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lifeinpoetry · 4 years

Note

hey! do you have any recommendations for poetry by latinx writers?

I’ve made three lists here to give a full range of what’s out there and they've been merged into Poetry Collections by Latinx Writers: New in 2020 & 2021 & Poetry Collections by Latinx Writers: 2019 & Earlier on Bookshop if you’re so inclined. Hopefully at least one of these interests you. ❤️

Poetry Collections by Latinx Writers: 2019 & Before (Ones I’ve Read & Enjoyed)

Slow Lightning by Eduardo C. Corral

Beastgirl & Other Origin Myths by Elizabeth Acevedo

Loose Woman: Poems by Sandra Cisneros

The Carrying: Poems by Ada Limón

Citizen Illegal by José Olivarez

Lessons on Expulsion: Poems by Erika L. Sánchez

peluda by Melissa Lozada-Oliva

My Wicked Wicked Ways by Sandra Cisneros

lo terciario / the tertiary by Raquel Salas Rivera

Teeth Never Sleep: Poems by Ángel García

Lima :: Limón by Natalie Scenters-Zapico

while they sleep (under the bed is another country) by Raquel Salas Rivera

Sharks in the Rivers by Ada Limón

A Tongue in the Mouth of the Dying by Laurie Ann Guerrero

blud by Rachel McKibbens

Virgin: Poems by Analicia Sotelo

The Glimmering Room by Cynthia Cruz

Unaccompanied by Javier Zamora

The Black Maria by Aracelis Girmay

Girl with Death Mask by Jennifer Givhan

Cenzontle by Marcelo Hernandez Castillo

Brother Bullet: Poems by Casandra López

The Inheritance of Haunting by Heidi Andrea Restrepo Rhodes

Milk and Filth by Carmen Giménez Smith

Corazón by Yesika Salgado

Refuse: Poems by Julian Randall

Ordinary Beast by Nicole Sealey

Cuicacalli / House of Song by ire'ne lara silva

Tracing the Horse by Diana Marie Delgado

With the River on Our Face by Emmy Pérez

Museum of the Americas by J. Michael Martinez

Paraíso: Poems by Jacob Shores-Argüello

Gold That Frames the Mirror by Brandon Melendez

Miami Century Fox by Legna Rodríguez Iglesias

Of Form & Gather by Felicia Zamora

Palm Frond with Its Throat Cut by Vickie Vértiz

Elegía/elegy by Raquel Salas Rivera

The Crazy Bunch by Willie Perdomo

Colonize Me by Benjamín Naka-Hasebe Kingsley

Poetry Collections by Latinx Writers: 2019 & Before (TBR)

Of Darkness and Tumbling by Mónica Gomery

Preparing the Body by Norma Liliana Valdez

Ugly Music by Diannely Antigua

Ceremony of Sand by Rodney Gomez

Stereo. Island. Mosaic. by Vincent Toro

Other Musics: New Latina Poetry ed. Cynthia Cruz

Meditación Fronteriza: Poems of Love, Life, and Labor by Norma Elia Cantú

Beast Meridian by Vanessa Angélica Villarreal

You Ask Me To Talk About The Interior by Carolina Ebeid

YOU DA ONE by Jennif(f)er Tamayo

These Days Of Candy by Manuel Paul Lopez

Unpeopled Eden by Rigoberto González

Advantages of Being Evergreen by Oliver Baez Bendorf

Each and Her by Valerie Martínez

Skins of Columbus by Edgar Garcia

When I Walk Through That Door, I Am: An Immigrant Mother's Quest by Jimmy Santiago Baca

