#npmsa2018

[thiscityisapoem]

Bargain

By Barbie Hurtado

Bargaining, I do it a lot

I promised once I wouldn’t hurt myself again

Sometimes it easy

Why would I wanna hurt myself anyway right?

Sometimes it’s hard

How can I not? I need to feel, I need to hurt I need

to stop being so numb.

I bargain with the universe, with the goddesses,

with my ancestors.

Please take away the pain, I will be a good person,

I will fight, I won’t let the darkness in, I won’t let it

defeat me just help me, take away this desire

that shouldn’t be part of me.

Let me live my life.

Free me from this darkness

I call upon my ancestors, I burn some sage, I sit

and cry and I repeat I will fast every Friday if you

will just let me live.

Barbie Hurtado is a fat queer chicanx activist and organizer that works with the San Antonio International Woman’s Day March, Planned Parenthood and the Rape Crisis Center. They are passionate about serving their community and is constantly learning, evolving and growing. Barbie believes in sharing arte y cultura with their community, as a teatrista and cultural worker. They write about las dolencias y alegrías de la vida but does not call themselves a writer. You can find Barbie around town leading chants on a megaphone, playing the jarana with Son Queers or transforming into their alter ego Pancho Panza.

[thiscityisapoem]

This City Is A Poem began with the idea that writing poetry (truly, about using our voice) could be an incredible tool toward learning about ourselves and connecting with others. We wanted to offer something to the community during National Poetry Month's celebration for those who can't make an event but who want to participate in their own way. 

We are beyond thankful to those who support us, those who have reached out, those who wrote a few poems or followed along every day. We also appreciate those who read at our first ever public reading and who submitted responses to our prompts. 

We are, as much as all of you, encouraged to keep writing. With that - for opening up your hearts - we thank you with this poem by Amy Lowell. 

Keep writing!

Barbara and Jo

💖

[thiscityisapoem]

We the People

By Jenny Browne

really should know something more

of the history of the historian, in order to better

understand the version being placed before us.

West Texas javelina do not see it this way.

In fact, javelina do not see well at all,

although their back teeth clack in warning

when they smell the dogs, my dogs I mean

tearing over the Pinto Canyon ridge.

In no particular order then I, historian

of this poem, remember a vertebrae practicing

C scales in the shade, the taste of salt, one dog

whose name kept changing from Basil to Beso,

a blue rinse over the vast Chihuahuan desert,

someone shouting Uno too late, and even myself

aging bravely as a one-armed cartwheel

between the cactus all that spring.

I remember too the instant we saw the javelina seeing us,

and wondered if we were safe. And by we you mean?

I’m talking to you, historian. Can we say everyone

eventually reaches the southern edge of borrowed property,

a contested border, the swollen river, an ordinary

morning walk on which they too begin to tear in half

all over again. Do you imagine your experience

to be unique? Have you ever seen the first known

photograph of a human being? It was taken in 1838

on an empty Paris street, although the street was

in fact crowded with bodies in motion. I’m talking to you

my dead.  You who held still and for so long were all

I could see. The javelina proved to be more interested

in the quail feeder and I in the liquid sound the quail made

leaving all at once, a sound like someone holding the eulogy

they spent all night writing in their furious shivering hands.

Sometimes we don’t even recognize our own grief

staring us down, arriving as it can so many years

after the fact. The fact? I backed up slowly as I could,

knowing what I do about their teeth, knowing

what I do about grief.

Jenny Browne's most recent collection of poems is Dear Stranger.  Her work has received fellowships from the James Michener Center, the San Antonio Artist Foundation, the Writers League of Texas, the Poetry Society of America and the National Endowment for the Arts. She lives in downtown San Antonio, teaches at Trinity University, and is the 2017-18 Poet Laureate of the State of Texas. Learn more about Jenny here, here, and here.

[thiscityisapoem]

She Calls Out To Me

By Sally Blue

While I am in the kitchen,

Mama – are we safe?

Mid-movement, I clutch

The dishtowel as

The thousand worries

Of a mother catch my mind’s

Eye like shards of broken glass

Like poorly lit parking garages

Like packages left on doorsteps –

We live in the safest of unsafe places.

Sometimes too much safety is a bad thing.

Most of all, I want who-you-are to be safe.

I say none of these things.

