Category: News

This week on Poetic Resurrection we have the Puerto Rican poet Luivette Resto. We discuss her poem Living on Islands Not Found on Maps. How growing up bi-culturally and using Spanglish or as I like to call it “fusion of words”.  We had a great time conversing about Puerto Rican culture. I love guests I can laugh with and laugh we did.

Luivette Resto was born in Aguas Buenas, Puerto Rico, but proudly raised in the Bronx. Her two books of poetry, Unfinished Portrait, and Ascension were published by Tía Chucha Press. Her third collection of poetry is from FlowerSong Press.

Living on Islands Not Found on Maps
I live on an island not found on maps. Growing up in the shadows of one of the most popular surnames: García. I speak Spanish to my abuela on Sundays but rely on Google to help my children with their homework because the accent rules never stuck. Stress or unstress? Penultimate syllable? Took the paradoxical college course: Spanish for Bilinguals where every Tuesday Prof. Cruz de Jesús would shake his head with indignation at my use of the familiar tú versus usted. No me conoce, he said. He was right. He didn’t know me and I didn’t know him or the proper word for bus or orange juice. What I did know is summers in Puerto Rico, eating quenepas as relatives asked, ¿No entiendes lo que dijo tu primo? And my abuela defending my tongue. This tongue. Colonized not once but twice. Leaving me isolated at family reunions.
Feeling inadequate for my inability to conjugate on command. Sounding out store front signs while riding the #42 bus on the way home from Kindergarten where I concentrated to understand Mrs. Farrell’s lessons about the seasons. But I finally found a home between Bronx bodega aisles, code switching with my homegirls about how many times Juana beepeó that boy we saw
standing in front of él building. This became the island where I belonged. Unfettered and absent of red pen corrections. Juana didn’t care if I used the tú or the usted or if my yo was about me or an emphatic reaction to her crazy story. This island didn’t care if I rolled my r’s or ever got the purpose of vosotros. An island where our bodies translated feelings: pursed lips, a raised brow, an aggressive eye or neck roll. We were bilingual neologists, inventing new lands we could carry in our Timbs and bubble coats. Here, language, like us, wasn’t disappointing or broken.

“Living on Islands Not Found on Maps”
first published on The University of Arizona Poetry Center’s website
Nov. 2020. Reprinted by permission Luivette Resto

https://www.luivette.com/

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This week, we are honored to have Luis J. Rodriguez back on the Poetic Resurrection Podcast. Luis reads his poem, Always Running. This poem describes the hardships of poverty, love loss, and how Luis dealt with his experiences. We discuss the difficulties of growing up in the hood, living in tenements full of roaches, rats, and despair. His episode aired  November 27th and after I posted his episode my computer died so my blogs are behind.  Hoping the audience understands.  Here’s his poem Always Running from Concrete River 1991 Curbstone Press.

Always Running
All night vigil.
My two-and-a-half-year-old boy
and his 10-month-old sister
lay on the same bed,
facing opposite ends;
their feet touching.
They looked soft, peaceful,
bundled there in strands of blankets.
I brushed away roaches that meandered
across their faces,
but not even that could wake them.
Outside, the dark cover of night tore
as daybreak bloomed like a rose
on a stem of thorns.
I sat down on the backsteps,
gazing across the yellowed yard.
A 1954 Chevy Bel-Air stared back.
It was my favorite possession.
I hated it just then.
It didn’t start when I tried to get it going
earlier that night. It had a bad solenoid.
I held a 12-gauge shotgun across my lap.
I expected trouble from the Paragons gang
of the west Lynwood barrio.
Somebody said I dove the car
that dudes from Colonia Watts used
to shoot up the Paragons’ neighborhood.
But I got more than trouble that night.
My wife had left around 10 p.m.
to take a friend of mine home.
She didn’t come back.
I wanted to kill somebody.
At moments, it had nothing to do
with the Paragons.
It had to do with a woman I loved.
But who to kill? Not her–
sweet allure wrapped in a black skirt.
I’d kill myself first.
Kill me first?
But she was the one who quit!
Kill her? No, think man! I was hurt, angry. . .
but to kill her? To kill a Paragon?
To kill anybody?
I went into the house
and put the gun away.

Later that morning, my wife came for her things:
some clothes, the babies. . . their toys.
A radio, broken TV, and some dishes remained.
I didn’t stop her.
There was nothing to say that my face
didn’t explain already.
Nothing to do. . . but run.

So I drove the long haul to Downey
and parked near an enclosed area
alongside the Los Angeles River.
I got out of the car,
climbed over the fence
and stumbled down the slopes.
A small line of water rippled in the middle.
On rainy days this place flooded and flowed,
but most of the time it was dry
with dumped garbage and dismembered furniture.
Since a child, the river and its veins of canals
were places for me to think. Places to heal.
Once on the river’s bed, I began to cleanse.
I ran.

I ran into the mist of morning,
carrying the heat of emotion
through the sun’s rays;
I ran past the factories
that lay smack in the middle
of somebody’s backyard.
I ran past alleys with overturned trashcans
and mounds of tires.
Debris lay underfoot. Overgrown weeds
scraped my legs as I streamed past;
recalling the song of bullets
that whirred in the wind.

I ran across bridges, beneath overhead passes,
and then back alongside the infested walls
of the concrete river;
splashing rainwater as I threaded,
my heels colliding against the pavement.
So much energy propelled my legs
and, just like the river,
it went on for miles.

When all was gone,
the concrete river
was always there
and me, always running.

Luis Rodriguez, “Always Running” from “The Concrete River,” 1991 Curbstone Books

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I watched an entire season of Ram Dass teachings and all the quotes this week are his.

