 It was interesting as we talked about getting our itinerary together for today we realized that we had some things in common so we decided to take a few of the common themes. One is food, the other is politics and the other one is Spanish and just kind of do a back and forth on that one. So this first one it turns out that I wrote a poem on Tetscatlipoca and so did Ricardo and Tetscatlipoca for those of you who may not know it is a major deity of the Nahuatl ancient Mesoamerican people and Tetscatlipoca has the characteristics of a trickster he's a very rough teacher of lessons for many of us and really challenges us with our illusions so I'm going to read my take on Tetscatlipoca and then Ricardo. Is it the time of Tetscatlipoca keeper of the smoking mirror Nahuatl trickster divine guide is it the time of obscured hearts and faces with idle illusions we adorn our fear with masks we hide our greed is this how he makes us his without pure hearts or a true face the mirror remains clouded will we be the inheritors of smoke illuminate illuminate our mirror oh giver of life like the sun reflect our light it was long nights of half sleep behind paper doors sat air that rushed through ceiling ribs boxed belongings that sort like pagodas that dragged my heart Tetscatlipoca brought me here to remember cold nights lit by flickering candles brought me here to breathe what was forgotten memory like the ocean infinite leaves blue foam at my lips can f laquece mi esperanza y el hambre me enlaza que se enrosquen higos en mis piernas y brazos llena mi plato de miel y trigo as que brote en pan mis labios so now that we've evoked in invoked Tetscatlipoca and he's hanging out with us here be careful um our next section was food because um well who doesn't like food but especially if it's good food and we're in the bay area with some of the best food so i'm i have some food related poems and one of them is called dali's watch i was just tripping out on um how he makes dali the artist makes everything melt i really like that image dali's watch tells the time it is too soon to remember too late to forget i fidgeted in your arms last night that familiar tangle of heat and levitating syllables my passion stuttered in my veins liberating me from the work of getting to know you better when your hands of salt rub the swell of my stomach i felt like freshly rising bread hot and vaporous i stayed awake all night in fear that you would want to have me for breakfast in the morning spread marmal pineapple marmalade on my shoulders wash me down with a cup of cafe con leche you smelled like ether i wanted to go under so bad perhaps we were primos in another life kissing cousins in the land of mu babeloni and babes who grew up to be saboteurs in the tower of babel our reincarnation finds us in this world of miami meanderings where we have shared omnivisions danced on the tops of conga drums joined the book of the century club debated the politics of taxi cabs search for the lost treasures of little havana we have minced words wrapped in bacon delectable appetizers for the main entrée distance flambé served with a side of corazón picante and a fine red wine is it time for dinner yet i consult dali's watch the minute hands are melting into the question of the next second i look for answers on its tilting face but it is either too fast to be accurate or too slow to care thank you so this is an ode to mole colorado almendrado emaciated ghosts of archbishops and viceroy viceroy's drift on pre-columbian aromas rattling spoons on cobblestones dragging copper pots aching for Aztec gold paying satiated by kitchen saints of colonial puebla amarillo fraipa squalls bulky burlap rope bumps spices into boiling broth holy urgency transfigures water into mole juan de palaflux y mendosa spain's viceroy decreed mole a colonial treasure between steaming mouthfuls chichillo convent of santa rosa's impoverished nuns at wit's end while an archbishop waits to be fed sore andrea de la sunción mills stale bits and spice under divine inspiration her fragrant sauce poured on wiry turkeys the sanctified plump gut pleased bpn long before cortez sailed into veracruz moji simmered in earthen pots poured on iguana asholots aquasile larvae insects mushrooms turkey duck dog deer negro verde mancha manteles cosmic bascon salient sauce drips from trotter kuzley's nine mouths as starving colonial ghosts wander thumbing beads at dusk whispering ingredient rosaries kakawate pasilla passas pepitas calabaza piñones plátano canela chocolate nojoli aju ancho a food becomes the prayer and makes me hungry well also and you get a really good idea of the what the the native populations of the americas have contributed to our entire world you know these are foods that we can now find everywhere this is a little bit off kind of poem about food but it serves its purpose is called spousal rape she sat cooly the morning cooking in her lap short attacks of bay water filled her eyes the lion arrived for lunch she had just dressed her thigh for the main dish he swaggered sideways against her ear they landed entangled in the cat's milk and struggled horizontally on the whiskers of a low growl how many meals they managed no one is certain only the teeth marks on her throat will ever say another personal favorite here pandulce right in los primeros días de la cosecha metates y morteros de piedra transformaban semillas en pequeños panes de amaranto con miel copal y y pan of rendas para tráloc he who makes things sprout pueblo de los ángeles sin critismo de gastronomía indígena con los de conquistadores europeos se recombina en harina elevadura sal azúcar fray torribio de benavente motolinia declares warm earth sprouts year-round unlike spain's frosty soil exalts inexhaustible wheat harvest of the poblano valley nans of conception santa catalina de siena san bernardo nuestra señora de guadalupe santa tereza la nueva santa clara santa mónica santa rosa de viterbo need twist braid sweetened salted arrays of doughy concoctions to feed starving believers so rihuana