Landscape with Headless Mama: Poems by Jennifer Givhan

Solecism by Rosebud Ben-Oni

Heart Like A Window, Mouth Like A Cliff by Sara Borjas

Scar on / Scar Off by Jennifer Maritza McCauley

¡Manteca!: An Anthology of Afro-Latin@ Poets ed. Melissa Castillo-Garsow

Grenade in Mouth: Some Poems of Miyo Vestrini by Miyo Vestrini

How to Pull Apart the Earth by Karla Cordero

All My Heroes Are Broke by Ariel Francisco

black / Maybe by Roberto Carlos Garcia

Blood Sugar Canto by ire'ne lara silva

The Book of What Remains by Benjamin Alire Sáenz

The Black Flower and Other Zapotec Poems by Natalia Toledo

Forgive the Body This Failure by Blas Falconer

Tijuana Book of the Dead by Luis Alberto Urrea

FUEGO by Leslie Contreras Schwartz

Puerto Rico en Mi Corazón ed. Carina del Valle Schorske

Dirt and Honey by Raquel Vasquez Gilliland

Cruel Futures by Carmen Giménez Smith

The Real Horse: Poems by Farid Matuk

A Song of Dismantling: Poems by Fernando Pérez

Arsonist by Joaquín Zihuatanejo

Comfort Measures Only: New and Selected Poems, 1994–2016 by Rafael Campo

Poetry Collections by Latinx Writers: 2020 & 2021

Postcolonial Love Poem: Poems by Natalie Diaz

Thresholes by Lara Mimosa Montes

Catrachos: Poems by Roy G. Guzmán

Repetition Nineteen by Mónica de la Torre

Like Bismuth When I Enter by Carlos Lara

The Breakbeat Poets Vol. 4: LatiNext ed. Felicia Chavez

Guillotine: Poems by Eduardo C. Corral

Migratory Sound: Poems by Sara Lupita Olivares

Thrown in the Throat by Benjamin Garcia

Not Go Away Is My Name by Alberto Ríos

Guidebooks for the Dead by Cynthia Cruz

Geographic Tongue by Rodney Gomez

Tertulia by Vincent Toro

Borderland Apocrypha by Anthony Cody

Every Day We Get More Illegal by Juan Felipe Herrera

Body of Render by Felicia Zamora

La Belle Ajar by Adrian Ernesto Cepeda

Feel Puma: Poems by Ray Gonzalez

On This Side of the Desert by Alfredo Aguilar

In Bloom by Esteban Rodriguez

An Incomplete List of Names: Poems by Michael Torres

Who Speaks for Us Here by Leslie Contreras Schwartz

The Fire Eater: Poems by Jose Hernandez Diaz

After Rubén by Francisco Aragón

#ineffabull #poetry recs #Latinx poets #asks #out of my collection #long post #i literally do not know what is up with tumblr's read more option #i had it #then it broke #now it's showing the whole post #so attempt 3

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tanadrin · 6 years

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On Mars

Things I love about Mars: the landscape.

Mars's landscape is both alien and familiar. There are other fascinating landscapes in the Solar System, of course: Venus, Pluto, Europa, Titan, etc., and each has their charms; but the thing about those landscapes is that the environment in which they're found makes them more alien. Venus has mountains and plains and, like Earth, few craters; but the crushing sulphuric pressure of the atmosphere and the fact that every few hundred million years it seems the entire planet may go molten and resurface itself makes Venus a setting for hard SF, or individualistic person-versus-environment stories: the narrative that suggests itself to me when I imagine standing (in some megaspacesuit) on the surface of Venus is not "this is a place humans could one day be," but "this is an unpeopled Hell."

(Also: apparently Venus may have had liquid water as recently as 700 MYA. Life on Earth seems to have arisen almost immediately, as soon as the conditions potentially favorable to it existed. From the formation of its oceans to 700 MYA, Venus would have been climactically stable, thanks to higher cloud cover than Earth. So it is entirely possible that for a couple of billion years, between the oceans of Venus forming and the runaway greenhouse effect destroying them several hundred MYA, Venus had life, up until the Neoproterozoic period on Earth. But if the theories regarding how energy is released into Venus's dessicated crust are correct, the fossil evidence of that life would have been annihilated in the same event that resurfaced the entire planet some time in its geolocially recent past. Perhaps fragments of it persist, floating deep in the mantle like the Farallon plate on Earth--but for now, an actual record of the biohistory of Venus is lost to us. What I'm saying is, Venus is a postapocalypse: not a hopeful Perelandra, not even in the far future, but a grievous memorial for what might have been our lush and gardenlike neighbor.)

