Circulo Members

Rosanna Alvarez

Rosanna Alvarez is a braided storyteller, educator, artist, mother to three guerreras, and a trucker's wife based out of Hollister, California. She is the author of Braided [Un]Be-Longing, a poetry collection that weaves together the most unanticipated spaces of poetic legacy found in the everyday and in everybody. She is the Co-Founder and Editorial Director of Eastside Magazine, an alum of the Macondo Writers Workshop, a fellow with the Anaphora Arts Emerging Critics Program, and recent recipient of the Distinguished Preservation Service Award for her work in writing, publishing, teaching, and performing. She grew up in San José, California as the first-born of nine siblings in a loud and loving Mexican family, siempre rezongando. She remains in awe of the power of Chicana storytelling, with heart in hand, ink to the page, always hollering truths. She also teaches Chicana and Chicano Studies at San José State University.

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She reached over and rubbed her white moonstone ring with her left index finger as if to say, “There, there.” Soothing. With her eyes closed, the smooth length of the ring could almost be mistaken for a piano key. It even had a tempo to it that she wouldn’t dare defy.

Everyone always commented on how beautiful it was. If you looked at it from just the right angle, you could see there was an iridescence to it. That always reminded Evelia of the different angles in life. Twists and turns that could shift your perspective ever so subtly. This wasn’t a dynamic she took for granted.

Long and oval like her mother’s kitchen table from her childhood. No fixed edges. You could always make more room. How many had gathered around that table throughout the years? Odd, she hardly

remembers meals at the table. The vivid recollections all center around laughter, jokes, a combination of people sitting and standing. Gathered. Recollecting joy. Moments of exuberant “Happy Birthdays!” and “Yo quiero la flor.” Her mother would sometimes take a knife to the table, waging war against the crumbs that had made home in all of its crevices, hoarding mementos from moments long gone. It was the only way to shake them out.

Still rubbing her ring, she opened her eyes and remembered. The sacred lands of Chimayo were not too far from Las Cruces.

William Gregory

William Gregory received his Master of Arts degree in fiction from Columbia College Chicago. He has a long history in Theater. His musical Welcome to the Shanghai-la was performed at Southwestern College and Electric Butterfly was performed at U.C.S.D. He was a Cabaret/jazz singer for many years. His music/theater writing can be found in In Pittsburgh, C.R.C.(Chicago Rock Coalition) and Midwest Ursine.. His short stories can be found in Hairtrigger. He is thankful for the Goodman theater program Genarrations. His short play La Medici of Beverly Hills premieres at Perceptions Theater in Chicago August

17-20, 2023. He is currently working on his first book of short stories. His newest play will be based on the Posthumous diaries of Pedro Cojulun, a Mayan, gay playwright who fought for indigenous rights amidst the Central American Banana wars. A magical realist journey into the Mayan world.

Clowns and Eddie Gourmet

Going to the Pic n Save was the highlight of the week.

“Vamos a la Pic and Save!” Our Mother would yell. And my sister and I would run to the Dodge, trying to hold our breaths just to freeze the moment, just in case our Mother changed her mind. She always did that you know?”Oh mejor vamos a la middle Eastern store or the Bible book store instead.” We held our breath until we got to Pic n Save.

We sat in the car with bated breath thinking about expensive things from J.C. Penney’s and Sears like French cookies with weird spelling and stinky perfumes or cheap candies I could sell at school. The Pic n Save was a store in California that sold inexpensive mark down items, long before there was such a thing as a dollar store. We were po not poor. Even the word could not afford the extra o r.

At Pic n Save the fun was in the hunt. My little sister and I would spend hours looking through mostly junk and scream out loud when we found something special, alerting our Mother on the other side of the store.

I screamed.

There it was. My black and white Pierrot, sitting on a porcelain ball, shiny with newness, looking alone and rejected. I had to have it, whatever it was. It was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen. When I got to the cash register I pulled out my sandwich baggie full of quarters, nickels, dimes, pennies and a couple random bills and began counting. This was going to take all of the money I had made that week from selling my little baggies of popcorn with chile, saladitos and Chico-stix at school. I was so excited I didn’t care about the people in line hemming and hawing at how long this was going to take.