I offer her the safety of routine,

Of listening, of presence. At night,

I watch her sleep and then,

Double-check the locks.

Sally Blue is a writer, coach and consultant in Austin, Texas. She's finally making real progress in editing her first novel and is one of those rare birds who is so ready for the summer heat.

[thiscityisapoem]

poem excerpts

By Emmy Pérez

And this skin            one of our organs

the largest        always sings this indigeneity

detribalized by no decision      of our own

           in the ranges of malachite 

butterflies     the same color    as the river 

      where we stretch         our legs between 

strip malls & stripped earth: 

        Falfurrias checkpoint      to our north    

walls     el río      Reynosa bridge     to our south

the east      the river’s mouth      & the Gulf.

     West to Falcon Dam.       Use wings 

* * *

And even el paletero twines      a cross of palm 

     leaves to his cart       & youth devour 

brilliant paletas       de coco y fresa 

as church bells ring         I remember

my mother saying       her father 

         handed her straw crosses

he wove as she spoke         two small

      children by her side

in her last visit to adobe homes         before 

    he died.      And I wonder how soon      it was

when we started to      get allergic

        to pollen & dust      & rejected

binarizing Tonantzines       though it was all

       between spelled out & implied            I imagine 

      this tongue rests coiled       like a caracol 

alive in its shell        ready to roll out

    at first like a cartoon 

carpet        until everyone stepping 

on my words        with talones y tacones 

     flats       Midwestern 

cowboy boots       with old gum 

    on the bottoms      defending 

the state       that pays them

        walks the fuck off         Yes 

I’m talking about you.

***

      Time stamps     mark our

seasons with protests       When 

     they say no      you say yes     DACA yes

Clean DREAM Act Now       Here to Stay

When they say yes     you say no. 

     Keep your ICE-y    

hands off        El Valle’s

        people and land.

Still, how can we compete       at national 

     with overseas troll factories           

cranking out memes          that speak to Ted Cruz Texans

        They say       they didn’t get        his Wall

but still new ones         have been funded

      properties will be      condemned

communities destroyed       A few builders

will laugh        all the way to the piggy

       get second honeymoons     extra 

cars           And now they’re sending 

      the National Guard

like the Marines      who hunted high school student  

          & part-time goatherd                RIP Ezequiel Hernandez

***

But they already lost

       the charge          that Demetria’s poem 

was evidence of smuggling             that Lorna’s 

      Librotraficante speech       in front of the Alamo

on YouTube           might help a Chicanita  

     finish her homework                  that Celina’s poem on Neta

for DACAmented youth          has exceeded the amount

      of expected views for a Tejana       from Edinburgo

***

The respite center here is filled     with smiling & some crying

     brown faces        relieved        because they made it

         they made it         they made it

Emmy Pérez is a Chicana poet and writer originally from Santa Ana, California. She has lived on the Texas-Mexico border, from El Paso to the Rio Grande Valley (where she currently lives), since the year 2000. A graduate of Columbia University (MFA) and the University of Southern California (BA), she is the author of the poetry collections With the River on Our Face (University of Arizona Press) and Solstice (Swan Scythe Press). Pérez is the recipient of a 2017 National Endowment for the Arts fellowship in poetry. In previous years, she was a recipient of poetry fellowships from CantoMundo, the New York Foundation for the Arts, the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, the MacDowell Colony, the Ucross Foundation, and the Atlantic Center for the Arts. She has also received the Alfredo Cisneros Del Moral Foundation Award for her poetry and the James D. Phelan Award for her prose writing. Since 2008, she has been a member of the Macondo Writers' Workshop founded by Sandra Cisneros for socially engaged writers. Pérez’s poetry has been published in the Academy of American Poets Poem-a-Day series and appears on the Poetry Foundation online. Her work has also been published in journals such as Prairie Schooner, North American Review, Indiana Review, Crab Orchard Review, Pilgrimage Magazine, PALABRA: A Magazine of Chicano & Latino Literary Art, and other publications, including the anthologies Orange County: A Literary Field Guide (Heyday), Entre Guadalupe y Malinche: Tejanas in Literature & Art (University of Texas Press), New Border Voices: An Anthology(Texas A&M Press), and The Wind Shifts: New Latino Poetry (University of Arizona Press). She has work forthcoming in the anthology Ghost Fishing: An Eco-Justice Poetry Anthology (University of Georgia Press). Over the years, she has served as a writing mentor and workshop facilitator at detention centers in New Mexico, El Paso, and the Rio Grande Valley in South Texas. She has also taught writing at the University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP) and El Paso Community College. In 2004-2005, she was a visiting assistant professor of creative writing at UTEP, and served as visiting director of the West Texas Writing Project 2005. In 2006, she began a tenure-track position in creative writing at the University of Texas-Pan American, a legacy institution for present-day University of Texas Rio Grande Valley (UTRGV), where she currently is an associate professor in the MFA and undergraduate creative writing programs.

