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.
Susana Praver-Pérez
Susana Praver-Pérez is a poet, visual artist, and editor. A former Physician Assistant and Associate Medical Director at La Clinica de la Raza in Oakland, California, Susana left medicine in 2021 after four decades of community service, to pursue her passion for poetry and art on a full-time basis . She currently serves as an Assistant Editor at “Poets Reading the News” journal.
Susana studied Creative Writing at Berkeley City College, Naropa Institute, U.C. Berkeley’s “Poetry for the People”, countless community-based classes, and is an alumna of both Macondo and Las Dos Brujas Writers’ Workshops.
Her first full-length book of poetry Hurricanes, Love Affairs, and Other Disasters received the PEN Oakland Josephine Miles Award for Excellence in Literature (2022). Her second full-length collection Return Against the Flow, published by Black Lawrence Press in 2024, was chosen by both Ms. Magazine and NYU’s Latinx Project as one of their top 30+ poetry picks for the year.
Susana divides her time between Oakland, California and San Juan, Puerto Rico and writes through the lens formed in the liminal space between languages, cultures, and geographies.
website: www.susanapraverperez.com
BEAUTY
I was born with a birthmark
shaped like Borinquen,
a brown island floating on the sea
of my belly,
a curiosity under my fingertips.
My mother always called my birthmark
a beauty mark,
turned it from stigma
to stunning.
When I was ten,
a doctor convinced my parents
this assemblage of melanin
could endanger my future.
He cut the small map
from my body,
stitched edges together,
indurated, upended, and pink.
With time, the scar became smooth
as sea glass,
soft and pliable, stretching wide
as I grew.
By the time I turned twenty-two,
the scar embodied
the shape of Borinquen,
suture marks suggesting
surrounding islands:
Vieques, Culebra, Mona,
Palomino, Icacos, and more—
the entire Puerto Rican archipelago
etched again in my flesh.
Natalia Rivas
Natalia Rivas states, "I’m a 73 year old renewng her love of poetry and art. I had interest in poetry since high school and early adult hood, as the saying goes “life happened”, I was busy with kids, addiction, returning to school, a career in chemical dependency. When I retired, around the start of COVID, I tried other things but always returned to writing. I create atmosphere and character my poem. I tell a story. Sometimes I write poems of political urgency. Other times I like to express my mental health issues, I like to play with words that have cosmic themes.
I’ve been studying Aztec philosophy, the Mexican conflict 1910, I believe the results of that war created dysfunction in the well being of the Chicano in many ways. I chose to say I’m indigenous of Mexican desent. I also have interest on the mystical side of our people and fully believe the the. Sacred teotol."
Elva Trevino Hart
Elva Trevino Hart is the author of Barefoot Heart: Stories of a Migrant Child and Simpaticas: San Miguel Stories.
Writing Sample:
I am nobody. And my story is the same as a million others. Poor. Mexican-American. Female child. We all look alike: dirty feet, brown skin, downcast eyes.
You have seen us, if you have driven through south Texas on your way to Mexico. We are there -- walking barefoot by the side of the road. During harvest time, there are fewer of us -- we are with our families in the fields.
Some of us grow up and move to the cities. We work downtown and speak perfect English. Others of us stay. I don't know which is better.
Sometimes we move to places where people don't know. They don't know that underneath the wool crepe suit is a brown, barefoot little girl like me. Behind the University-speak is a whole magic world in Spanish. We play the game well and it looks like we are happy. Sure, we're happy.
But then, when we're flipping through radio stations on the way to the office, we get to the Mexican station -- and they're playing our favorite corrido. It makes us long for mamacita, for tortillas, for the comadres and the tias, for dancing rancheras in the hot, sweaty night under the stars at the fiesta.
Then the nine-to-five life seems dry as a stone and without a soul.
"How did I get here?" we ask.
I'll tell you.
Colleen Shoshana McKee
Colleen Shoshana McKee grew up in the Ozarks, speaking a mix of “Black English” and Yiddish in the middle of the woods. She later moved to St. Louis, then Oakland, and most recently, Santa Clara, where she lives with three adults, two toddlers, and two pet snails. Somehow, she still manages to get some writing done.
