Tony Aldarondo
Tony Aldarondo is a Poet and Actor and proud poppa of two kids. He is in numerous anthologies and has performed theater and poetry in venues from L.A. to the Bay. He has a full length poetry collection coming out in 2021.
Paul Aponte
Paul Aponte is a Chicano Poet from Sacramento. He is a member of the writers groups Escritores del Nuevo Sol (Writers Of The New Sun) and also Círculo. He has been published in the Tecolote Press Anthology Poetry In Flight, Sacramento Poetry Center's quarterly Poetry Now, Un Canto De Amor A Gabriel Garcia Márquez (a publication from the country of Chile containing poems from around the world with 31 countries represented), in the Anthology Soñadores - We Came To Dream, in La Bloga - a Los Angeles online publication, and in the Los Angeles Review Volume 20 - Fall 2016. He was also the editor's choice in the online journal Convergence.
CÍRCULO
En la noche quieta
oigo sus voces.
Dicen secretos,
rompen mitos,
y desgarran barreras.
Sonidos de papeleo
y lapiceros de ideas
construyen floricanto en mi mente.
Su tenor me tiene enamorado.
Un círculo de voces
que penetran mi ser.
Reflejo de mis recuerdos.
Cultura para mi alma
burbujeando
en
historias
y
poesía.
-.-
In the silent night
I hear their voices.
They tell secrets,
tear myths,
and break down barriers.
Sounds of shuffling paper
and pencil driven ideas
construct "flower & song" in my mind.
I am enamored of its existence.
A circle of voices
that penetrates my being.
Reflection of my memories.
Culture for my soul
bubbling
into
stories
and
poetry.
Paul Aponte, October 19th, 2018©
Lucha Corpi
Born in México, Lucha Corpi came to Berkeley as a student wife in 1964. She is the author of two collections of poetry: Palabras de mediodía/Noon Words and Variaciones sobre una tempestad/Variations on a Storm (Spanish with English translations by Catherine Rodríguez Nieto); two bilingual children’s books: Where Fireflies Dance/Ahí, donde bailan las luciérnagas and The Triple Banana Split Boy/El niño goloso; six novels, four of which feature Chicana detective Gloria Damasco: Eulogy for a Brown Angel, Cactus Blood, Black Widow’s Wardrobe, and Death at Solstice; Confessions of a Book Burner: Personal Essays and Stories issued in 2014. She has been the recipient of numerous awards, including a National Endowment for the Arts and an Oakland Cultural Arts fellowship, PEN-Oakland Josephine Miles and Multicultural Publishers Exchange Literary Awards; Latino and International Latino Book Awards for her crime fiction. A retired teacher, she resides in Oakland, California.
Berkeley Blues
II
A Beatriz Pesquera y Roberta Orona
Entre mis ojos y la luna había
365 noches de insomnio
Una pequeña grieta en el estómago
El dolor de saberlo a él ajeno
El haz luminoso de una estrella
Una banda de mapaches desvelados
Saqueando las arcas del basurero
Y mi vecino delirante
que empapado de mezcalina
a medianoche corría por la calle
sin más defensa en contra de la luna llena
que un par de calcetines rotos
y la camisa de fuerza.
Entre mis oídos y la luna
ascendía la rasposa melancolía de Lady Day
Una nota repleta de espanto
Y el maullido del gato en celo
que ofrecía sus responsos de recién nacido
por la fé nuestra que agonizaba
entre los arrozales de la Indochina
en las aulas de San Francisco y Berkeley
y en las barriadas de Atlanta y Chicago
Los Angeles y Dallas.
Entre mis labios y la luna
se colaba el calor húmedo de otro otoño
Una brizna de azul de medianoche
que la memoria iba transformando ya
en polvo de oro
El olor de un petardo de gas
El dolor mudo del hambre
entre pecho y espalda
Y todos aquellos versos
escritos con la saqueada ortografía del silencio
en las últimas trincheras del instinto.
