FLOR Y CANTO
Category: Writing and Poetry

Flor y Canto: Celebrating Latino Poetry in San Francisco

New America Media, News feature, Melanie Reynard, Posted: Aug 07, 2008

Editor's Note: Poetry is alive and well in San Francisco, home of the beat generation, and Latino poetry is thriving in its Mission District, reports Melanie Reynard.


SAN FRANCISCO – On a recent sultry evening in San Francisco, 24th Street in the Mission District was overflowing with crowds who came to hear poetry in "Flor y Canto en el Barrio: A Celebration of Latino Poetry." At the corner of each café that participated in the event, modern day poets kept the audience spellbound with raw and refined reflections.

In an age of blogging, spoken poetry may seem counterintuitive: Why spend time sitting with the personal thoughts of a stranger when you can just connect quickly through cyberspace? But since the days of Homer, spoken poetry has filled the same need that blogging does today: community cohesion.

The poets, who look like people you might run into at the bank or the Laundromat, are young and old, emerging and established. They are all witnesses of contemporary life in California.

.. Kim Shuck, a mixed Tsalagi, Sauk/Fox, and Polish educator, writer, weaver, and mother of three, stood before the audience and described her experience at the dinner table: "Humor and food are the trickiest of cultural artifacts, but overlaps do occur. My Polish and Tsalagi relatives sat down one evening and enjoyed potato pancakes together…."

Barbara Jane Reyes, a Filipina woman, shared her experiences from the streets of West Oakland: "Calling all crane operators, high up in the heaven of diesel smoke, leather-faced…."

And Victor Valle, a professor and retired reporter, shared his history when he recalled a ride with his father across the U.S.-Mexican border in the 1930s: "He'd say it was an honest mistake, simply forgot his papers, wandered too close to a previous life…."

The poets of "Flor y Canto" transcend generational gaps: At a poetry reading at the Mission Cultural Center for Latino Arts, feminist songstress Mamacoatl thanked older poet Nina Serrano for "opening the way" for her generation. Serrano clasped her hands and replied, "Thank you for daring to say all the things that have been in my heart all these years."

There is a saying in Spanish: 'Tu eres mi otro yo (You are my other self). According to Melissa Lozano, a 29-year-old poet from Oakland, Calif., this is part of the Flor y Canto festival that resonates most with her. "It means, 'I see you in me, keep going, and know that your art is a part of me as well,'" she explains.

As poets like Mamacoatl openly reconciled and asserted their own values, the audience was assured that life had meaning. In a secular culture, where we are left on our own to grapple with spirituality, the literary passion of a stranger is inspiring. As poet and host Nina Serrano said at the event reception, "It's not only all about community, but it really is the result of community organizing that started in the late '60s to fight issues of equality. The experience of art is the experience of community."

..Today's raconteurs have the power to create a sense of community that transcends racial boundaries. Even if you did not eat potato pancakes with your relatives like Kim Shuck or sit in the car with your father as he evaded the border patrol like Victor Valle, you can still access their experiences. Poets have the power to unite us.

As legendary poet Saul Williams once said, "You wouldn't have had the hippie movement if it weren't for the Beat Poets of the '50s. You wouldn't have had the civil rights movement if it weren't for the Harlem Renaissance poets. You wouldn't have had the Black Power movement if it weren't for the Black Hearts movement, which preceded it with those poets."

The "Flor y Canto" event demonstrated that poets create a sense of community by writing about the steps they take everyday. No matter what our background, there is a universal inner life we can tap into. No one is alien to another person's experience or culture. All of our senses are called upon to relate to one another.

The voice of the poet not only connects us to each other, but also connects us to ourselves. The more we refine our writing, the more we refine our thoughts. The more we refine our thoughts, the better we know how to face our future and take action. In the words of Saul Williams, "First comes our fight to articulate it, and then we embody it. So any time poetry gets popular, I'm excited."


Photo credits: Melanie Reynard

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Women’s Wisdom Walk Nov 25th San Francisco
Category: Life

Save the Date!  November 25th, ..:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />

 Women's Wisdom Walk,

12 noon,

 City Hall Esplanade.