When I got home I unwrapped my beautiful, glossy clown and looked him up in our World Book Encyclopedia. I learned that a Pierrot was from something called Commedia del arte. Pierrot’s girlfriend Pierrete had left him for Harlequin and Pierrot would be sad for all eternity. I had found a soulmate.

Maybe the ennui started on those nights when my Mother came home from work, her face dripping like a sweaty clown, mascara dripping with sadness.

With no words, she’d strip to her underwear and bra, reaching for the telephone, back when extension chords wrapped around the house and lock herself in her bedroom for hours. I heard her mumbling and sobbing behind the door; the strains of Javier Solis playing in the background.

Maybe it was the sighs she let out everytime the radio played Los Panchos or Jorge Negrete. Maybe it was the jewelry she threw into the Ocean each time a boyfriend left her, telling us that it was the only true way to forget a man.

Maybe it was the way she wrapped her polio-stricken leg in bandages so that her foot would fit in a shoe and maybe, just maybe no one would notice her deformities.

Whatever it was, it called to me. Each time I watched the vinyl spin on my record player, I became transfixed with the songs and words, making the unachievable seem believable.

Over the years my Pierrot collection became quite large. At night I’d stare at them and wonder what a clown could ever do to deserve such pain, like my Mother.

Then I met a boy, his name was Noel. He was the moon and stars in my eyes.

I had no idea what that meant. I’d just heard it in a song somewhere.

Noel liked me, but not like that.

It crushed me. And one night my Mother walked in on me crying in my pillow. An Eddie Gourmet record sang to me on the turntable.

“Ay Billy, you are like me. We are cursed with these hearts. We feel too much.”

As my Mother walked out the door, she swiped one of my Pierrot’s off of the shelf. And as I bent down to pick it up I noticed the dust that had collected on my collection of broken hearts.

I don’t know whatever happened to the clowns. There ought to be clowns.

Enrique Buelna

Enrique Buelna is an experienced History Instructor with a demonstrated history of working in the higher education industry. His research interests include working-class history, civil rights, social movements, immigration, race, class, and oral history. Chicano Communists and the Struggle for Social Justice is currently available from UA Press. He is also working on a screenplay and avidly creates multi-media paintings and sculptures.

Enrique currently teaches in the History department at Cabrillo College. He is skilled in Nonprofit Organizations, E-Learning, Editing, Curriculum Development, and Adult Education. He earned a Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) focused in History from University of California, Irvine.

Making Noise

When I first met Ralph Cuarón in 1998, he was seventy-five years old, staunchly defiant, and proud of his life’s accomplishments. Despite having suffered a debilitating stroke that same year, Cuarón possessed a sharp wit and vivid memory. Sylvia, his wife and lifelong partner of almost fifty years, often felt frustrated that she could not accurately describe in words the person that Ralph had once been. But where details might fail her, she possessed a flair for the poetic and an urgent need to get the story out. “The Ralph you see here today, “ she pressed, “is but a shell of the man he used to be.” And in the course of our many interviews, there was one word she occasionally used to characterize her spouse, and which captured my attention -- “gadfly.” As the picture of Cuarón’s life came into focus, I began to understand Sylvia’s use of this intriguing word. Burned into her memory was the life of an individual habitually engaged in provocative criticism of social and economic inequality. Still, more than being a persistent and irritating critic as the word implies, Cuarón made it his lifelong mission to organize others to act on their own behalf. In different capacities, he engaged with young people to help them realize their true potential, always with the underlying goal of unleashing this energy on the world. He also hoped that this energy would be used in the pursuit of building grassroots communities, with the ultimate goal of laying the foundations for a better world.

Lupe Friaz

Guadalupe (Lupe) Friaz was raised in Tonyville, an unincorporated area of Lindsay, California to Mexican immigrant parents. They made a living as farmworkers. She and her four siblings worked alongside them on weekends and in the summers. She received a BA from UCSC and a PhD from UC Berkeley. She taught at the University of Washington and a few other places before returning to her first passion as a teacher and healer of children and families. She was a finalist in the Bellingham Reviews, 2021 Conger-Beasley Prize.