Titan, Europa, and Pluto--although they have very different landscapes--have a common feature, which is that waste heat from technology (heck, from human bodies) would melt or boil their surfaces. Pluto is especially bad in this regard, given that its plains are 98% nitrogen ice. Humans on Pluto would be creatures of unquenchable fire, destroying everything they touched. Europa is much more familiar, especially if it has warm seas beneath the ice; but its landscape is a vast broken plain of ice, possibly with a band of peninent spires rising into the sky at the equator. It's metal as fuck. But the airless, radiation-bathed surface is, again, seems to be suited mostly to being a vehicle of existential exploration, and the subsurface ocean may just be a hopeful dream, like the jungles of Venus. Titan, that weird little orange goofball, also has a water ice surface, plus a hydrocarbon "hydrosphere" which is fascinating! It's the first time the IAU has had to come up with a naming convention for actual bodies of liquid on a planet's surface. It has lakes! Inlets! Seas! But it's tiny, has very little gravity, and if you tried to terraform it even a little bit the entire thing would melt or evaporate. There are stories I would happily tell on Titan. I can even imagine they would have some features of the stories I would tell of an Earthlike world: here is a political boundary following a river, here are pirates on the Ligeia Mare (pirates on a methane sea, frost condenses on the inside of the hull even through half a meter of insulation, we haven't seen sunlight in weeks, we haven’t seen the sun since we were born). But the strictures of the environment also demand a more hard-SF sensibility, and a hard-SF sensibility applied to the "soft" aspects of science fiction: how do the constraints of the environment shape how societies function? How is politics, war, and economics different in a place where atomic individualism isn't just maladaptive, but maybe impossible? I've thought about these questions in other contexts (deep space, settlements on airless rocks), and although Titan expands the possibilities somewhat, it doesn't expand them much. But it's definitely my third favorite body in the Solar System (after Mars and, of course, Earth).

[Ligeia Mare, the second-largest lake on Titan, 78° N, 249° W .]

The rest of the solar system is either gas giants (which fill me with too much dread to really apprehend them on an immediate or aesthetic level; what hubris is it to try to imagine a little human soul against the endless storms of Jupiter?), or small, airless bodies specked with craters. Some of these verge on the utterly uninteresting. Io is at least respectably garish. But the narrative context they suggest to me is the same as Titan, shorn of the unique geographical points of interest that moon offers, and while that doesn't mean they're not interesting, they don't excite me nearly as much. I am glad they exist. Some are really beautiful (speckled Ganymede! gleaming Eceladus, Europa's twin! what the fuck is wrong with you Iapetus!).

(What did we do as a species to deserve a Solar System full of so many different, beautiful worlds? How much wonder is there in the rest of the Universe if this little corner is already so full of it?)

But Mars. Ah, Mars. You know, my head says that interplanetary colonization would be a waste of resources and, lacking a useful economic purpose, ultimately a giant boondoggle. There are inhospitable environments on Earth that are, against Mars, an Eden, and we have yet to people them; if science is our aim, even the practical benefits of a manned mission to Mars stop at orbiting the planet and controlling robots remotely below. And I know all this. But there's a quiet voice in the back of my head--quiet only because like the rumble of distant thunder it is spoken at much deeper frequencies, frequencies of the ground beneath my feet and of my soul itself--that says if I don't die having crunched the grit of Mars beneath my feet or run its dust between my fingers, my life will have been empty and devoid of purpose. Not to get too metaphysical on you, but I'm pretty sure there's a part of my soul that is convinced it was meant to be born on Mars, meant to wander the Kasei Valles and the Tharsis plateau, that longs to stand on the Olympus Rupes and watch the dust storms on the Amazonia Planitia below; to sojourn in the Labyrinth of the Night, filled with fog from sublimating frost.

Mars is alien. Mars is not like Earth. Yet its appearance suggests a world we almost know: here are canyons, here are sinuous valleys, here are dusty plains. On closer inspection, these things reveal their true, unearthly nature: this is a canyon as long as Europe, yawning deeper than the mountains rise. This is a volcano, yes--it is the size of France. If you stood on its summit, very nearly above the top of Mars' atmosphere (which is taller than Earth's!), its slopes would disappear around the curve of the world before you saw their end. These valleys are not river valleys: they are ancient outburst channels, the catastrophe that scoured out the Channeled Scablands--over, and over, and over again. The atmosphere is gasping-thin, and often choked with dust. The surface is freezing. Nothing lives, not so far as we can tell. But you can imagine yourself there. I wonder why?