[thiscityisapoem]

Time by yourself for writing

By Sonia Dominguez

Sit alone

with your favorite pen

an expensive journal or

a simple piece of paper.

Order coffee, tea or water.

Sit alone with your thoughts.

Sit alone in crowds.

Sit inside

a remembrance here

a remembrance there.

Write it down.

Sit outside

listen to the birds sing

listen to the fountains trickle.

The wind through the trees like breath to life.

Write it down.

Words as smooth as a gel pen glides on the paper.

Words as rough as an un-sharpened pencil.

You decide, write it down.

[thiscityisapoem]

A Queer Looking for Her Crown

for Gloria Anzaldúa Y tatiana de la tierra, my Spirit Guides

By Anel I. Flores

I.

I looked for myself

under the heels of Dolores del Rio

while lovers slurped chianti

and curled their eyes at the belly of jelly

and the sad-eyed piano man

I heard my grief in the brittle sound of his keys

I saw her long breasts levitate and land as she danced

I didn’t find me

I looked for myself in the reflection

of the trickling river

Found a face framed of long hair

fallen from the ledges of my ears

blades of grass floating across my rippling cheeks

a few tiny orange fish swimming into my eyes

That girl in the river’s reflection

wasn’t me

I thought of jumping in

swimming out to sea

with hopes I’d find me

I looked for myself at the bottom of the stairs

in the fleshy glittery stones of the grotto

paused

took a breath

and saw me

a piece of me

yesterday’s me

a petrified me

bulbous cold and still breathing

A me I didn’t want to see

The me of then

Another time

when I couldn’t bind the rope

when I almost gave in to choke

forgot how to spell hope

because I couldn’t find a why

or a me

a body in which to live my life

that time

sheltered by trees

fallen to my knees

It was just me

and the deep blue hole

far enough from the mother’s eyes

but close enough to god

All was not lost

didn’t cry

didn’t die

let that memory say goodbye

and decided to try life a few more times

I looked for myself in the paper-size window

at the old Tenampa cantina on Houston Street

Found a man’s back

bent over a lacquered bar top

His a body frame

lost behind sagging pants

and an untucked baby-blue button-down

I saw a woman’s body

her tight jeans

thick thighs

red botas

knee-high

and almost found me

Before she burrowed and buried

under the adobe of his arm

Now that wasn’t me

If he’d melted his ridged edges into her curved frame

like his oppressive posture spoke to

maybe

just maybe

would I have found me

in the both of them

he

she

Maybe I would have found me

playing pool

smoking a short

on the neighboring chrome bar stool

Tejana bro cool

I looked for myself inside the hundred-year-old doors of a men’s store

Passed my pointy finger over the smooth shoulder of a blue coat

Slid the back of my hand against the silk of a striped tie

and in the scent of a leather Stacy Adams shoe

I saw a costume I might fit into

a body I’d maybe finally warm up in

a gender blend

a pachuco femme

se veía bien

“May I get a shoe for you

My name is Matthew

Let me know what I can do”

“Thank you”

My bag in hand

Me and my tangerine shoes

went on a trolley cruise

passed another building reeking of booze

a park

a few sleeping pit bulls

y San Antonio’s first public school

Me and my dude shoes

turned the corner into a womb of erected red sand

open corridors

A trail of fables and metaphors

I fell into her sliding doors

Looked for myself in the chairs

up the stairs

in the vibrant colors reflecting off the glass walls

I saw more than a thousand spines stacked straight up and down

multiple stories high

laid about

hugged in under arms

up against cheeks

making people smile and frown

With my free hand

I reached out

grabbed the first hardback

looked around

walked over to where I couldn’t be found.