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"The tortillas fluffed up with the heat from the griddle; as they browned they’d release a floury aroma that was irresistible. One could imagine butter melting into the tortilla, a sprinkling of salt, rolling it up, and eating it in a few big bites. I was to fill up the tortilla basket so I knew to be on the alert and if my brothers weren’t fast enough it would cost them a whack from the rolling pin. They were willing to risk it."

Shizue Seigel

Shizue Seigel is a third-generation Japanese American writer, visual artist and community organizer Based in San Francisco. She explores intersections of history, culture and spirituality through prose, poetry and visual art. Find out more about Shizue at writenowsf@gmail.com.

Prior to World War II, her grandparents leased a 140-acre produce ranch near Pismo Beach, and owned properties in San Luis Obispo’s Japantown. She was born in 1946, soon after her family’s release from WWII incarceration. She grew up in segregated Baltimore, Occupied Japan, California sharecropping camps and skid-row Stockton. She’s a college dropout who learned by doing—from the Haight-Ashbury to Indian ashrams, from the corporate advertising to HIV prevention in public housing.

She is the founder/director of Write Now! SF Bay. www.WriteNowSF.com., and has published eight books. Her latest project, Hidden Histories of the Central Coast, connects the Japanese American experience with of Latinx and Asian agricultural immigrants.

Gaman

Baachan. Grandma. Of you I know facts

not the feelings you did not speak

The year before you died, you dreamed you stood at Nirvana’s gates,

but they sent you back because you hadn’t suffered enough.

Gaman. Endure. Persevere beyond hope.

Kichinto shinasai. Do it just the right way.

Your eyes were like jet—brightly opaque.

They saw all without a hint of weakness.

You left Japan in 1913, when a man from the next village

called you to California. Courted you with photos of horse and plow, promised you muttonleg

sleeves and a feather-plumed hat

So you packed your kimono/steamed over the long ocean to the big land.

You placed your faith in this man, this life, this land and it was good—

though children died and crops failed.

You prayed to the Buddha in the dining room

and Kamisamain the kitchen.

When plows turned up arrowheads

you asked a Shinto priest to come 200 miles

to honor the spirits of the past.

Isshoni, Issho ken mei, together

You and your husband worked with all your might.

on 140 leased acres at the Pacific edge.

You grew peas, lettuce, and cantaloupe that thrived in the moist sea air,

worked around alien land laws, shipped your produce to L.A.,

dressed your kids in sailor suits and fancy dresses,

bought property in the Japantown

for a nihonjinbarbershop, fish market, pool hall, and gas station.

Where did your faith go in 1934

when your husband drove into a telephone pole?

A silly little accident—until his stomach filled up with blood.

The hospital would not x-ray. Pneumonia, they said.

No double indemnity for accidental death.

You said he might not have died if he’d been white.

You said it only once—out loud. For months you walked the cliff’s edge looking over the

churning sea toward home.

Gaman and ganbatte. Suck it up. Never give up.

A widow with four children,

you hired a foreman to help manage the farm.

Tried to collect rents in Japantown, but all through the Depression,

tenants wept in their doorways,

“Maybe next month… business is so slow.”

Onegai shimasu, forever in your debt.”

Then a white man bought half the farm out from under you,

plotting to turn a profit by doubling the lease.

But you told him “No!” Moved off his land and up the hill.

Built another house. Put your faith in your community.

“Let’s all tell him no!” For a full year, no nihonjin leased your place,

until the landlord knuckled under

and let you come back at the old price.

That kind of Jap conspiracy does not go unpunished.

In 1942, Pearl Harbor blew up your world

Cast you into the searing desert, east of the Colorado River

Imprisoned with 18,000 others in three square miles of sand

trapped amid tar-paper shimmering

like a mirage that would not dissolve.

Tucked inside your shoe was all that remained of your previous life.

A clipping: “Jap house burns to ground.”

And cash from the realtor who bought your Japantown.

“You’ll never be able to keep up the taxes.

Let me do you a favor and take it off your hands:

your $50,000 property for two thousand cash.”

When they let you out in 1945, friends warned.