The teachings had everything in it from his disliking of people, to his sexuality, to his questioning of Enlightenment. But what I noticed throughout the entire season it’s about being. He was just being.

How difficult it is for most of us to just be. Just sit still to quiet the mind and just be. So much of what we learn is to be a doer or a thinker or a seeker.

“The thinking mind is what is busy. You have to stay in your heart. You have to be in your heart. Be in your heart. The rest is up here in your head where you are doing, doing, doing.” 

The idea of being is just being. We have the answers to our lives, but we don’t sit quietly to hear what they are saying. There is more to us than this three-dimensional physical plane. We see this in our dreams, meditations and sometimes we get that aha moment when we talk to somebody or watch a TV show or overhear someone speaking. It’s amazing to me when you get those little nudges and I don’t know where they come from. Is it intuition? Is it our higher self, our angels, spirit guides? In the past, when I have fought these nudges, I will fall flat on my face. So, follow that intuition, Spirit guides, higher self, etc. because it’s usually right. “Remember, we are all affecting the world every moment, whether we mean to or not. Our actions and states of mind matter, because we’re so deeply interconnected with one another. Working on our own consciousness is the most important thing that we are doing at any moment, and being love is the supreme creative act.”

These nudges told me to write and publish my poetry. I was scared to do that because yes; I was exposing who I was. I was afraid I would not be accepted. The opposite happened. I was accepted. This same little nudge came to me constantly for two years to start up the Poetic Resurrection podcast. I didn’t know what the podcast should be about. I knew it would not be about acting. Then, during the pandemic, I saw people marching and helping at food banks and I thought, how wonderful would life be if we had self-love and self-acceptance? With these acceptances, it would be easy to accept and love others. There would be no fear of loss. Whichever direction these nudges are directing you, they need to be of a kind heart.

“Unconditional love really exists in each of us. It is part of our deep inner being. It is not so much an active emotion as a state of being. It’s not ‘I love you’ for this or that reason, not ‘I love you if you love me.’ It’s love for no reason, love without an object.”

The poem for this week is Continuum from Inspire Me: Perception.

Continuum

Spring florets glimmer
In afternoon light
Scent of fresh tulips
Myths of existence—fables

Trembling in 90 degrees
Veneer of tears
Illusions of turmoil
Created by self
Head spins—Pandora’s Box

Seven sins tap across the stage of
A cardinal songbird
As the earthfall cleanses itself
Hope gathers irises
For a rainbow bridge

Oyá* conjures and flees storm
Yemaya*—mother disapproves
Amazon and Niger Rivers
Dominated
Femininity protected

Travel—Antipodes
Indian ocean with full moonlight
Glistens as the waves erupt
Hera’s* vengeful heart
Aches from illegitimate family

Crumbled mirror of water
Tears cascade past seven years,
Moisture blooms lilies of death
Phoenix’s ashes resurrected
In endless evolution

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• Oyá uses tornados as her weapon and raises dead armies to use as her warriors.
• Yemaya is a powerful orisha who’s the mother of living things.
• Hera is Zeus’ wife, best known for her jealousy of Zeus’s other family.

 

Yesterday, I was honored to once again interview Luis J. Rodriguez for an upcoming episode on Poetic Resurrection. We spoke for about two hours and we had an amazing conversation about many subjects, including sexual abuse. Being a survivor of this, I had written the poem The Little Girl featured in my first book, Inspire Me: Raw. I’m grateful to my parents for being there for me. It was an experience I thought I had overcome since I could talk about the situation. But, I hadn’t.

It wasn’t until I wrote the poem that I could release the shame and trauma I was holding onto. It served no purpose but to keep me down. Why would I want to hold on to that? The situation is that we sometimes don’t know we’re still holding onto the past. It has a way of showing up as a trigger and that’s when I knew I had to work on letting go. I don’t believe in “forgive and forget”. Yes, I can forgive, but you don’t forget. You learn to forgive them and yourself for holding onto so much pain throughout your life.

I’ve noticed many survivors talk about their experience and I wanted to do the same; I just wrote from the perspective of the child, because the child doesn’t understand.

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The Little Girl from Inspire Me: Raw

The little girl walks to school
Tenements line gray streets
She does well in school
Her five-year-old stature
Shows resistance & strength

Drawings of prismic colors
Joy and glee adorn her face
Hesitant to show teacher
Waiting for praise—teacher questions
She understood but couldn’t answer

Teacher screams at her
Points—to disappear into
The sea of moveable desk
She gazes at her tattered shoes
Her friend speaks English, she does not

Colorless teacher was unkind
To the little girl
Who only speaks Spanish
Tears flow down her face
She hides – the teasing kids

Goes home, keeps to herself
Pretends to be an actress
Living a world that wasn’t her own
Only hearing voices of a different land
Citizens we are, but not considered same

Pretending so young to be okay
Her seven-year-old friend
Said she wanted to play
A store basement, dark and clammy
Her friend gazes on while she screams
“It hurts,”. “Why did you do this?”

A teenage boy
Took friend’s innocence and
Now he’s taken the little girl’s
Her soul and worth
But she doesn’t understand

The store owner saves her,
Atop soaring stairs
Bold voice of disgust
Vibrates the crypt
Boy halts, he runs

She now rests at home
A peeling grey wood porch
Third-floor view—sits on step
Sunless hallway
Looking at the sky so blue

Doesn’t know how she got there
Mind’s a haze of events
Discolored panties, hand washed often
Advertise the status of her little life

The bandages trying to hold
The innocence lost. It’s too late
Mom looks at her—
Turns away and cries.
Did she do something wrong?
Sorry you’re hurting; doesn’t know what to do

I’m sorry mom
Don’t mean to make you cry
Don’t mean to make you cry
Tears never came to me
The little girl who didn’t understand