She is the author of six collections of poetry, memoir, and fiction. Her most recent collection, Routine Bloodwork, was a finalist for the Charlotte Mew Award from Headmistress Press, a women’s press. Colleen Shoshana teaches creative writing and works as an editor. She also teaches English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESL), and US Citizenship Interview/Test preparation. https://www.colleenshoshanamckee.com/
Humans Suck
I see the words forgive yourself
stenciled 3 times on my street,
40th, on my way
to the train.
I tap them lightly with my cane each morning,
hit them heavy limping home at dusk.
forgive yourself flashes in the streetlights in the rain
reflected in the junction box
on the corner of Martin Luther King.
Someone’s stenciled HUMANS SUCK
a few times on 40th—probably someone else—
HUMANS SUCK is smudged
glopped in what looks to be blistering tar
bubbled up from some Oakland hellmouth.
I like the two together:
Forgive yourself because
you’re human. Humans suck.
forgive yourself is faded,
HUMANS SUCK more steadfast
despite the angry smear.
But I see forgive
burnished on the sidewalk
faint as old nickels and pennies.
It shows up better in the rain.
I see the words I need at my feet.
2.
This isn’t the first time. Nine years ago,
just before I left St. Louis,
someone wrote FO GIVE YO SELF
small, brushed green
on a gutter on South Grand
around the corner from where we lived.
First saw it one frigid dawn
on the way to the bus.
It was a few months
after my best friend killed herself.
All through the ice, the long thaw,
the brief spring,
FO GIVE YO SELF
multiplied, the words
bigger, blacker,
sprayed at eye level
on stolid brick buildings
along South Grand.
I still saw my sweetheart’s sexy ghost
strutting down Grand in striped bellbottoms, smoking
or giving me the stink eye, sometimes
just sticking out her tongue.
One summer dusk, looming over the highway,
seven stories up and ten feet tall,
FO GIVE YO SELF
outlined in gold,
bold on a gutted warehouse,
a swaying thing of splinters,
more wind than wood,
teetering over the Mississippi River.
Who risked their lives to write it?
Every time I see these words,
small or monumental,
I do forgive myself,
if only for that moment,
and bless the ones
who needed
to write it
and did.
I can walk
these cracked and crumbling cities
knowing someone
is blessing us all,
every wretched one of us,
no matter what we’ve done
or failed to do.
Claudia Meléndez Salinas
Claudia Meléndez Salinas is the co-founder of Voices of Monterey Bay, an online news magazine for California's Central Coast. In 2021 she was a co-recipient of the Ralph B. Atkinson Award for Civil Liberties by the Northern California ACLU Monterey Chapter. Her first book, "A Fighting Chance," was published by Arte Público Press, and her poems have been published in Journal X, LatinoLiteratures, and La Raíz Magazine.
23 and Me
for Víctor
I carry a nopal on my forehead
generous fruit of this land
medicinal, nutritious, thorny
patriotically green and insurgent
arrogant and life-giving
I carry a nopal on my forehead
undeniable sign of my origin
Mixteca, Cochimí, Miwok
Sixty percent Tenochtitlan
Thirty percent Isola d’Elba
I carry a nopal on my forehead
The cactus that told Nahuatlacas
They had arrived home
to the lake of abundance
of eagles and snakes
a place for hunting and rest
That ironic nopal paints my face
the color of earth, of clay, of copal,
of corn and squash blossom,
of epazotle and huazontle,
of nochtli and etl,
of cacahuatl, chocolatl,
guajolotl and aukatl.