“Don’t go come back here.They’re shooting out our windows at night.

They won’t sell us gas or fertilizer.”

So you came north to start again—at 57

sharecropping strawberries on your knees—

in another tar-paper compound.

culling rotten berries for a few good ones to eat.

mentally plotting precise ways to live without waste.

Kichinto shinasai! Do it right.

How much suffering is enough to get to Nirvana?

María José (Majo) Ramírez Jiménez

María José (Majo) Ramírez Jiménez(Ciudad de México, 1988). Estudia la maestría en Estudios Latinoamericanos en la Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM). Es licenciada en Letras Hispánicas por la misma casa de estudios. Editora, reportera y escritora. Sus ficciones y ensayos han sido publicados en las revistas Tierra Adentro, Marabunta, ERRR Magazine, Enpoli, Hipérbole Frontera y MilMesetas, donde participa en el consejo editorial. Su cuento “Petriscente o de la transmutación a lo bello” fue seleccionado para formar parte de Voces indómitas (2022), la primera Antología de Narrativa Breve escrita por mujeres de Crisálida Ediciones.

Sus intereses abarcan salud, feminismo, literatura y diversidad sexual. Fue reportera de investigación para Conexión Expo Med y co-conductora del programa de radio “Carabina”, por No-Fm. Actualmente, es directora editorial de La Liebre de fuego; asimismo, forma parte del proyecto Dogma editorial; también, dirige “Poderosas. Círculo de lectura de escritoras latinoamericanas”, donde busca visibilizar la obra de autoras de Latinoamérica y el Caribe.

María José (Majo) Ramírez Jiménez(Mexico city, 1988) is a graduate student at the Latin American Studies program at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM). She holds an B.A. in Hispanic Literature from the same university. Editor, reporter and writer. Her fictions and essays have been published in the magazines Tierra Adentro, Marabunta, ERRR Magazine, Enpoli, Hipérbole Fronteraand MilMesetas, where he participates in the editorial board. Her story “Petriscente o de la transmutación a lo bello” was selected to be part of Voces indómitas (2022), a Short Narrative Anthology written by women published by Crisálida Ediciones.

Her interests include health, feminism, literature and sexual diversity. She was a research reporter for Conexión Expo Med and co-host of the radio program “Carabina", by No-Fm. Currently, she is the editor of La Liebre de fuego; she is part of Dogma editorial project; and she also created the book club “Poderosas. Círculo de lectura de escritoras latinoamericanas”, where she seeks to make visible the work of authors from Latin America and the Caribbean.

Desde la fisura

Por Majo Ramírez Jiménez

Vértigo

el íntimo temor de confundirme

menos la luz del sol.

Me gustaría

en un breve movimiento de las nubes

hilvanar dos deseos:

la ausencia de

una sílaba

escondida

la imagen esplendente

de soñar en una tierra temblorosa

que libre al cuerpo.

Una sombra en la ventana

La luz se escurre por la ventana, cae sobre el dorado lomo; los grandes ojos chispeantes se abren en el momento exacto en que escucha los pasos, el clic de la puerta al cerrarse. La pequeña bestia bosteza, se estira un poco y cambia de posición. Desde su sitio observa las sombras deslizarse brevemente por la sala, mientras alista las orejas. Los humanos arrastran los pies, trastabillan, un cuerpo se arroja a la cama y los resortes crujen. La gata sabe, ha comenzado el ritual del amor.

Vianney A. Gavilanes

Vianney A. Gavilanes is a Mexican migrant, educator, scholar, and writer raised in San Leandro, California. Her work often centers on themes of language, identity, justice, and homemaking. Growing up as an undocumented migrant child left an indelible mark. Her experience with losing, finding, and continually affirming her voice as a brown body in a perpetual sea of whiteness informs her writing and teaching. Recognizing the healing power of writing, Vianney works alongside youth to cultivate their creative self-expression through writing and the arts as part of our collective liberation.

Vianney is a member of Write Now SF! and Círculo. She has participated in Somos en Escrito’s Palabras del Pueblo writing workshop with Lorna Dee Cervantes and Corporeal Center’s Tongues and Languages with Jenna Tang. When she is not writing, teaching, or reading, you can find Vianney hiking the local Bay Area trails, playing Badminton with her sobrinas y sobrinos, or tomando cafecito with her mom and sister.

