Red wine that punctures the skin

Achiote PressMil gracias to Craig, Jen & Len of Achiote Press for giving me the chance to read alongside my wife, finally meet and hear the dope work of Bec, having Ver share with me the tale of the Tongans and to contribute to the next Achiote Seeds. Let’s just say that there is no shortage of inspiration right now and I couldn’t be happier with life and my poetry.

SET LIST
– Dawn En Nueva Yo
– Menagerie
– After Working The Late Shift Again, A Young Boricua On Times Square
Composes a Response To a White Co-Worker Concerning The Myth of Racism
– My Father, A Cabdriver, Chimes In With A Few Words of His Own on The
Myth of Racism as He Drives by Times Square
– Being Don Quixote by Rich Villar
– an atlas of nationalism
– Sonnet for the Lexington Avenue Express—Mt Eden Ave Stop
– Dedication

Extra Notes
Dawn is composed of lines from Poeta En San Francisco (you can see a first draft here. At the time I posted it I didn’t think it would become a poem but asi es la vida.)

Menagerie is gonna work its way back into my readings.

Since Rich couldn’t be in the Bay, I decided to bring some of his special wepa-ness to the mix. Barbara also read a few of his pieces as well.

This reading also marks the first time I read out of my new self-produced chapbook “Anywhere Avenue” which you will be hearing more about shortly.

Palabra.

Achiote Seeds
from L to R: Jennifer Reimer, Craig Perez, Barbara Jane Reyes, Oscar Bermeo, Veronica Montes, Rebecca Mabanglo-Mayor & Todd Melicker

I’m breathin in/I’m breathin out

Last night’s IWL reading was all kinds of wonderful. Different voices, different styles, maximum effort with an audience full of attentive listeners. It was my first time reading at Intersection for the Arts and lemme say, as both a reader and an audience member, its a dope space for poetry.

When I walked in the door they told me I was gonna be the first reader of the night which (for some strange reason) did not come as a surprise.

SET LIST
– Sepia
– Revelation & Anywhere Avenue
– Dedication
РCanto del Ni̱o Pobre
– After Working The Late Shift Again, A Young Boricua On Times Square
Composes a Response To a White Co-Worker Concerning The Myth of Racism
– My Father, A Cabdriver, Chimes In With A Few Words of His Own on The
Myth of Racism as He Drives by Times Square
– Sonnet for the Lexington Avenue Express—Mt Eden Ave Stop

Much newness present here with five of the seven poems being read for the first time and all of these poems written in the last three weeks.

Full disclosure time… Sepia was written as part of a collaborative writing exercise at one of the first IWL workshops. The piece read last night is a highly edited version of the lines I contributed. Dedication is a translation exercise which I was playing around with over a month ago but it didn’t come together until just yesterday afternoon. This piece is also in speed-edit mode thanks to the input of my amazing wife who also helped give shape to Sepia in record time.

All of this bodes very well for Sunday’s Achiote Press reading where I will be reading alongside some fly poetas and unveil a surprise or two. Ding- The Nebulous Bell!

More info on the Achiote Press reading at Craig’s blog or you can download a PDF flyer here.

Ghost in the Machine

The reading at the Mission Cultural Center was amazing! It’s been more than a year since I have had more than 10 minutes to do mah thing and I made sure to take advantage of the longer feature time.

SET LIST

In the “Put Up O Shut Up” Dept: Recent posts regarding form have definitely inspired me to embrace the décima and sonnet even though I didn’t follow the correct rhyme scheme for Décima del Pobre Niño so have since renamed it Canto pare el Niño Pobre. On the flip side, Sonnet for the #4 Line is in pentameter and does follow a very classic formula. Many thanks again to Jack Agüeros’s Sonnets from the Puerto Rican for helping me to understand and engage the sonnet in a more personal way.

In the “New Shit!” Dept: I wrote both the sonnet and the décima only a few hours before the feature. A fact I didn’t share at the reading cuz I was short on time and while it is cool to bring the new hotness announcing it can sometimes be a crutch and, besides, to this audience just about everything I read was New Shit.

In the “Subtle Segue Way” Dept: Speaking of audience, I have been thinking a bit about just how much I have audience in my head when I write.

Straight up– Yes, I do think about audience when I write because one of my poetic concerns is bringing poetry to as many different communities as possible. However, I do NOT write thinking that I want to please any specific community since I know that will trigger a very harsh inner editor that will not allow me to write anything that challenges me or my “audience.”

The in-between is this apparition of an audience whose faces I can sort of make out but can’t quite make out. This “audience” shifts as I write line to line and also morphs from reading to reading allowing me to always try to come up with New Shit while still working out the kinks from old pieces.

Am I thinking about this way too much? Maybe. I have heard of poets who claim to write with no audience in mind and if that is what works for them then more power to em but I gotta work with what drives me so there’s that.

Mad love to all the poetas of the evening (a true highlight was the work, and conviction, of Yosimar Reyes) and Paul Flores for bringing us all together.