[The informally-named “Columbia Hills,” Gusev Crater, Mars, 14.5°S 175.4°E. Mosaic image taken by the Spirit rover. The distance is about 300 meters to the base of the hills.]

Part of it, of course, is the wonderfully detailed photography from Mars missions, and the fact the planet is extensively mapped--one of the best-mapped bodied in the Solar System. As part of the Inner Solar System, we can orbit it comparatively easily, and we don't have to rely on photos snapped during quick flybys. (The USGS has complete, detailed maps of Mars available for free! The USGS is a freakin’ international treasure.) I think Mars more easily than most worlds in the Solar System is a canvas onto which we can imagine projecting the psychodramas of our own history. If the "minor" objections of its ultrafreezing surface and its unbreathable, thin atmosphere can be overcome, we can almost imagine it like any other harsh desert into which human habitation has intruded (and humans, like a gas, do tend to occupy all available space). And those objections can be overcome, if we are patient and work very hard, and they can be overcome without annihilating the surface of the world. It would be possible to blanket Mars in a thick, carbon dioxide-rich atmosphere and bring its temperature up to, say, Antarctic levels (i.e., you could survive indefinitely in very warm clothing with a breathing apparatus) with several centuries or possibly a millennium of the diligent application of existing technology. We have no reason to do it right now, and it would be madness to try, but it's doable--so one day, we might.

And if we did? Well, I'd like to think that the species that did that would be, after Carl Sagan, a species very like us but slightly better in important ways, and that by then Earth would be a much nicer place to live; and Mars, therefore, by extension, would be a more rugged and difficult environment but still full of basically decent people who have solved problems like poverty and oppression and large-scale warfare. With a light brushing of a sort of Mad Max visual aesthetic, what with all the breathing masks and the exposed ductwork. Hopefully they would continue the IAU trend of giving everything really atmospheric names, so we wouldn't have the place carpeted in stupid shit like "New Canada" and "President Reagan Land", like Antarctica has been. (Seriously, the IAU needs to take over naming stuff in Antarctica, it's dire down there.)

There is another possibility of course, and in my mind that possibility is inextricably linked with the fact that Mars is small. Mars, like Earth and Venus, probably formed with a dense atmosphere. Its coldness, believe it or not, is not a feature of its distance from the Sun. That's a common misconception. The approximate habitable zone of a G-type star like the Sun extends from within the orbit of Venus to just to, or slightly beyond, a planet at Mars's distance (1.5 AU or so). Venus, for its part, was doomed by being just too warm, and, as the Sun aged and its energy output increased, the homeostasis of its environment being tipped a little bit too far, until the whole thing collapsed, the seas evaporated, and the water vapor was shorn apart by ultraviolet energy, its hydrogen scattered into space by solar wind. But Venus is big. Venus could hold on to its atmosphere regardless. Mars could not. Though further from the Sun, and initially with its own hydrosphere (which now sleeps frozen beneath its crust and at the poles--which have enough water in them to deluge the surface meters deep), the solar wind gradually stripped away Mars's atmosphere, until it was unable to trap heat, and liquid water ceased to be able to exist on its surface for more than the briefest periods of time. Earth, too, would be frozen desert if it had an atmosphere like Mars.

[A Noachian-era alluvial fan in Eberswalde Crater, 24°S, 33°W . Many Noachian-era craters show evidence of having once been filled with water. The aptly-named Noachian period was the last time surface water might have been abundant on Mars, and ended roughly 3.7 billion years ago.]