Recolectando Mis Pedacitos

We re-member ourselves through story

stitching ourselves back with threads of language

a medicinal ceremony for our wounds.

Wounds blending with the marrow of our bones

dismembering us

with every lesson

separating our soul from our body

reason from our heart

we must

Galeano says

recollect the pieces education has dismembered.

Childhood memories

haunt me

Spanish-speaking little brown girl

sitting in Ms. Jone’s first-grade classroom

a seemingly benign gaze

piercing my skin with jagged edges of whiteness

as English stings, burns, severs my tongue.

My cheeks sore

busy holding back Spanish

a battle in my mouth every time I speak

English and Spanish live inside

but only one can speak at a time

no mixing, no blending, no accenting.

With every word, every syllable

a piece of Spanish torn away

there was no room for both

English was the language of prosperity.

La educación me descuartizo

no me quebró

me arranco pedacitos

que aún no han vuelto a mi

andan vagando

los debo recolectar.

Ando por la vida recolectando

aquello que me fue arrancado

temiendo encontrar

pedazos de mi

ilegibles

Rescatar a la niña atrapada en

el tiempo

es mi sanación.

Tus palabras mi niña,

son mi medicina.

Tus pedacitos

son mi voz.

No descuartizada,

sino entera

entretejida con hilos de tus heridas y

fortaleza.

Porque lo que una ves fue arrancado,

será regresado a mi.

In reference to Eduardo Galeano’s poem “Celebración de las bodas de la razón y el corazón” from El Libro de los Abrazos.

Apeksha Harsh

Apeksha Harsh is a believer in the power of arts to initiate dialogue and transform learning. Apeksha has worked as a facilitator with the Warwick Writing Programme in Schools, Writing West Midlands, YMCA, including leading city schools & art galleries of Mumbai. She designs thematic-based workshops aimed at creating a safe space & allowing participants to reflect and connect with their personal, immediate worlds as well as the world beyond. Openness, honesty and creativity form the core of her work. With an MA in Writing from the University of Warwick, her work has appeared in Ambit, Under the Radar, Here Comes Everyone, Eunoia Review & Fusion and is forthcoming in The Heroines Anthology. Apeksha has performed spoken word & storytelling for Australian-based Word Travels' Story Week 2020, Mumbai Storytellers Society's Building Bridges Storytelling Festival 2024 and Postcard: A Literature Festival by Rotaract 3141 Mumbai. She shares her creative experiments on Instagram as @apswrites.

Fossil Dust

The way you live

with your million legs

with your million eggs

and your tiny cilia

The membranes and the mitochondria

that collide and collude

A microscopic meter of broken wing

and a string of saliva in compound eye – what a thing

the way you live –

in a rolled up touch of dirt

on the forgotten floor of an

abandoned poetry shack.

I had to break the door

Just to get in.

Published in Under the Radar by Nine Arches Press, 2017

María Mínguez Arias

María Mínguez Arias is the author of Nombrar el cuerpo (Editorial Egales/España; El BeiSmAn PrESs/USA; 2022) named among the Best of Queer Lit of 2022 in Spain, and of the International Latino Book Award winning novel Patricia sigue aquí (Editorial Egales, 2018). Her essays and short stories appear in anthologies and journals in the US, Spain, and Mexico. She is co-editor of #NiLocasNiSolas: narrativa escrita por mujeres en Estados Unidos (El BeiSmAn PrESs, 2023), and an active member of the #NewLatinoBoom, a movement of contemporary writing in Spanish out of the United States. With her work she aims to widen the space where literature exists, because in her opinion, it has been way too narrow for way too long. She works as Operations Director at feminist press Aunt Lute Books and lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with her partner and their two teens. You can find more about her work at www.mariaminguezarias.com

Te sigues yendo [excerpt]