Nopal of Zacapoaxclas defeating the French
of Tlaxcaltecas making alliances with Cortez
of Malintzi giving birth to Martin
of Coyolxauhqui hunting Coatlicue
Nopal of talavera, of barro negro
of colonial furniture and Santa Clara’s candies
of Papantla flying pole dancers
of Taxco silversmiths
of Yancuictlapan weavers
Opuntia ficus-indica
giver of life
of protein, calcium and iron
of soups and salads
antioxidant, anti-inflammatory
armor against diabetes
machete against cancer
This nopal on my forehead
it’s banner
it’s volcano
it’s eagle and it’s pride
Aztlán, Hah-nu-nah
Refuge of egrets, Turtle Island
registry into the Navajo, Luiseño, and Tsimsian nations
sustenance for our heirs
to combat droughts and famine
wars and conquest
swords and Bibles
for centuries to come
and a few millennia more.
Puebla, Mexico, July 2018
María T. Balogh
María T. Balogh is a multilingual, bicultural poet, fiction writer, performing Caribbean folkloric dancer, and educator. She has a book of poetry in Spanish by Ediciones Torremozas, a Spanish publisher, and a collection of poetry and fiction in English by Cool Way Press. Her fiction and poetry have been published in several different journals from the USA and South America. She has been all over and done just about everything, including building rural aqueducts while in the Peace Corps. She is now retired as a Teaching Professor Emerita from the University of Missouri St Louis.
En español: Biografía Breve
Nació en Barranquilla, y creció entre Santa Marta y Barranquilla, Colombia. Vino a los Estados Unidos en los 80s donde ha vivido desde entonces, excepto por un intervalo de año y medio en los 90s. Posee una maestría con doble especialización en español y la enseñanza del inglés como segunda lengua y además una Maestría en Artes Finas — escritura creativa. Se ha desempeñado como profesora de español o de inglés en universidades y escuelas secundarias tanto en Colombia como en Estados Unidos. Actualmente está jubilada y es profesora Emérita de español en la Universidad de Missouri, St. Louis.
Ode to the Ñ
misunderstood
almost lost
in attempts
to universalize
alphabets
neglected
by language learners
the Ñ lives on
relentless
imperious
A sublime N
with a twisted crown
a disdainful smile
at its very top
that creates phonetic
and semantic differences
reigning over words
that would not
be the same
without it
The word mañana
how monotonous
with consecutive, unromantic Ns
Oh, Ñ, without you
my mother’s nickname, Oño
would be the same
as Yoko’s surname
Countless of other names
would simply not exist
Núñez, Nariño, Saldaña…
A ñame, essential ingredient
of Caribbean cuisines
would become a non-exotic
and boring root vegetable
The Ñ distinguishes
ano & año
anus from year
cana & caña
white hair from sugar cane
cono & coño
cone from a vulgar expletive
pena & peña
sorrow from rock
una & uña
one female & fingernail
sueno & sueño
I make a sound from I dream
Oh, Ñ my Ñ
stay strong
don’t make me
long for you
añorarte
I want to teach you
enseñarte
I want to use you
with loving care
con cariño
I want to bathe in you
bañarme en ti
I want the voluptuous center of my tongue
not just the insignificant tip
touching the roof of my mouth
in its kissing embrace
necessary to produce your sound
continue to survive, and persevere
Oh, my Ñ
© María T. Balogh
Joe Navarro
Joe Navarro is a Literary Vato Loco, creative writer, teacher, parent, grandparent and has been an activist for human rights, political rights, and social justice. His writing is inspired by people’s struggles for human dignity, familia, democracy, peace, and preserving our Mother Earth. He has authored seven chapbooks of poetry, has been included in eight literary anthologies and journals, including three educational publications. Joe can be reached at poetajoe@yahoo.com.
Abuelo y Mamá
El padre de mi mamá
Mi abuelo, grandfather
Spoke with me
Sin palabras, with his eyes
He had centuries
Within him, waiting to speak
Told my mamá he is Azteca
She believed him, at least
That’s what she told me
Never felt like a foreigner
In this hemisphere
Loathed the attitudes of settlers
Who displaced drum beats and
Belonging songs that Abuelo
Preserved in his dreams
Passing them along
In beats of our hearts
Singing praises of our ancestors
That visit us in our unconscious dreams
She shared my abuelo’s
Ancestral dreams with me, too
© 2021 Joe Navarro