Any atmosphere we give Mars is doomed in the long run--on the order of thousands of years, not millions. Any civilization we engender on Mars is not a civilization for eternity: it is doomed from its beginning. If we are less wise than we hope, less able to cooperate than we wish, less able to accomplish the miracles of terraforming that we require, the saga of human habitation on Mars will not be the saga of overcoming the frontier, of planting a new, bright tree of our people on a neighboring world; it will be a saga of a promising beginning and then a long--terribly long--slow decline. The Martian desert will slowly cover cities and whatever little groves of life we plant; our first, tentative seas will dry up; increasing scarcity will become the norm, not for a few generations, but for whole civilizations, until the entire memory of the world is nothing but a medieval feeling of decline, of loss, of some ancient glory which we cannot quite remembering being forever beyond our reach. The midcentury scientific romances of a dying Mars were true, but they were not accurate assessments of the present or the past. They were prophecy--a prophecy which is not guaranteed, but which should serve as a warning nonetheless.

Again, my interest in these concepts is mostly from the standpoint of fiction and imagination. Colonization of Mars is a long, long way off, and sitting here in the mythic past of any future Martian civilization, with a warm green spring outside my window and the luxury of breathing free oxygen kindly manufactured for me for free by the native biosphere, I would be surprised if any future settlement of Mars unfolded more than a little bit in the way I expect. Nonetheless, these are the thoughts that occur to me as I pore over maps of Mars. Here, the Chryse Planitia. Here, the graceful curve of the Claritas Fossa. Here, Elysium, its scattered features named for the abodes of the dead. Here, the illimitable Vastitas Borealis. Here, the Chasma Australe, which cuts deep into the southern Martian pole; where Edgar Rice Burroughs might have imagined the ten-thousand mile River Iss. I know that I will probably never see this world with my own two eyes. But God Almighty! I would give anything!

#maaaaaars #ramblings and doggerel

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allthingsgene · 7 years

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Avowed by Julie Enszer "Bold and wise, compassionate and erotic, the poems in Avowed explore aspects of a contemporary lesbian life within a committed relationship and as a citizen in the larger community. The narrator celebrates ("We break a glass. Mazel tov! We cry.") and mourns her losses ("Sometimes, between three and four a.m./on a break from her game/of bridge, your dead mother visits."). Riffing on Jewish liturgy, the feminist declares "everyday/I thank God/I was born a woman." Avowed delivers a complex, sustained vision of intimate partnership while celebrating the political changes that have secured LGBTQ visibility." Robin Becker, author of Tiger Heron "Avowed asks the critical question, "Is paper all that makes a marriage?" For the queer bride in a long-term relationship, the answer is as hard-won as the right to marry. Julie R. Enszer explores the bittersweet journey of a lesbian couple's struggle through the happily ever after with an edgy and humorous perspective that dares to share deep truths about desire, sex, and love." Rigoberto GonzAlez, author of Unpeopled Eden Less . Thank you @julierenszer for sending Avowed and Lilith's Demons my way! Can't wait to read this poetry collection! . #book #books #booksph #filipinobooklovers #bookworm #bookwormph #bookish #booklover #booklr #booklion #bioknerd #bookwhore #bookaholic #bookstagram #bookstagrammer #bookblogger #blogger #bookreviewer #bookreview #yalit #yalit #epicreads #bookstagramfeature

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thefrostplace-blog · 5 years

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DPIR - Poem-a-Day // Rigoberto Gonzalez

DPIR – Poem-a-Day // Rigoberto Gonzalez

Rigoberto Gonzalez was the Dartmouth Poet in Residence at The Frost Place in 2009.

Read a poem, “Unpeopled Eden,” here.

The Dartmouth Poet in Residence program at The Frost Place is a six-to-eight-week residency in poet Robert Frost’s former farmhouse, which sits on a quiet north-country lane with a spectacular view of the White Mountains, and serves as a museum and conference center. The program…

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poemsfortheresistance-blog · 7 years

Text

Unpeopled Eden

RIGOBERTO GONZÁLEZ

We died in your hills, we died in your deserts,

We died in your valleys and died on your plains.

We died 'neath your trees and we died in your bushes,

Both sides of the river, we died just the same.

"Plane Wreck at Los Gatos (Deportees)," Woody GuthrieI

after the immigration raid

Beneath one apple tree the fruit

lies flung like the beads from

a rosary with a broken string.

Another tree stands amused

over the strangeness of a shoe

that pretends to be an apple

in its redness, though it'll never be

an apple with that lace stem

and a pit where a core should be.

