#npmsa2017

[thiscityisapoem]

Pecan Tree

I see you---

abandoned,

neglected,

underappreciated.

  I acknowledge you---

sacred and nourishing

the city of

San Anto

  Strong

Persevering

Like Emma Tenayuca

Fighting for the rights

Of those who shelled you.

  Pecan Tree

Don’t whither

You’ve held our city together

You deserve better.

  We take, take, take your fruit

To raise ourselves

While your branches wilt--

forgotten.

  When will we give tribute to your presence?

How will we give thanks

To your hugs of shade?

Sheltering from humid summers

Birthing our voces with your roots

Offering peace to our plights

  Pecan Tree...

  Please accept my prayer

Please accept my gratitude

Your seeds, San Anto

Your existence, your song.

  If this city is a poem,

You are the sweet surrender between each line

That deep exhale between each verse.

Responding to nature (and the connections it makes in our lives) on Day 9 of our 30 day poetry writing journey is Elizabeth G. Rodriguez.

Elizabeth is a queer brown woman who was born and raised in San Antonio, Texas. She has a Master of Arts in Woman's Studies from Texas Woman's University. She is a writer of poems and short stories that are born from many personal experiences of generational trauma, women of color feminisms, working-class activism(s), resiliency, and love. 

[thiscityisapoem]

mamatita mi sobrina

          1—to live in this world 

 there must be a cat 

or some other animal 

because unaccompanied 

life isn't worth waking 

morning sometimes declines 

to smile coffee is necessary 

           2—you must be able 

 to see that every slice of orange 

 her abuelo feeds her with his fingers 

 is a slice of sun on her tongue 

 rising like the sonrisa she beams 

 when he gives her another piece of 

 the world to her year-old self is 

 this ripe this taste this world unpeeled 

             3—to do three things

  walk in the shoes of the stranger

                         you will one day meet 

                                           whose language you may not 

                know nuestros corazones no son extranjeros 

 speak your mothertongues sin vergüenza 

                         somewhere entre English y Español 

                                           porque el futuro is yours is brown 

                 & home hides in our ears 

 remember that tenderness 

                         is in the hands 

                                            whereas our hearts are 

                  the toughest part of our bodies 

                          that dear apple of my avuncular eye 

                                            you are the apple 

                  you are the eye 

  Oh, John Fry, you had us at mamatita. Thank you for responding to our writing prompt.

Originally from South Texas, John Fry's poems have been published in West Branch, Colorado Review, and Tupelo Quarterly, among others. His work has been anthologized in New Border Voices (Texas A&M UP) and IMANIMAN: Poets Writing in the Anzaldúan Borderlands (Aunt Lute). The author of the chapbook silt will swirl (NewBorder), he is a graduate of Texas State University's MFA program and a poetry editor for Newfound Journal. He currently lives in the Texas Hill Country -- though his heart lives in San Antonio -- and is a PhD candidate at the University of Texas at Austin, where he studies medieval English literature.

[thiscityisapoem]

Germination

To bury the seed is

to let darkness kindle it

like a match to a sparkler

but not sudden

an explosion that takes

time.  In a week or two

the sunflower packet says

they will shoot and sprout

not one of a kind

but one kind of many

numerous as city lights.

Pour water to make them

incandesce underground:

rudimental roots shine

and push down

while two leaves

on a stem white as

pure light,

all the colors of fire,

push stones aside

in thirst of light.

Robin Scofield, author of And the Ass Saw the Angel and Sunflower Cantos (Mouthfeel Press), has poems appearing in The Texas Weather Anthology, Malpais Review, and Pilgrimage.  She lives in El Paso with her husband and Belgian Shepherd dog.  She is also poetry editor of BorderSenses.  Her forthcoming volumes include Flow from Street of Trees Projects and Drive from Mouthfeel Press.

Thank you, Robin, for the reminder of thirst for light.

[thiscityisapoem]

Flower Offering

tiny ofrenda

this flower from the future

that grew garden wild

a-live crimson volunteer

gives her life for beauty

 from fragile ovule

blooms anther and filament

calyx and sepal

botanical butterflies

spread their psychedelic wings

 flowers are given

freely in love-sacrifice

to brighten shadows

of manufactured worlds

sadly become reality

 beauty sits silent

on pavement gray’s back

reminds us to breathe freely

to give thanks for our lives

for all we’ve yet to live

Odilia Galván Rodríguez provides a meditative reminder for Day 12 of This City is a Poem’s annual daily writing celebration. Odilia is a poet, writer, editor, educator, and activist, and is the author of six volumes of poetry. Her latest, The Nature of Things, is a collaboration with Texas photographer, Richard Loya, by Merced College Press 2016. Also, along with the late Francisco X. Alarcón, she edited the award-winning anthology, Poetry of Resistance: Voices for Social Justice, University of Arizona Press, 2016.  This poetry of witness anthology, the first of its kind, because it came about because of the on-line organizing work of Alarcón, Galván Rodriguez, and other poet-activists which began as a response to the proposal of SB 1070, the racial profiling law which was eventually passed by the Arizona State Legislature in 2010, and later that year, HB 2281which bans ethnic studies. With the advent of the Facebook page Poets Responding (to SB 1070) thousands of poems were submitted witnessing racism, xenophobia, and other social justice issues which culminated in the anthology.