“Papel, Ima tell ya a story”

* Piri Thomas’s succinct explanation of his writing ‘process’

Here is the breakdown from last week’s Kearny Street Workshop reading:
-A Personal History and Reflection on Sixty Years in Oakland from the Reverend JT (Excerpt)
-Random Acts of Storytelling: Overheard on BART
-an atlas of nationalism
-And God said “Vaya” (Excerpt)

I would have loved to throw in a cover piece but we were only given 6-8 minutes and I did not want to be a mic hog. This reading was a little bit more stressful than the last KSW reading since most of the readers dropped down pure fiction work and I had a mix of different work that I contributed to the chapbook and wanted to give a little shine to all the pieces.

You can find an early version of Reverend JT’s story here and make no mistake: It is his story. I was just lucky enough to have him share it with me. Even though I only read about two minutes of it, his story was the piece that I think most people really vibed with.

More appropriation as the Random Acts of Storytelling was a trio of snippets that I have overheard (or heard secondhand) while traveling through the Bay’s transit system.

The real challenge of the night was figuring out how to deliver atlas (unformatted first draft- here). A poem that I am really happy with but was unsure on how to deliver it or, more honestly stated, scared that the audience would not understand it. I don’t think I would have been so scared if I was being given say 12 minutes or so of mic time which just goes to show what a diva I have become. ;-)
Dense with purposefully abbreviated, disruptive syntax from an unclear, unreliable narrator, it is a challenging poem to present and I think I pulled it off. Maybe. I did end it with a firm and definitive “ThankYou” ala Willie Perdomo. So I am now four-for-four on today’s appropriation checklist.

And God said “Vaya” is actually the last line of Miguel Piñero’s Genesis According to San Miguelito (5-for-5) but the rest of the piece is all me and a pretty good start to my creative non-fiction career. A bit of a shout out as well to Miguel Algarin as his poetic challenge of a poet detailing his burial has been gnawing at me for a long time and while I haven’t figured it out in poetic form yet, I have figured some of it out in prose with this piece. Mind you, it’s not really me in the piece but it is very close to me. I didn’t read the excerpt that appears in the chapbook but instead went into a middle part where my character laments as to what has gone so wrong in the Bronx he remembers from his youth. And let me tell you, I don’t think I have ever read my writing with a genuine sustained sadness in my voice until now probably cuz I have never set out with the intent to be sad. Serious, yes. Somber, yes. Sad, no. Mostly cuz I think if I had set out to write something like this I would have failed miserably, very happy to report that this is not the case here.

Mad shouts to KSW, fearless editor Thy Tran and all my fellow workshoppers for putting together a dope ass chapbook.

All photos courtesy of Jay Jao

Can’t forget./We only get what we give.

we don’t have to set the way back machine too far, just to last week, where – as rich pointed out – we see yo boy from da bronx back on the mic on the second tuesday of the month with the obvious difference being that its happenin in califas (san fran’s mission district, to be precise) and i am not hostin but rather one of the features. the event is the presentation of kearny street workshop’s latest chapbook Same Time, Same Place or it could be Same Place, Same Time (depends on which edition you got) which is cool considering that the summer workshop series which spawned the poems also threw my poetic perspective for a bit of a loop, the good ‘shake yo ass up’ type loop.

i am very happy to say that i had a damn good time presentin the new (and not so new) poems that the workshop brought to the forefront. honestly, i just dont think that there is enough or can never be enough fun on the mic. as an audience member, i had plenty nuff fun hearing my compatriots’ work and seeing our facilitator, the right reverend truong tran, speak on the class.

the blog archives say its been a minute since i did this, so hear goes the rundown:
– Homeboys Beatjuggling Down The Westside Highway by John Rodriguez
– both a place and a scare-word
– About B-Boys in the Boogie Down
– Poem written to the Jimmy Castor Bunch’s “It’s Just Begun”

i only had seven minutes of mic time so thats all i could squeeze in but its a pretty good representation of both time and place (peep the chapbook title!) as i wanted to cover as many bases as i could. and before i forget, much props to Anthem Salgado for not only comin to the reading but also providing the voice to the Jimmy Castor lyrics in the last poem in a very impromptu duet. (for more pics, hit up derek chung’s web site right here)

now lets set the time machine to the future: come january there will be another KSW reading. this one focusing around the creative non-fiction class that i just finished. right now, i am still working on the story but its very close to a finale which has me quite relieved cuz i didnt think i could write a short story worth a fuck. i mean, i kinda knew i could write something but i didnt think it had these kinda legs. i may also be making another appearance doin some poetry up in the mission soon. nothing solid yet but featuring tends to generate its own momentum, a nice roller coaster ride that i dont plan on agitatin but also aint shyin away from.

and we’ll close it out with a view on the current which is that i’m about 1/3 through Robert Caro’s “The Power Broker” an intense read on the life and accomplishments of Robert Moses. i picked it up solely to get a historical perspective on the building of the cross bronx expressway and its immediate effects on the bronx but am instead being schooled on how this one man shaped all of new york city. i am still 400 pages away from the bronx but getting closer and with that i am out cuz i got two pumpkin pies in the oven!

love ya like if i baked ya mahself!