Y en el sexto año de vivir en Estados Unidos el cuerpo dijo We are going to be ok. Así, en inglés, y le tuve que creer porque para entonces yo ya lo había dejado prácticamente todo para quedarme aquí con una mujer. Bueno, todo menos el idioma, que como una línea intravenosa me iba nutriendo de todas mis Españas: la recordada, la presente —extraña y alejada— y la soñada. Al idioma me agarré como pude, me hice traductora. Y el idioma, agradecido, aguantó estoicamente mientras iba perdiendo su lustre, hasta que por fin me senté a escribir con la disciplina que da la sed de años de irlo dejando por anteponer la vida a la escritura como práctica. Como el cuerpo no me dio para ejercer muchas cosas a la vez y ante la posibilidad siempre presente de morir joven, preferí morir sin haber escrito a hacerlo sin haber acompañado y criado hijes. Así que aquí estoy: viva, madre de dos adolescentes y trabajando en mi segundo manuscrito, con la línea intravenosa bien colocada sobre la vía venosa central, la que lleva al corazón que, cuando puede, todavía palpita en castellano. Pero sí, el cuerpo, clarividente como tantas otras veces, me lo dijo en inglés y a mí se me abrió el panorama de la existencia como si de repente me quitara de los ojos la venda de la experiencia migratoria y se hiciera la luz: I was, por fin, going to be ok.

You Keep Leaving [excerpt] translated by Robin Myers.

And in the sixth year of living in the United States, my body said We are going to be okay. Just like that, in English, and I had to believe it, because by then I’d left almost everything behind so I could stay here with a woman. Well, everything except for the language, which kept infusing me, like an IV drip, with all of my Spains: the one I remembered, the present one (strange, remote), and the one I’d hoped for and dreamed of. I clung to the language as best I could: I became a translator. And the language, grateful, hung in there stoically as it lost its shine, until I finally sat down to write with a discipline honed through years of thirst, years of pushing it aside and putting life before writing as practice. Since my body wouldn’t let me do very many things at once, and faced with the ever-present possibility of dying young, I preferred to die without having written over dying without having raised and accompanied children. So here I am: alive, the mother of two teenagers, working on my second manuscript, with the needle firmly inserted into my central IV line, the one that flows into the heart that still beats in Spanish when it can. But yes, clairvoyant as it’s been so many other times, the body spoke to me in English, expanding the panorama of my life as if it had suddenly yanked off the blindfold of migratory experience and let the light to flood in: I was – por fin – going to be okay.

Kwamise Fletcher (LadyK)

Kwamise Fletcher (LadyK) has discovered the healing power of spoken & written word art forms & uses them as therapy for the soul... LadyK's spoken word runs the gambit of politics, race, religion, self-expression, and current events. She is guided by multi-generations of maternal English teachers to create magic with her words. Her commitment to empowering her community through her words has led to many opportunities to perform at a variety of local African American & multi-cultural events in the Central Valley. She recently put out a spoken word album called "The Essence of LadyK". She is a member of The Loudmouth Poetry Slam team of the Central Valley & is now a nationally ranked Womxn of the World Poet. She has published work in Chapbooks, Collective Consciousness Vol. 3 and Say it Louder Vol. 2 as well as her own Chapbook, I Stand 10toes DOWN. LadyK attempts to inspire and motivate through the stories we tell, connecting with each other through the rhythms and melodies that move us.

Verbal Masterpiece

As a little black girl with a proclivity towards an elevated vocabulary and precise articulation...
meant that i was often times accused of having a desired propensity towards whiteness...God forbid I just have a love of books and words...
Who does she think she is using all them big words, you sound like a White Girl...
Because being black....sounds a particular way...
That little girl, hadn't yet become this BEAUTIFUL BLACK WOMAN standing before you today...
Who only now can I confidently say to my haters, check it...
I'm lyrically gifted, spiritually lifted...poetically inclined to run circles around the linguistically challenged...study long, study wrong when confronted by my MASTERFULLY crafted wordplay...meant to leave you mentally conflicted and debating my meanings...while I ARTFULLY saunter into my next, verbal masterpiece...