·         Calling 100 Elders, Women of Wisdom, Community Leaders, Medicine Women, Tribal Spokespeople...Men and Women of Peace, Young Women, Child Women.

Come and walk with us this day, lets cast a circle of Feminine Energy to heal violence in our     communities, to raise our voice before government and plant a vision.

·         We sustain that when the human rights of Women and Children are respected, the whole community thrives!

·         We recognize we must work together as Women to heal the culture of violence at the various levels in which is perpetrated; from the Spiritual to the economic realm, from educational realm to the institutional.

·          We want a new day, a day in which women and girls can walk with total confidence that our culture values our contributions to humanity.

We are going to create a web of dew with the help of all walkers, plant the new vision and spin it into manifestation. 

Be a part of it!

More info:    primatelunar@yahoo.com.mx

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EL CAMINO QUE SE ABRE LINKS

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STRANGE FRUTA, EL DANZON
Category: Writing and Poetry

STRANGE FRUTA

Cm                                        C7

Southern trees bear a strange fruit

Cm                                         C7

Blood at the leaves and blood at the root

F                                                      Gm

Black bodies swinging in the southern breeze

Cm                     C7                        Cm

Strange fruit hanging from the poplar tree

But the southern fence bears an even stranger sight

Dismembered human bodies multiplying on both sides

Thousands and thousands for migrans funneled through the desert left to die

The pears rotted in the orchard this year no hummingbirds arrived

They were hunted down by the minute men

Another act of patriotism to save america the blessed

From those dirty mexicans, from those terrorists,

From those jornaleros over there pissing on the corner

No shame, I tell you , no education

F                                                 Gm           Cm

Stealing the jobs, stealing the dreams of america

Typical scene of a border town

No civil rights, no right at all

Neorliberal thinking and the NAFTA trade

Have unleashed an epidemic of femicidal rage

Morenita linda, nina de Guatemala,

Obrera en Cd Juarez, en Nogales o Tijuana

Your sacred body ganged raped and torn to pieces

Has been scattered all around and consumed by every one;

Your legs were recently found buried in the desert sand

Your heart and your kidneys were flown to New York

For a very pricey transplant

Your spinal column ended up at an MD conference in Phoenix, Arizona

Courtesy of UCLA, due to an overflow of body parts

And don't nobody knows why

The film of the brutal attack is sold in Europe and in the United States

                                     F                 Gm                Cm

And business is doing great, letting us all live in disgrace....

Cm                                         C7

Here is afruit for the crows to pluck

For the rain to gather, for the wind to suck

For the sun to rot, for a tree to dropp

F                   Gm               Cm

Heere is a strange and bitter crop.

4:36 AM - 1 Comments - 4 Kudos - Add Comment

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Arde La Selva
Category: Writing and Poetry

Arde la Selva

Lluvia de Plumas Negras

El Holocausto

                                                                                  Madre de Dios, in the border of

                                                                                            Perú-Brasil-Bolivia

Me han dejado sola

El calor es terrible

En esta cúpula de humo y neblina

¿Porque he venido?

Me han dejado sola

Yo ardiendo en mis comezones

Ardiendo en incertidumbre

Yo amnésica

Ciega, sorda, cruda

Me he recordado anciana en el cerro

Yo Hopi en el cerro

Yaqui en el cerro

Yo amazona

Supe del mal

Y me fui

Deje de acordarme

Me derrame sobre las llamas

Y me disolví en un torbellino de moléculas.

Esa anciana era yo

La dueña del fuego

Cuando empezaba a llorar

El viento.

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El Cuerpo del Delito

El Cuerpo del Delito...

Míralo, mío es

Este cuerpo de mestiza migrante

Míralo, tan ingenuo

Que solo busca echar pa'lante

Tan cruza fronteras

Este mi cuerpo tan desobediente

Tan tumba barreras

Este mi cuerpo tan ignorante

Al acecho de la migra

De la placa, de la ley,

Ilegal, este mi cuerpo del delito

The crime of deliberately unknowing racist legislation

Te crime of consistently walking through the wall

Questioning with my humble existence

Your pride, your pride, your pride,

In the atrocities of your imperial nation

The crime of swallowing my heart

And fertilizing the land

Oh, with the sorrow of my tears…

That's right I've been growing your tomatoes

With the sorrow of my tears.

