Category: blues
-
arnoldo garcía: No longer Oakland
Three poems by Arnoldo García No longer Oakland The smell of Oakland, Trash-strewn wind The rotting smell of hamburgers mixing into the tail-pipes of carbon-monoxide a street-curb sewage sludge of leaves, discarded clothes and legs of chairs tilting the natural world over us I walk to work Alongside the streetwalkers The only ones who smile…
-
Day Four 2019 | The cellphone baby
The cellphone baby criesbewildered by human voicesUnsteady in our armsThe cellphone screen filled with rhythmic red ocean wavesand a toenail moon calms her for a breath or twoHer skinher hearingher sighther touchher hairher bodyis wirelessher ancestors are blockedher father is in jailher mother needs a breakher grandfather disappeared years agoand her grandmother holds her tightcomforts…
-
Incessant: The beauty that cannot be stopped
My people are beautiful their bones are made of stone their blood, vines that tear walls apart their skin a gift from the sun that binds our wounds to our words My heroes never said they were going to give their life for the people, for the land, for the infinite horizon of our communities…
-
International human rights day |Día internacional de los derechos humanos
Welcome to international human rights day: Human rights day is the day when you can be fully human, imperfect, immigrant, imbecilic, important, impotent to stop the U.S. disaster, immune to the past, immured with the possibilities of liberation, human liberation, in the new day. When indigenous indios are The People of the Earth The original human…
-
Day of the Dead Word Festival | poems
Every day is the day of my dead 1. I harvest their suns and their pleasures erupt on my tongue My dead are troubled, always asking for more time on earth, Rebirth without redeath Love without betrayal Fire without water to burn alive They are not ghosts who inhabit the stairwells of my brain They…
-
Azlant: Migrants in the kingdom of the real estate
Knowledge, transformation, affiliation… Migrants don’t travel. Migrants are at home on the road. There is no point of departure and return — return is the dream of all migrants. The seasons –winter, spring, summer, autumn, winter– are our places, our suns, our times and spaces for momentary rest, momentary placement. Displacement, movement, roots as sails,…
-
Every day is the day of my dead
1. I harvest their suns and their pleasures erupt on my tongue My dead are troubled, always asking for more time on earth, Rebirth without redeath Love without betrayal Fire without water to burn alive They are not ghosts who inhabit the stairwells of my brain They do not possess anything They didn’t possess nothing…
-
Madre-abuelita (for manuela & josé)
I long for my grandmother’s tortillas her bold hands that seized fevers and captured ghosts her guidance, her comales, where chiles and tomatoes sang she nourished us with food and prayer to plant flowers to surround us with family, community and hope she didn’t want anyone to die she preferred to die first than see us…
-
Oración a Billie Holiday
Por favor diosa sálvame, por favor coatlicue negra, házme tu cuate, cúbreme tus brazos, déjame nacer de mi propia piel, házme lluvia, conviérteme en nubarrones, relámpagos, vientos, en tu hijo házme xocolatl, házme volatil ternura, diosas sálvenme Poema y pintura por arnoldo garcía (copyright)
Welcome to La comuna: ART OF THE COMMUNE 