Karen Cecilia

Karen Cecilia is based in Glasgow, Scotland (as of August 2024). She has spent most of her life in New York City. She continues to work in the United Kingdom and The United States. Her work has been seen in NYC at 3LD, La Mama, HERE Arts Center, Dixon Place, Theater For The New City, Theatre Odyssey, Sarasota FL, The Coalescence Theatre, Illinois and The Firehouse Theatre, Richmond, VA and Jermyn Street Theater, London England. She is member of the Playwright/Directors Workshop at The Actors Studio, NYC. Her play Ivy Walls was one of four finalists and produced at the Second Annual Theatre Odyssey One Act Play Festival and has received Top Finalist Honors for the 2019 Ivoryton Women Playwright’s Initiative.

Karen has taught creative writing workshops in New York City, Denver, CO, China, Athens, Greece, London, England and Glasgow, Scotland. She continues to teach theater and writing at several colleges across New Jersey and New York City.

She is available for playwriting workshops. Contact: https://www.karencecilia.com/

Elbina Batala Rafizadeh

Elbina Batala Rafizadeh immigrated from the Philippines in 1964. A daughter of an Army Sergeant, her family settled in Salinas, California near lettuce fields and views of Sierra de Salinas hills. She now lives in Santa Cruz, California managing her garden and puppies. She is a retired public health nurse having worked in Watsonville California before she became a semi-retired academic published researcher, having earned her PhD in nursing science from UC Davis. She devotes her time to writing and photography. She is collaborating on forthcoming anthologies, “Remembering Al Mutannabi, a Portable Peace Protest” and sole editor of an anthology of contemplative poetry “Word and Image,” along with her first collection of poetry, "Keepers of the Malickong Rice Terrace" in the Fall/Winter 2024." Her poems are published in Santa Cruz-based journals, phren-z, Journal X, Porter Gulch Review, and Peace, Poetry, and Policy (Middlebury Institute, Monterey, CA.) She is active with Writers of Color-Santa Cruz County, Friends of the Santa Cruz Library, and Cal Poets teaching in the schools.

Who Am I?

Aunties speaking Illacano
bits and pieces coming back
because English is now
my adopted language.
Why did time let me forget?
I feel stuck between
two worlds, favoring neither,
Igorota Filipina,
Filipina-American.
Who am I?
What does the mirror
say back to me, my black
hair with streaks of gray.
What do my tired brown eyes,
held by subtle red capillaries,
say to me from the mirror?
Does it matter?
My mind says no,
but my heart yearns
for her identity revealed,
while I begin the last stage
of my life,
who am I?
Where did I come from?
Where am I going?
Am I going,
as I start to say goodbye?

Catherine Lee

Catherine Lee is a widely published neo-Beat who reads solo and performs with improvising musicians “on poem.” Among these were joint gigs (1986-87) with poet/hipster tedjoans, whose “Jazz is my religion” griot mantra continues to inspires her. Lots of Lee's multimedia projects are archived on Soundcloud and VIMEO. A more detailed artistic profile is located at GetCreativeSanAntonio and Lee can be reached at Jazz-Ovation-Inn.com.

Lee has served as a subject matter expert on jazz poetry annually since 2011 on KRTU-FM during April (National Poetry Month and International Jazz Appreciation Month). She received San Antonio city funding in 2015 to present with musician Cecil R. Carter a workshop for poets on how to read poetry with musicians. In 2021 and 2024 Lee also received city funding to develop dramatic scripts through Zoom-recorded rehearsals with senior citizen actor/readers. “Mentor Wonders” was published in 2022 and “Maverick Secrets: Decoding Early TV Westerns” is forthcoming in 2024.

Vanessa Chica Ferreira

Vanessa Chica Ferreira (she/her) is a multifaceted force in the cultural landscape of New York City. As an educator, poet, and playwright, she channels her creativity into thought-provoking works that challenge societal norms and invite you to be vulnerable.

Vanessa co-wrote the play “Live Big Girl,” which captivated audiences at esteemed venues such as The National Black Theatre, The Tank, and BAAD. This bold exploration of body positivity and fat activism enjoyed sold-out performances and left a lasting impact with its powerful message. Vanessa’s exceptional contributions to the arts earned her the 2023 Bronx Cultural Visions Grant, supported by the Howard Gilman Foundation. This grant facilitated the production of her recent poetic play, “Live Big Girl: A Chair That Fits,” which debuted in April 2024 at Lehman College. The play aims to deconstruct and reimagine the concept of fat, offering audiences a fresh perspective on body image.

