El callar no es no haber qué decir, sino no caber en las voces lo mucho que hay que decir.
- Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, Respuesta de la poetisa a la muy ilustre Sor Filotea de la Cruz
¡Huelga! Support the Janitors!
Janitors in Houston walked out of work this week, fighting for contracts with six of the largest cleaning companies in Houston. The janitors work part time for $5.30 an hour and no health benifits. The majority are Latinas. No one can live on those wages. Nadie puede vivir bien ganando tan poco en la ciudad de Houston. To find out more about what's going on, go to the Houston Justice for Janitors site. O en español, hay información aquí.The Chronicle seems to be doing their best printing anti-union op-eds and letters from anti-union folks. Desde luego, lo que se cuenta en los periodicos hispanos es todo lo opuesto. Una ciudad sumamente dividida.
There are daily picket lines and a big march this Saturday in the Galleria. Also, they are collecting food for the huelguistas. Read this letter to supporters on Indymedia to get all the details on what you can do to support.
Embody this!
Lorna Dee Cervantes spoke at the U of H tonight about: free poems, blogging a poem a day for each death in Iraq, her five books in one Drive, a love a joy a long time coming, organizing stem cells in Taiwan for Alfred Arteaga’s heart, Chumash rebone and the foundation for our adobe cardboard palacios, the vagina, the vulva, the smell of poetry experience, the connection between the dead and the living, streetside tough cholas building a present future, a long time coming, people intimidated by books, finding ways to bridge the brecha, viva la raza cuz my legs are open, m’ija please, las esas, la malinche providing more counterrevolutionary dreams, thy prick, thy virgin, the truth of it, her muscular thighs, heathen dreams not making good catholic girls.Someone mentioned these shoulders were to stand on. I'll stand on the ground. Let the elders breathe a little.
Then in the kind of rush that comes in a parking lot streetlight:
Mi pasión, que my life's just fast enough, kay see you in the blogosférico, a half a million poems and counting for each wartime corpse, a light alight sixties movement politics, a tree to sit in and watch the beatings, no, my granpa was that gringo, i thought, do penance, fuck, a way to poetry through meetings, internet spreadsheets, conference calls, rejection, always striving, always más, maybe the problem’s taught in school, so life is unlearning or to try, don't think so much, you said, slow down, you said, thick words and infatuation, the meaning an organizing tool, language these words you are in love with words, gracias, isn't my poem, this one is yours, one for our legs kicked open in glee, for the black boy behind me giggling at the smell of your vulva, for small mounds of pecho and nipples, striving with arms in the air, with banging body blues, with running, with not caring about microphones because this hair made flow lucid, because politics isn’t over there, to be involved in again, here now in this room, in this ciberespacio, you reading this line, to breathe for it. for finding a way to my body, to embody.
Where he started is where he finishes.
Freddy Fender is dead.Some biographical info in the Austin paper. Details from the funeral services in his hometown in San Benito here and here.
Painting by Charles Miller.
El odio
No he nacido para compartir el odio, sino el amor.
- Antígona
Ya no me pidas que la odie como tú la odias. No voy a compartir tu odio, sino el amor.
- Antígona
Ya no me pidas que la odie como tú la odias. No voy a compartir tu odio, sino el amor.
Stop the Invasion
Mike Davis strikes back.
What few people -- at least, outside of Mexico -- have bothered to notice is that while all the nannies, cooks and maids have been heading north to tend the luxury lifestyles of irate Republicans, the gringo hordes have been rushing south to enjoy glorious budget retirements and affordable second homes under the Mexican sun.
Yes, in former California Gov. Pete Wilson's immortal words, "They just keep coming." Over the past decade, the State Department estimates that the number of Americans living in Mexico has soared from 200,000 to 1 million (or one-quarter of all U.S. expatriates). Remittances from the United States to Mexico have risen dramatically, from $9 billion to $14.5 billion in just two years. Although initially interpreted as representing a huge increase in illegal workers (who send parts of their salaries across the border to family), it turns out to be mainly money sent by Americans to themselves to finance Mexican homes and retirements.
Ideas Davis presented this past summer at the Centro Cultural de Tijuana. Fully developed and terrifying. Full piece is here.
Back On Deep
Back on my block. Framed by the concrete corner lot with the occasional eighteen wheeler and the two story house with black moldiness thriving on their porch's brick steps. Styrofoam to go box torn and ragged by the fence. Chard drowning. Kale demolished. Seven inches of rain in a few hours. The sun arrives again, humidifies the already wet wind, burns through clouds and leaves the body empapado. Ensweated gross and realing. Lips chapped in the city of Lewis and Clark instantly recover in the sopping damp. No more cracking scaling or fissured pain, just new wetness. Heat to airconditioning in a few hours. Two women, a mother and a daughter, dying down the street from the house at the Gulf Freeway and Tellepsen. Saw it at the taqueria on Canal 45. Drove down into the water, never to come up. To tell their story. Now when passing under the overpass, thoughts about. To mourn after the sun comes out, mourn while gathering the trash from the fenceposts. Is hardest. Fashioning time.
Recovery
St. Louis is freezing. Saw the Arch to enter the West, the hordes of older white men in suits attending the Western History Association conference, fatal. Pero, pues da gusto estar aquí en Gringolandia. La verdad, Houston raras veces se siente tan bolillo.