Entre aquella noche de octubre y la luna
no existía
ni Marx ni Lenín
ni la lucha armada
ni la revolución interrumpida
que nos dejara polvo y cansancio
exilio y desengaño
No éramos latinos ni chicanos
ni estudiantes en una institución
que apenas si nos toleraba.
Éramos gotas dormidas en el cubo del tiempo,
nombres acurrucados en los intersticios
de un sueño
Y entrábamos al poema
como se entra a un cetario
con los ojos líquidos de la memoria
a buscar entre fósiles de días nonatos
la geoetnología del planeta
la ecología cultural de la raza,
a beber un poco de intimidad y muerte
del remanso quieto de la nostalgia.
© Lucha Corpi
Berkeley Bllues
II
A Beatriz Pesquera y Roberta Orona
Between my eyes and the moon there were
365 nights of insomnia
A little crack in my stomach
The pain of knowing he belonged to someone else
The ray of light from a star
A band of wakeful raccoons
raiding the garbageman’s treasure chests
And my delirious neighbor
running at midnight along the street
drenched in mescaline
with no more defense against the full moon
than a pair of torn socks
and a straitjacket.
Between my ears and the moon
the hoarse melancholy of Lady Day
One terror-filled note
And the yowl of a cat in heat
a newborn’s requiem squall
for our faith as it lay agonizing
among the rice paddies in Indochina
in the classrooms in San Francisco and Berkeley
and in the ‘hoods of Atlanta and Chicago
Los Angeles and Dallas.
Between my lips and the moon
the moist warmth of another autumn
A strand of midnight blue
already being transformed by memory
into gold dust
The putrid smell of a gas canister
and the mute pain of hunger
between breast and back
And all those poems
written in the looted orthography of silence
in the last trenches of instinct.
Between that October night and the moon
there was no
Marx, no Lenin
no armed conflict
no interrupted revolution
to leave us with dust and exhaustion
exile and disillusion.
We weren’t latinos or chicanos
or students in an institution
that barely tolerated us.
We were drops of liquid asleep in the cube of time,
names nestled in the crannies
of a dream
And we entered the poem
as one enters the ocean where whales are breeding,
our eyes streaming with memory,
to look among the fossils of unborn days
for the geoethnology of the planet
the cultural ecology of the race,
to sip intimacy and death
from the quiet pool of nostalgia.
© Catherine Rodríguez-Nieto
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Odilia Galván Rodríguez
ODILIA GALVÁN RODRÍGUEZ is a poet, writer, editor, and activist. She is the author of six volumes of poetry. Her latest, The Color of Light, (FlowerSong Books, 2019) is an extensive collection of chronicles and poetry honoring the Mexica (Aztec) and Orisha (Yorùbá) Energies, which she worked on during her time living in Cuba and Mexico. Also, along with the late Francisco X. Alarcón, she edited the award-winning anthology Poetry of Resistance: Voices for Social Justice (University of Arizona Press, 2016). Galván Rodríguez has worked as an editor for various print media such as Matrix Women’s News Magazine, Community Mural’s Magazine, and Tricontinental Magazine in Havana, Cuba. She is currently the editor of Cloud Women’s Quarterly Journal online and facilitates creative writing workshops nationally. As an activist she’s worked for the United Farm Workers of America, AFL-CIO and the East Bay Institute for Urban Arts, has served on numerous boards and commissions, and is currently active in women’s organizations whose mission it is to educate around environmental justice issues and disseminate an indigenous worldview regarding the earth and people’s custodial relationship to it.
The Colorado River
is d(r)ying
she's hardly reached
the ocean
in two long decades
except in trickles
in dribs and drabs
a pulse flow of water
twenty years of longing
twenty years of reaching
twenty years of dreaming
to bloom all the way out
to be kissed and embraced by the waves
to mix with the salty sea that is her Mother
Ocean
Red river’s damp arms extend out
out as far as she can go are branches outstretched
her fingers always wanting to lengthen further
to go where she'd always gone before since time before
time immemorial
to do what she'd always done to arrive there
Copyright © 2019 Odilia Galván Rodríguez.
All Rights Reserved.
