#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]

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]

Responding to Day 3′s prompt is Graham Coppin. We are so glad to feature him. Graham was born in South Africa, lives in Brooklyn, NY and has studied with Amy Beeder, Aimee Nezhukumatathil, Jericho Brown and Ada Limón. He's been published in, amongst others, Burningword, FRiGG, OxMag, Arsenic Lobster, Caliban, The Round, and New Ohio Review. He is a new believer in the Oxford comma and can be found on Instagram at instagraham.nyc.

[thiscityisapoem]

Where the Chaos Consumes

In the chaos of trying to keep everything under control I balance the beauty of creativity against the gray burden of broken spirited youth. I drum roll my fingertips as if my desktop were a snare leading to an anticlimactic hush. I tap out a rhythm tainted tune on my keyboard with long dramatic pauses.

 With the circuitry and silence surrounding,

I sit confound in solitude. 

 I create life in the sterile halls of an institution. 

 The space of my office recently expanded to let in   more  empty   air.

I rest my soles on a plush floor mat and roll my chair against its dark surface.  I format this prose, with the constant interruption of radio transmissions and frequency buzz. I attempt to tap into a spiritual vibration.

 I seek a source of enlightenment by fluorescent lighting that dims my mood to a sullen state.

I narrate in the nocturne with sharp turns.

 I burn the ante-meridian fuel into the wee hours of a whispering glow. When my heart gets too low I turn on melancholy tunes to anchor my blues, because sometimes I need to let it resonate in the deep. 

 Somewhere in the minor chords I strike a match, detach my feelings from the void and lead them to coalesce with my words. Often times I reel them in swiftly.

 I give heart to these thoughts evoking the light that is the kindling of my passion. I retrace the steps of my childhood for the glory of the ones that are all losing theirs as they spend night after night within these cinder block walls tucked behind these metal doors. 

 Here we don’t call children prisoners; we refer to them as referrals and detainees.

 Funny how the world has a way with words.

 We all find winding paths around the truth with similar and identifiable clues.

But my heart begs me to be easy with honesty.  My conviction refuses to be coy.

I am far too boisterously candid with familiar truth.

 So excuse me, if you wish, for saying things plainly and prettied up with poetry.  It’s the only way I know. 

 My inhibitions left before the night shift started, 

before I parted the Red Sea of these words I read and seized the plump and tender pulp of artistry and swallowed its’ honeyed succulence. It’s become cantankerous in my belly like Jonah or the scrolls Ezekiel swallowed. So now I sit in this Detention Center surrendering to the muse and the chaos within. 

 I realize I am in the same predicament as these capsized children. 

  San Antonio’s jewel, Andrea “Vocab” Sanderson, is our pilon this year. Her poem is a response to the extra prompt about our writing desk. Where do we write? And why? Is our desk a wooden horse’s back in a brightly colored room or is it against a wall or on the bus or in our heads, spoken out over and over again, until memorized?

Thank you, Vocab, for closing us right - with a reminder that our words live once written, once spoken. How they can sometimes save us or another. 

To download a copy of Vocab’s poem, click here.