Here to present a paper, “’Un mexico-texano más’: El sol de Texas y conflictos de nación.” A novel from 1926 about two Mexican immigrant families laboring and living in Tejas by Conrado Espinosa. To be republished next year by Arte Público Press with an introduction based on this paper. Should write more, more will come later, next year when the book is published.
Here to present a paper, “’Un mexico-texano más’: El sol de Texas y conflictos de nación.” A novel from 1926 about two Mexican immigrant families laboring and living in Tejas by Conrado Espinosa. To be republished next year by Arte Público Press with an introduction based on this paper. Should write more, more will come later, next year when the book is published.
Sacrificing Aesthetics
Well, feeling bad about not posting more. But, with too much to do, something suffers. Fall planting season in Houston. The little kale and chard keep being crushed by leaves falling from trees. Why people start seedlings inside. Somehow a segue into a discussion of aesthetics and politics featuring Adrienne Rich:
"There's a mainstream idea that you sacrifice aesthetics if you write about political positions," she said at a reception after the reading. "I don't think that's true." In one of her most pointed and overtly political poems, Rich sets her sights on Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld '54, subverting his oft-referenced quote about troop readiness. Responding to charges that the army entered the Iraq War ill-equipped, Rumsfeld stated, "You go to war with the army you have." "You come back from war with the body you have," reads Rich's poem "Calibrations," which is set in a military hospital full of soldiers who have lost limbs in Iraq.
A little more here.
"There's a mainstream idea that you sacrifice aesthetics if you write about political positions," she said at a reception after the reading. "I don't think that's true." In one of her most pointed and overtly political poems, Rich sets her sights on Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld '54, subverting his oft-referenced quote about troop readiness. Responding to charges that the army entered the Iraq War ill-equipped, Rumsfeld stated, "You go to war with the army you have." "You come back from war with the body you have," reads Rich's poem "Calibrations," which is set in a military hospital full of soldiers who have lost limbs in Iraq.
A little more here.
dis texas
Well, sorry if it seems like bloguero navel gazing but. More Google search terms that lead only-god-knows-who to this site. Now with cities and countries!
la vida artistica de kumbia kings - managua, nicaragua
clementina - madrid, españa
wait time at tijuana/san ysidro - la jolla, california
why do we wait inline - washington, dc
telephone road houston texas honky tonks - montrose, colorado
poesía de la espinaca - la paz, bolivia
pluecker bad texas - college park, maryland
dis texas - palos verdes, california
So first visits from many countries. Wish all the anonymous Telephone Road obsesionados would leave comments. And that old acquaintances who Google my name and find this would not lurk so much.
la vida artistica de kumbia kings - managua, nicaragua
clementina - madrid, españa
wait time at tijuana/san ysidro - la jolla, california
why do we wait inline - washington, dc
telephone road houston texas honky tonks - montrose, colorado
poesía de la espinaca - la paz, bolivia
pluecker bad texas - college park, maryland
dis texas - palos verdes, california
So first visits from many countries. Wish all the anonymous Telephone Road obsesionados would leave comments. And that old acquaintances who Google my name and find this would not lurk so much.
Bio
Been reclaiming imaginary roots
cut them up to propagate new growth.
*
La tradición que hay que abandonar,
conociéndola.
cut them up to propagate new growth.
*
La tradición que hay que abandonar,
conociéndola.
First they came for the ____________ and I was ____________
Have to be worried when the rules keep changing. Had too many friends in jail to think this is a good idea. This one is the most worrying:
• The department will allow immigration agents unfettered access to the city's two jails, as they have had in the Harris County jail, and officers will start asking all arrestees whether they are citizens.
What a mess. A lot more fear in the community, the only possible result. Who wants to call the cops anyway? Everyone knows when the cops come a whole lotta people go to jail, a big net catches all fish. And now. In the jail, checking papers. Not on the street maybe for now. But who knows when that will change. Any day now, unless:
If you are against this, email mayor@cityofhouston.net and let him know. More info here.
Even the bureaucrats shouldn't be checking papers. Oh and, this new fence through the South Texas Valley from Laredo to Playa Bagdad, disastrous. Just say no to la línea.
Oh and, ideas on the fill in the blank above graciously accepted.
• The department will allow immigration agents unfettered access to the city's two jails, as they have had in the Harris County jail, and officers will start asking all arrestees whether they are citizens.
What a mess. A lot more fear in the community, the only possible result. Who wants to call the cops anyway? Everyone knows when the cops come a whole lotta people go to jail, a big net catches all fish. And now. In the jail, checking papers. Not on the street maybe for now. But who knows when that will change. Any day now, unless:
If you are against this, email mayor@cityofhouston.net and let him know. More info here.
Even the bureaucrats shouldn't be checking papers. Oh and, this new fence through the South Texas Valley from Laredo to Playa Bagdad, disastrous. Just say no to la línea.
Oh and, ideas on the fill in the blank above graciously accepted.
Yeah, it's Foucault
I am no doubt not the only one who writes in order to have no face. Do not ask who I am and do not ask me to remain the same: leave it to our bureaucrats and our police to see that our papers are in order. At least spare us their morality when we write.
The Big M.F.
The Big M.F.
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