  Galván Rodríguez has worked as an editor for various print media such as Matrix Women's News Magazine, Community Mural's Magazine, and Tricontinental Magazine in Havana, Cuba. She is currently, the editor of Cloud Women’s Quarterly Journal online; facilitates creative writing workshops nationally, and is director of Poets Responding to SB 1070, and Love and Prayers for Fukushima, both Facebook pages dedicated to bringing attention to social justice issues that affect the lives and wellbeing of many people and encouraging people to take action. Her poetry has appeared in numerous anthologies, and literary journals on and offline.

As an activist, she worked for the United Farm Workers of America AFL-CIO, The East Bay Institute for Urban Arts, has served on numerous boards and commissions, and is currently active in Women’s organizations whose mission it is to educate around environmental justice issues and disseminate an indigenous world view regarding the earth and people’s custodial relationship to it. Odilia Galván Rodríguez has a long and rich history of working for social justice in solidarity with activists from all ethnic groups.

[thiscityisapoem]

Sky Logic

You’ve never gone a day without it—the blue or gray

winking behind you. Constant backdrop,

 circus tent of shivering magenta-yellows

pulled taut over your every thought.  This is

 a member in your quotidian family—the billowy

persistence, the adamant

 tick-tocking nearness.

Vermeer made his skies bleed

 through 17th-century windowpanes—

a second-hand light, a tawny eye

 pooling in a girl’s shy lap,

a sepia-stained silence

 spilling thick as milk

across a letter’s fingered heft—something even he

 dared not depict head on. And how to hold

even a teacup of it in one hand?

 How to define this constant audience,

this luminous seepage across your fingers each day?

 Then again, I’ve seen a sky dip its clouds

so low into a backyard

 I thought I was drowning in whatever

I’d not yet done with my life. That gray

 visitation (with its wet-paint breath)

clearly unconcerned

 with my interpretations of it.

Right now, the sky backlights the trees—

 who dangle their pear-shaped leaves

against it, who puzzle-fit their shapes

 into its ongoing, afternoon sheen.

Thank you, Alexandra van de Kamp, for responding to today’s prompt! 

Alexandra is the Creative Writing Classes Program Director for Gemini Ink, a literary arts nonprofit, and the author of several poetry collections, including Kiss/Hierarchy (Rain Mountain Press 2016), The Park of Upside-Down Chairs (CW Books 2010), and the chapbook Dear Jean Seberg, which won the 2010 Burnside Review Chapbook Contest. Her poems have been nominated for Pushcart Prizes and The Best of the Net. She’s a native New Yorker, who’s happily relocated to South Texas.  

[thiscityisapoem]

It’s another beautiful day in National Poetry Month but tell us how you are. Write it out, Poet. We’ll be right here.

[thiscityisapoem]

Palm Reader

Palm Reader

 My mother’s aunt unlocks her secret:

she's been eating lemon leaves 

to recover from breast cancer scars;

  same mother but different father. Distance:

the left line in my palm leans further

 from the right. My breasts are small,

young mountains in my cupped hand.

I want to grow lemon trees & erase disease

  from my blood. The spaces between my fingers

are islands.  I lay my body there to rest.

  The stub to my 11th finger breathes

a genuine rhetoric. If one member is removed,

a string of memories remain. The mother

  to my mother’s mother wore life for 70 years.

The folds in my palm bend my hands to age.

Answering the body for Day 11 is Afua Ansong. Afua is a Ghanaian American artist who writes poetry and teaches contemporary and traditional West African dance. She’s is currently working on several projects about the migration of humans and birds. Her work can be seen or is forthcoming in The Seventh Wave, Maine Review and other magazines.

[thiscityisapoem]

Where I Grew Up

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.

Thank you, Edward Vidaurre, for a poem detailing the individual way we each are made into ourselves. Edward 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. 

[thiscityisapoem]

Advice to My Son

Your heart will break

I’m sorry, but it’s the truth

Maybe a girl whose voice makes you woozy

whose eyes convince you to defy logic

whose smile makes you feel invincible

Maybe your daughter

when she says she’s fine

but you know otherwise

and refuses your counsel

Worse however

You will break a heart

I’m sorry, but it’s the truth

Maybe because you think you know better

Maybe because you want something more

Maybe because you’re bored

Maybe because your heart says so

You’ll watch her from a distance

her head lowered in disappointment

Imagining her tears is worse than seeing them

especially when you know you were the cause

and you’ll wish you’d never said what you did

You’ll carry it forever

Eddie Vega is a poet and spoken word artist. He was recently published in the anthology, Truth to Power (Cutthroat Press), and featured on the poetry webcast, MegaCorazon. He teaches high school and can be found on most nights at open mics and slams throughout San Antonio. Eddie can be found at TacoPoet.com.

[thiscityisapoem]

My Life Is a Flambeau Parade

By Barbara Pena (responding to Day 11′s prompt).