The tree at the end of the row

will weep over the pillage

all week. Around its trunk, debris:

straw hats, handkerchief, a basket

going hungry for what's out

of reach. Somewhere in the orchard

a screech goes weaker by the hour.

A radio without paws, it cannot claw

its chords to end its suffering.

But silence comes, eventually,

and the apple trees will rest,

gathering the shadows to their roots

as the flame inside each apple

falls asleep. All the while, finches

perch among the branches—patient

vultures waiting for the fruit to rot.

For a wasp, intoxicated by the sugars,

this is the perfect place to nest.

The colony will thrive inside

decay: the apples softening until

their wrinkled skins begin to sink,

the seeds poking through like teeth.

The trees will sway without the wind

because the ground will boil

with larvae. A bird will feast

until it chokes and ants will march

into the belly through the beak.

after the ride by bus

A strand of hair pretends to be

a crack and sticks to glass. A piece

of thread sits on a seat, pretends

to be a tear. The bus makes believe

no one cried into their hands and smeared

that grief onto its walls. The walls

will keep the fingerprints a secret

until the sheen of oils glows by moon.

Rows of ghosts come forth to sing.

Until that keening rocks the bus

to rest, the fumes intoxicate

the solitary button—single witness

to the shuffling of feet and a final act

of fury: the yanking of a wetback's

shirt. The button popped right off

the flannel, marched in the procession

and then scurried to the side. The lesson:

if wounded, stay behind to die.

The bus breathes out the shapes

turned silhouettes turned scent

of salt and sweat. The steering wheel

unspools, every window shaking loose

the wetness of its glare. And now

a riddle squats over the parking lot:

What creature stands its ground

after evisceration? Roadkill. Clouds

close in to consume the afterbirth.

III

after the detention in the county jail

A mausoleum also keeps these gems:

precipitation that hardens into diamonds

on the cobweb stems, streams of urine

that shimmer like streaks of gold.

Lights coax out the coat of polish

on the floor and what's solid softens

into water stripped of ripples. Stilled

and empty, a river that has shoved

its pebbles down its throat.

The cell holds out three drops of blood

and will barter them for company,

hungry for the smell of men again. Janitor,

border guard or detainee, it's all the same

musk of armpit, garlic breath, oils

that bubble up from crack to tailbone,

scent of semen from the foreskin,

fungus from the toes. Without takers,

the keyhole constricts in the cold.

after the deportation plane falls from the sky

A red-tailed hawk breaks through

the smoke and doesn't drop the way

the bodies did when the plane

began to dive and spat pieces of its

cargo out the door. No grace, the twitching

of such a great machine. No beauty to

its blackening inside the pristine

canvas of majestic blue—a streak of rage

made by a torch and not a paintbrush.

The hawk lands on the canyon

and snaps its neck in quick response

to the vulgar cracking on the boulders,

to the shrill of metal puncturing

the canyon, to the burst of flames

that traps a nest of mice within the lair

turned furnace, burning shriek, and hair.

Stunned host of sparrows scatters.

Fume of feathers, pollution in the air.

Poison in the lungs of all that breathes.

A darkness rises. The blue absorbs it

the way it dissipates a swarm after

the crisis of a shattered hive. Heaven

shows its mercy also, swallowing

the groan that spilled out of the hill.

No signs of tragedy by dusk

except a star splayed over rock,

the reek of fumes—a disemboweled god.

after the clean-up along Los Gatos Canyon

What strange flowers grow

in the shadow. Without petals

and with crooked twigs for stems.

The butterflies that pollinated them

were bits of carbon glowing

at the edge. The solitary lone wolf

spider doesn't dare to bite

the scorched caul on the canyon.

It packs its fangs for brighter lands.

The footprints drawn in black

do not match the footprints

in the orchard though they also

bear the weight of the unwanted.

The chain gang called upon to gather

the debris sang the Prison Blues

all afternoon: Inmate, deportee,

in your last attempt to flee

every bone splits into three.

after the communal burial

Twenty-eight equals one

deportation bus equals one

cell in the detention center, one

plane-load of deportees, one

plunge into the canyon, one

body in the coffin although one

was a woman—sister not alone

anymore among the chaperone

of angels with wings of stone.

