, Buffalo, and has taught at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM); at Dartmouth College, where he was the César E. Chávez Fellow (2002 – 2003); at the University of California, San Diego (2003 – 2008); and at the University of Texas, Austin (2008 – 2010). His writings appear frequently in exhibition catalogs. Tejada has published critical writings on contemporary U.S., Latino, and Latin American artists in Afterimage, Aperture, Bomb, The Brooklyn Rail, SF Camerawork, and Third Text. Tejada lived in Mexico City (1987 – 1997) where he worked as an editor of Vuelta magazine, published by the late Nobel laureate Octavio Paz; and as executive editor of Artes de México.
Aracelis Girmay is the author of the poetry collections Teeth and Kingdom Animalia, for which she won the Isabella Gardner Award & was nominated for the NBCC Award. Originally from California, Girmay has taught community writing workshops with young people in California & New York for the last ten years. Girmay has also taught at Queens College and is currently on the faculty of Drew University’s low residency M.F.A. program & Hampshire College’s School for Interdisciplinary Arts.
For more information about the event, contact Celeste Mendoza at cmendoza@cantomundo.org or Deborah Paredez at paredez@austin.utexas.edu.
Luis Lopez-Maldonado
1960…
CALIFORNIA
El Granjenal, Michoacán, December Traditions
I hear a little girl talk to me
on nights like this one, intimidating
and forgotten. When limp
olive trees cast their shadows
on my shadow, machete in hand,
I stop to watch. Is it a sin to closely
watch your cousin strip down to his underwear?
Uno de los Maldonado’s baby cries
and my abuelita calls for her yerba de Manzanilla.
Las posadas are held tonight on our street,
my sister chosen to be la virgen Maria,
my cousin as Jose— horses, a donkey,
floors drowned
in hay, a floating star lit
hung with the same wire
they used to hang my birthday piñatas with–
I am no one tonight though.
No role-playing.
The warm smell of canela boiling in large pots,
pan dulce arranged neatly in plastic
containers. This feels foreign to me,
like my mother and my father.
But I pretend to enjoy it and stand behind the old ladies
in their black rebosos. We sing in Spanish,
songs that relate to the Nativity scene
that once was before my time. The space between
my temples fixes on my cousins eyes
and we both smile under our closed lips.
A choreographed night and after duties disappear,
so do we, sneaking away, taking an extra Aginaldo,
going to our private hideout– the muddy stalls
of an abandoned home where a family
was murdered. In the dark we forget
about everything and caress each others hair,
and kiss each others lips, “for practice,”
pretending to be doing it to a girl.
But for me,
it was heaven.
Luis Lopez-Maldonado was born and raised in Santa Ana, California. He earned a Bachelor’s Degree from the University of California Riverside in Creative Writing, and another in Dance. His work has been seen in The American Poetry Review, Spillway, The Packinghouse Review and Cloudbank. Poets that have influenced Lopez-Maldonado’s work include Gary Soto, Federico Garcia Lorca, Cesar Vallejo, Rigoberto Gonzalez and Alba Cruz-Hacker. He is single and living in Orange County.
Xican@ Poetry Daily 