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

[thiscityisapoem]

What? There are only 30 days in April? Well then, this writing prompt is a pilon - that little extra you don’t expect but can smile about. Take a moment to consider your own writing commitment. Keep going. We know you can.

See you next year.

                                                                            - Barbara and Jo

[thiscityisapoem]

Day 30. 

Let that sink in.

We’ve been writing together - off and on - each day or most days or one really amazing day. I’m proud of us.

Mary Oliver would be proud. Answer her call.

[thiscityisapoem]

Day 29 just needs to be loud, present, alive, and all over the place. Write it out.

[thiscityisapoem]

Possibly I am a wolf.

A sigh is a small fire

& yes, God—yes, I hope You don’t mind.

I invited the old deer with their small antlers

as regular guests of the small talk

of life & simple love, of the boy inside me

wanting to save the game.

In a field of jimsonweed & smutgrass,

I throw corn & listen to the old-bodied does:  

Love is a lost tongue, a clock

made of tree hearts & hair—I think this is what

they say, but I struggle to speak loneliness

& there are other words for the distance between yucca

& sotols, like there are other words for Love.

All of these do matter.  

& patience is another sigh, another fire,

says the oldest doe. As loss is a breath made by trees,

one you cannot see—perhaps I am translating

wrong, but a pause full of self, that small fire of waiting,  

a sigh thinner than any blue thread

is what I heard, & who hasn’t ever wondered of languages

we once spoke?  & who hasn’t placed the mouth’s

purple huff against the dark stubbles of any clock?  

Tomorrow, I will go back to life as usual.

Tomorrow, I will accept what I do not see,

to listening to the soft moans of trees.  In sun my body

is a horse bone, made of brownness & wolf sighs.  

I reach out to the invisible lines of wind.

I ask God for the ganas knotted up in the rootballs

of mesquites, but a bird falls in my mouth.

Possibly I am a wolf.

Possibly I am not made of wind.

Possibly I don’t know any good thing about temptation

& rage.  When I open my lips, the deer can do nothing else

but glare at the hunger persisting in my teeth.

I ask God to whisper.

I ask God to tell me what happened to hypothesis

& where are all the words?

  Day 16 and we are truly transformed with Joe Jiménez’ offering. Joe is the author of The Possibilities of Mud (Korima 2014) and Bloodline (Arte Público 2016).  Jiménez is the recipient of the 2016 Letras Latinas/ Red Hen Press Poetry Prize for the book Allegory, Rattlesnake, which will be published in 2019. The novel Bloodline is the recipient of the 2017 National Association for Chicana and Chicano Studies Young Adult Fiction Award and was a Finalist for the Texas Institute of Letters 2017 Young Adult Fiction Award.  His essays and poems have recently appeared in Iron Horse, RHINO, Gulf Stream, Waxwing, Queen Mob’s Teahouse, and on the PBS NewsHour and Lambda Literary sites.  Jimenez was recently awarded a Lucas Artists Literary Artists Fellowship from 2017-2020. He lives in San Antonio, Texas, and is a member of the Macondo Writing Workshops.  For more information, visit joejimenez.net or find him on twitter and instagram at @JoeJimenezSATX.

[thiscityisapoem]

Rose Oil

Our new house is bordered by overgrown trees and bushes all bearing

something: figs, cumquats, and white roses, the wild kind with fewer

petals. I take primrose oil to assuage my empty uterus from throwing

 a tantrum once a month. How many tiny yellow buds have been sacrificed

to keep me upright in a classroom, explaining the difference between

en dashes, em dashes, and hyphens, or the subtle ways we build trust

 with our readers? Trust is as valuable and tangible as money. Sometimes

I feel it rattling in my chest like loose quarters. My husband went to a strip club

for a bachelor party. I have never been, but I have an easier time picturing it

 when I replace the bills with long-stemmed roses thrown at the women’s feet

for their masterful performances, the careful reaching under the threat of thorns.

And how does one extract oil from roses, anyway? I can feel it locked in the pores

 of the petal silk, but when I close them in a heavy book, not one drop stains

the pages. Heat, of course. Once, I was small, and I lit a match and immediately

dropped it. I wouldn’t touch another one for years.  

Ellie Francis Douglass takes our prompt with a flower and unfolds every petal into a story. Thank you, Ellie, for responding to our Day 12 prompt.

Ellie holds an MFA from Oregon State University, and she is the poetry editor of Carve Magazine. Her poems have been published in the Missouri Review Online, Washington Square Review, Borderlands: Texas Poetry Review, and others. She lives in San Antonio, Texas, and teaches at Northwest Vista College.  Find more information about Ellie at EllieFrancisDouglass.com.

[thiscityisapoem]

Responding to Day 8′s prompt, Jo Reyes-Boitel. Jo is a poet, writer, hopeful essayist, motivator, mother, daughter, rabid music listener, beginning percussionist, and lover. Texas transplant by way of minnesota | florida | mexico | cuba, Jo is co-curator for the annual This City Is A Poem project. Find Jo on twitter (@BoitelJo), Tumblr (www.tumblr.com/blog/jrboitel), IG (@jrboitel) or at any local or regional coffee shop with a decent cortado.