Guilty, guilty, guilty

De ser mujer articulada

En la corte del red neck

Guilty, mujercita enajenada

Tan incapaz de ver

Ilegal, este cuerpo nuestro

Del delito.

7:03 PM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

Iam not your typical jesus Lover
Category: Religion and Philosophy

 I am not your typical Jesus lover.

 Ever since I was little I knew that all evils in this world where definitely condoned by God.  I saw my mother prayed upon by the miserable missionaries who hunt for souls to feed their corporate religion of a savior god.   Only Jesus saves, they would say, so you must turn your will to him and obey blindly and with faith.  Only Jesus they'd say…with the mind of a slave.

No, I am not your typical Jesus lover, as the matter of fact I have gone to the other side of the world from Jesus, as far as possible!  Not that I hated the guy, personally, but I just did not care to spend my sweet energy on some icon that has historically served the supremacist colonizer in stripping the  dignity of my indigenous ancestors.  No, I was looking more to a ceremony in the arms of some Goddess of purity, someone untouched by the greedy finger of the patriarch. 

 So I traveled like most light chasers to the navel of the universe, Cuzco!  You've been, right? 

C'mon, who hasn't done Machu Pichu? 

So there I am drinking the sacraments, conversing with the spirit of the mountains, praying for understanding, to the elements, to the soul of intelligence, until one night a wise woman gave me medicine and locked me in a temple…

I woke up in a bed of salt and roses

No vomit, no vision, no nightmare

Before me, the altar

A prominent white Christ

And a tiny Mary on his right

I woke up in a bed of salt and roses

Feeling abandoned

There was no song

I was alone

Before a dominant Jesus

In the center of the Earth

-Why Jesus? Why?

Why must you be bigger than your mother?

Why must genocide in your name?

Why such hypocrisy surrounds you…

I go so far away and even here I find you?

I the desperate woman

La mujer desesperada

Blooming blue snakes

Out the collar bone

Heating my crown

Giving me shade

I the desperate woman

La mujer desesperada

Coughing uncontrollable laughter

Twirling ribbons of purple rage,

Orange, white…

Shedding tears of electricity

Blue, diamond like…

Unswer me Jesus, si es que eres tan hombre! le dije... and to my utter amazement Jesus replied.  Slowly and with no emotion he pointed to myrRed sneakers.  "you brought your shoes into the temple" he sentenced.

                              And I wept.

11:16 AM - 3 Comments - 6 Kudos - Add Comment

La Deuda Interna
Current mood: artistic
Category: Writing and Poetry

Pre-Columbian drum and flute

La Deuda

You arrived on this land

Guaranteed the right to loot

Everything you lusted for

Was yours for the grabbing

And you took

And took

And renamed it all

I became a savage, a slave, a whore, a witch

And you took

My labor, my knowing, my love, my sons

When you could not ravage me no more

You conceived of the debt, la deuda

I should pay you endlessly for being alive

While female, while brown

Maybe then you would satisfy the

Angry want of my Spirit

But nothing can

You kill, you poison with your violence

You prosecute me, capture me

And name me

Property

I the same Pagan

Raped by greed

You the conqueror, the slave master

The cattle man.

La Deuda, querido

Te la he pagado con cada cadena

Que me has impuesto

A lo largo de los anos,

Con mi paranoia clandestina

Con el desarraigo de mis hijas

Su vida forzada a las despedidas

A mi condición de fugitiva

Esa deuda, que me imputas

Te la he pagado con creces,

Con el dolor de mi vientre,

Con la locura, la ilegalidad

Y la ausencia

¿Que mas le puedes cobrar a una mujer sin bienes?

Te pago 50 mil oraciones de prosperidad

Te pago con infinito perdón

Te pago con 25 mil flores blancas,

Con canciones, con bendiciones

Esa deuda que me imputas

Que ya te he pagado con creces

Con trillones de lágrimas

Con tantas noches insomnes

Con el Corazón en ruinas.

12:26 AM - 2 Comments - 2 Kudos - Add Comment