When I opened her

my feet stepped up and down on the ground

my bones quaked

my stomach churned

my fingers burned

She flew out

A kite carried up by the wind

A string of letters and poems

She had a tongue of snakes that could not be cut out

a body of boulders

cactus

soil

and pages

She said

I was Ometeotl

loose

liberated

brown

a seed

growing through the hardened ground

Without a sound

a bridge grew plank by plank

before me

on the other side

what I was looking for

I had found

Me

She

He

We

in one body

I felt my limbs slither around and around

For a moment

for a moment

for a moment

I was found

unbound

both feet on the ground

one over here

one over there

A river rushing up inside of me

I released a hemorrhaging sound

blood

cum

water

mucus

and tears

a fountain

Finally, my braided tendons unwound

The stories fell from the shelves

onto the ground

into my hand

against my temple

cracking my brow

all around

even the walls fell down

I crowned

II.

I wanted to tell someone what I had found

I kept walking around

Packed my Stacys

to my feet

on the ground

The streets grew up and down

Clipped my hair tight

and stretched my frown  

Sounds of Tejano twang

blasting booms

bass behind tinted windows

hands tossed history in tortillas

lengua tacos

Laughter lauded through screen doors

mesquite arms danced and waved

offering a slice of shade to the viejita

She enjoyed the wait

I ended up

down

by the mouth of the river

There was no living being and no human sounds   

I looked around

Tried to find myself a friend to tell about

what had just gone down

but no one appeared

I thought

no one wanted to hear

Until suddenly

a crack in the mud opened up

like a mouth

Water and blood gushed up and out

Then with a tug

she re-appeared from the wound

pulled me down

My nails dug into the mud

My knees dropped down with a pound

With all of her might

she pushed my ear to the ground

and I heard the voices of thirty-seven thousand years

I am here

I am found

Anel I. Flores was awarded Women’s Advocate of the Year 2018, The Abrije Creadores Award, named Best Of San Antonio Local Author 2017, the Chingona in Literature Award 2016, the Ancinas Award at Squaw Valley, the NALAC Fund for the Arts Award, the Accion Women Inspiring Women Award, the Yellow Rose of Texas Educator Award, and the Mentorship Leadership Award from the National Performance Network. She is co-editor of forthcoming Jota Anthology with Korima Press and author of Lambda literary award nominated book Empanada: A Lesbiana Story en Probaditas. Currently she is working toward publication of her upcoming book Curtains of Rain and beginning her graphic memoir, Pintado de Rojo.

[thiscityisapoem]

City of Tiny Terrors

By Kamala Platt

 Today this city is a poem of tiny terrors.

They say this city is a poem of wonder,

though magnetisms have been switched out,

one force for the other.

What once comforted, rebels.

What once crooned, grumbles.

What once welcomed, repels

What once sustained, crumbles.

Memories have lost their cohesions.

Bridges have gone behind walls

that separate generations and terminate symbiosis.

I want to plant spring seeds,

but time has washed askew, drained away--

The sun has not returned, has been deported.  

Each morning, I wake in anticipation

but sense as I rise, the weather is not right.

So instead, I pour water in a clay saucer. I feed cats.

You say you do not know trust, anymore.

Neighbors have been detained, deported with the sun.

You do not know neighbors.

There are no neighbors.

There is no one left whom you know.

Neighbors have been evicted.

They have nowhere, now.

Their puppies sit in a wire cage, awaiting fate.

It doesn’t come. We pour water in a tin bowl.  We feed dogs.

I read the news, like all of you:

San Antonio is a model for the world:

A wonder of globe-washing, a new, clean Tri-centennial city.

A Guardian of Goodwill on the Planet.

I scoff: For their world, perhaps,

but not our neighborhood.

For their planet, perhaps

but not for people like us,

not for the animals,

not in our times of tiny terrors.

Kamala Platt, PhD, MFA teaches Creative Writing, Ethnic American Literature & Environmental Justice Poetics through ASU Online for the School of Humanities, Arts and Cultural Studies. She is author of Weedslovers: Ten Years in the Shadow of September (2014) & On the Line (2010). She currently lives and works on San Antonio’s Westside. Her current interdisciplinary, creative and scholarly work responds to environmental, social, and cultural crises, in particular, borderland militarization, displacements and domination, and environmental and climate justice concerns.