Manuel Merino, Julio Barrón,

Severo, Elías, Manuel Calderón,

Francisco, Santiago, Jaime, Martín,

Lupe, Guadalupe, Tomás, Juan Ruiz,

Alberto, Ramón, Apolonio, Ramón,

Luis, Román, Luis, Salvador,

Ignacio Navarro, Jesús, Bernabé,

Rosalío Portillo, María, y José.

Y un Deportado No Identificado.

No papers necessary to cross

the cemetery. The sun floods

the paths between tombs

and everything pushes out

into light. No shame to be

a cherub without a nose.

The wreath will not hide

its decay. Cement displays

its injuries with no regrets.

This is the place to forget

about labor and hardship and pain.

No house left to build, no kitchen

to clean, no chair on a porch, no

children to feed. No longing left

except a wish that will never come

true: Paint us back into the blank

sky's blue. Don't forget us

like we've forgotten all of you.

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fourwaybooks · 9 years

Text

The Rumpus Poetry Book Club Chat with Rigoberto González!

Read the interview here.

Rigoberto's books, UNPEOPLED EDEN, and BLACK BLOSSOMS, are available for sale on our website.

#rigoberto gonzalez #unpeopled eden #the rumpus #fwb

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structureandstyle · 10 years

Text

Unpeopled Eden

We died in your hills, we died in your desserts, We died in your valley and died on your plains. We died 'neath your trees and we died in your bushes, Both sides of the river, we died just the same. "Plane Wreck at Los Gatos (Deportees)," Woody Guthrie

after the immigration raid

Beneath one apple tree the fruit lies flung like the beads from a rosary with a broken string. Another tree stands amused over the strangeness of a shoe that pretends to be an apple in its redness, though it'll never be an apple with that lace stem and a pit where a core should be.

The tree at the end of the row will weep over the pillage all week. Around its trunk, debris: straw hats, handkerchief, a basket going hungry for what's out of reach. Somewhere in the orchard a screech goes weaker by the hour. A radio without paws, it cannot claw its chords to end its suffering.

But silence comes, eventually, and the apple trees will rest, gathering the shadows to their roots as the flame inside each apple falls asleep. All the while, finches perch among the branches--patient vultures waiting for the fruit to rot. For a wasp, intoxicated by the sugars, this is the perfect place to nest.

The colony will thrive inside decay: the apples softening until their wrinkled skins begin to sink, the seeds poking through like teeth. The trees will sway without the wind because the ground will boil with larvae. A bird will feast until it chokes and ants will march into the belly through the beak.

after the ride by bus

A strand of hair pretends to be a crack and sticks to glass. A piece of thread sits on a seat, pretends to be a tear. The bus makes believe no one cried into their hands and smeared that grief onto its walls. The walls will keep the fingerprints a secret until the sheen of oils glows by moon. Rows of ghosts come forth to sing.

Until that keening rocks the bus to rest, the fumes intoxicate the solitary button--single witness to the shuffling of feet and a final act of fury: the yanking of a wetback's shirt. The button popped right off the flannel, marched in the procession and then scurried to the side. The lesson: if wounded, stay behind to die.

The bus breathes out the shapes turned silhouettes turned scent of salt and sweat. The steering wheel unspools, every window shaking loose the wetness of its glare. And now a riddle squats over the parking lot: What creature stands its ground after evisceration? Roadkill. Clouds close in to consume the afterbirth.

III

after the detention in the county jail

A mausoleum also keeps these gems: precipitation that hardens into diamonds on the cobweb stems, streams of urine that shimmer like streaks of gold. Lights coax out the coat of polish on the floor and what's solid softens into water stripped of ripples. Stilled and empty, a river that has shoved its pebbles down its throat.

The cell holds out three drops of blood and will barter them for company, hungry for the smell of men again. Janitor, border guard, or detainee, it's all the same musk of armpit, garlic breath, oils that bubble up from crack to tailbone, scent of semen from the foreskin, fungus from the toes. Without takers, the keyhole constricts in the cold.

after the deportation plane falls from the sky

A red-tailed hawk breaks through the smoke and doesn't drop the way the bodies did when the plane began to dive and spat pieces of its cargo out the door. No grace, the twitching of such a great machine. No beauty to its blackening inside the pristine canvas of majestic blue--a streak of rage made by a torch and not a paintbrush.