In addition to her theatrical work, Vanessa facilitates “The Unlearning Series” writing workshops with NAAFA (National Association to Advance Fat Acceptance). She also founded theWORDbox, a two-year online project that fostered community through writing and editing workshops and resource sharing. Vanessa has Vanessa's written works reflect her dedication to exploring the human experience. Her pieces can be found in publications such as Snapdragon: A Journal of Art and Healing, Essential Voices: A COVID-19 Anthology, The BX Files: Contemporary Poetry from the Bronx Anthology, The Abuela Stories Project, The Acentos Review, and the Great Weather for Media anthology.

To delve deeper into Vanessa Chica’s creative universe, please visit www.VanessaChica.com

Egg

I found you this morning Mamá

On the tip of my tongue

In the taste of an egg over seasoned with garlic

You were there Mamá

I ran my tongue slowly across my teeth,

The inside of my cheeks

Looking for more of you

Mother's Lace

Our connection

Loose fringes at the seams

We weren’t always good at mending

We, the sweet lace of Abuelita’s oil-stained curtains

Paper-thin, holding on, despite the grease

Your departure

This unfair unraveling is only but a crinkle

The sun (you) still shines

Maria Mejorado

Maria Mejorado’s family migrated from Texas pursuing work in the abundant agricultural fields of California, in hopes of a better life. Maria was born and raised in Sanger, a small agricultural town in the Central San Joaquin Valley.

Coming of age during President Johnson’s War on Poverty, the United Farmworkers Union and the Women’s Liberation Movement played a significant role in the trajectory of Maria’s life, education and career. She was the first in her family to earn a bachelor’s degree. St. Mary’s College influenced her lifelong passion of helping the disadvantaged to take advantage of program offerings in colleges and universities she represented. She obtained a Master’s degree from Harvard’s Graduate School of Education and a Ph.D. from UC Davis.

Maria retired as an Assistant Professor in the College of Education at CSU Sacramento. In 2020 she began her journey as a writer. Publications include: Dear Sun Maiden (2021); She Controlled Us with Her Eyes (2022); Grapes of Hope: Lessons Learned Picking Grapes (2023); and Retablo: A Movie’s Role in Coming of Age (Expected December, 2024). Maria is working on a memoir currently titled: The Making of a Matriarch – A Daughter’s Story of Family Love, Loss and Coming of Age.

Through her consulting company, In Your Corner, Dr. Mejorado is available as a motivational speaker.

She Controlled Us with Her Eyes

She controlled us with her eyes

To not bring attention to herself,

As she molded us into appreciative

Guests and grateful children,

She had to learn to be at age ten When her own mother died.

Dark expressive eyes outlined,

By long and thick eyelashes that burned while cooking, said “yes or no,” but mostly no when we

Looked in her direction.

Hosts insisted "don't look at your Mom, enjoy more Treats."

School was her heart's desire,

But without proper attire,

"Next year Mija" never came.

Education became her dream.

A high school diploma for all her children to stay out of "El Santo Sol."

Mom had curative powers.

Could lower a fever

With an egg in her hand and a prayer on her lips.

A child's pee poured over hot bricks healed a child’s Broken limb.

Work always welcomed

To feed, clothe and shelter her seven children.

Five-Hundred pounds of cotton she picked daily; hundreds of

Trays of grapes spread and turned into Sun Maiden

Raisins fine.

Mom had style.

"Bueno, bonito y barato" in dress.

Later years elegantly in jeans she lived.

Her last appearance she would've approved.

Well heeled, coiffed and dressed to the nines for her final appeal.

The day after her 95th birthday, had she lived another five,

Sat a tiny bundle of bright orange and yellow feathers behind an Easter lily, as I wrote these lines, fluttered into tree branches, then away.

Mom's way to ensure she is not forgotten.

Círculo de poetas & Writers

A community of diverse poets & writers supporting the literary arts