The hawk lands on the canyon and snaps its neck in quick response to the vulgar cracking on the boulders, to the shrill of metal puncturing the canyon, to the burst of flames that traps a nest of mice within the lair turned furnace, burning shriek, and hair. Stunned host of sparrows scatters. Fume of feathers, pollution in the air.

Poison in the lungs of all that breathes. A darkness rises. The blue absorbs it the way it dissipates a swarm after the crisis of a shattered hive. Heaven shows its mercy also, swallowing the groan that spilled out of the hill. No signs of tragedy by dusk except a star splayed over rock, the reek of fumes--a disemboweled god.

after the clean-up along Los Gatos Canyon

What strange flowers grow in the shadow. Without petals and with crooked twigs for stems. The butterflies that pollinated them were bits of carbon glowing at the edge. The solitary lone wolf spider doesn't dare to bite the scorched caul on the canyon. It packs its fangs for brighter lands.

The footprints drawn in black do not match the footprints in the orchard though they also bear the weight of the unwanted. The chain gang called upon to gather the debris sang the Prison Blues all afternoon: Inmate, deportee, in your last attempt to flee every bone splits into three.

after the communal burial

Twenty-eight equals one deportation bus equals one cell in the detention center, one plane-load of deportees, one plunge into the conayon, one body in the coffin although one was a woman--sister not alone anymore among the chaperone of angels with wings of stone.

Manuel Merino, Julio Barrón, Severo, Elías, Manuel Calderón, Francisco, Santiago, Jaime, Martín, Lupe, Guadalupe, Tomás, Juan Ruiz, Alberto, Ramón, Apolonio, Ramón, Luis, Román, Luis, Salvador, Ignacio Navarro, Jesús, Bernabé, Rosalío Portillo, María, y José. Y un Deportado No Identificado.

No papers necessary to cross the cemetery. The sun floods the paths between tombs and everything pushes out into light. No shame to be a cherub without a nose. The wreath will not hide its decay. Cement displays its injuries with no regrets.

This is the place to forget about labor and hardship and pain. No house left to build, no kitchen to clean, no chair on a porch, no children to feed. No longing left except a wish that will never come true: Paint us back into the blank sky's blue. Don't forget us like we've forgotten all of you.

--Rigoberto González

I am always hesitant to post long poems because I'm afraid people won't take the time to read them, but I really wanted to share this one because of its use of rhyme and meter. I'm not going to go into too much detail, but the poem is written in alternating lines of iambic tetrameter and trimeter Tetrameter has 4 feet, or 8 syllables, while trimeter has 3 feet, or 6 syllables. Iambic verse means the stress falls on the second syllable in each foot. The use of meter works to create a rhythm throughout the poem.

Often when we think of poems that incorporate the use of rhyme and meter, we think of really old poems--the ones everyone knows (think Shakespeare and other dead guys). It's been a while since I've read a collection that so deliberately uses rhyme that reads so subtly to me. There is some end rhyme in this poem, but there doesn't seem to be a complete set pattern to it. It's mixed with a strong use of enjambment and slant rhyme. So sometimes there's exact rhyme, but we don't see it at the end of each line. We see one word at the end of a line, and then it rhymes with a word in the middle of the next line. Look at the first stanza. Flung rhymes with from. Beads rhymes with strings and tree. Amused rhymes with shoe. The variation in the use of rhyme works in two ways: it enhances the musicality of the poem and it makes us keep reading.

Read this poem and the entire collection, also titled Unpeopled Eden, and study it because of all the poetic devices it incorporates. Each poem in this collection is so carefully crafted and I've already learned a lot just by reading it and typing it to share with you. The poems all center around the people who cross the border between the US and Mexico, particularly the plane crash in Los Gatos Canyon and the deportees who were killed. Check it out.

-S

#ss #lit #poetry #Structure and Style #Unpeopled Eden #rhyme #meter #Rigoberto González

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