ines a la cruz transcribe 17 of her cloister's bread recipes in the margins of epistolary tomes she wrote in isolation dakubaya's first patisseries el globo el molino spill baguettes and croissants into dusty 1800 mexico city streets monserra montels airy pastries sparks war in 1828 king louis philippe blockades the gulf with interlocking pastry booms and pommel san juan de uloa forcing a 600 000 pestle reparation to be paid in flour yeast and sugar after military honors rang santa anas santa anas leg was buried on amaranth and honey wafers oh yeah santa anas leg it got around mm-hmm really it did okay pumping heart murmur of love upbeat and open palpable breath beat of ocean waves delicious fruit pumping heart red blue tempo of cosmic breath my place with you on this unraveling planet is on the backs of goya shawki celestial sprinter into time let's ride her spinning integration her full moon cycles her spatial chaos her galactic soul let's stir her into steaming coffee sip her magic feel her force let's taste her spirit ingest her soul as she makes her way to our chambers of flesh and light thank you now goya shawki i will just do one of those shameless you know solicitations or but speaking of goya shawki this is an image of goya shawki who is the moon goddess the mesoamerican moon goddess and i just read from my new book called exiled moon which deals with different kinds of exile going on on the planet um so and i brought some with me in case you're you're interested thank you so next we're gonna do a one more on the food or yeah or are we so this one's titled undocumented and it's a emulation poem so it's uh it follows a pattern of roque daltons poema de amor para los guanacos the ones who pick fruit vegetables carp slaughter flesh slaughterhouse flesh scrub floors and restaurant dishes trim garden plants harvest orchards and vineyards cook and labor 12 hours a day care for someone's children push fabric and food into the whore of machines the ones who endure psychological torment if they step out of their neighborhoods the ones who live hidden in gated jasper mansions the ones whose homelands have been occupied by transnational great trade agreements the ones forgotten as unions and politicians yarn about a living wage the ones who fight for wobbly shade and luke warm water in the fuming sun while bosses lounge on dollar bill at a rondacks the ones whose children face the blade of cutbacks first while our economy dances on stilts made of their skin and bone the ones who disappear in border prison the border prison profit system deemed invisible by the law forsaken by their home governments in border gulags the ones who gleam gilded harvesting crops to feed america like a compassionate christ on the mount feeding multitudes with inexhaustible baskets the ones who build civilizations with corn and blood my sisters and brothers my aunts and uncles my neighbors my friends my family my people okay people of the harvest the crushed grape withers on the vine no gnarled hands to pick it no one to make wine let us now lost wilts on its row the empty fields forgotten by scythe and sickle and hoe cotton worm slowly drying in the sun if there were backs to carry it but there are none fruit long past ripe falls heavy to the ground and bursts its rotting entrails with a sluggish sound the fields are all in mourning rotting blackly in their sorrow for the people of the harvest who will not return tomorrow the great vine now a grave mark for every back wrenched soul that spent a life of labor and died giving birth to growth the poison that protects the field often kills the worker the sun that ignites orchards to bloom beats hard upon the child and sucks life away when the fields have finished rotting and gives itself to bloom be aware of the many souls in the orchards perfume in the fine green skin of the plant in the sweetness of the fruit in the soil dark with my people's blood in the fiber of the root frozen food capital in adolescent memories steaming billows from distant cannery stacks the mustard corrugated shell was an intrusion in vast fields it seemed to grow it seemed to shrink as I grew memories of steamed vegetable wisps that clung to my mother's white plastic apron remind me of the year she toiled to raise her children and her fight for a future in 1985 picket line snipers hurl volcanic rocks through scab windshields national news networks flashed our struggle into america's living rooms 1500 workers unite union boss fred heim underestimated the will of workers tired of tired of empty promises and deals under cutting worker wages life paused for 19 months sergio lopez the teamster puppet grinned stringing us along with my hands are tied school friends disappeared from class moved evicted $50 weekly benefits not enough to pay the bills next up us boxes packed loaded car muffler exhaling cancer where to go at lunch we delivered lunch plates that mother ate in the crisscross shadow of a cyclone fence origami tortilla folds as she listened to shouts in the distance fiery clashes peaked when teamsters in the owner's pocket ended the strike the emboldened few walked back with dignity having defeated the ominous richard shaw only half of the original workers returned to the conveyor lines for less than they negotiated after the anger and struggle a worker gleamed into living rooms across america and declared we are not afraid the western work ethic and the overworked ethnic i saw your eyes tumble out of your head under the weight of a sack of gold the spanyard had declared you a beast of burden and refused to acknowledge your skin and bones left to dry in modeled roads with only the teeth of dogs to redeem them a century or so later the church it took you a hundred years to build rip the arms from your body and use them as flags to fly atop palacios a gobiernos that waved in bruised colors of broken fingers and sweating hands later in that century i saw your swollen lungs expand sluggishly under a heavy layer of mind dust until they expanded and vanished into the makers of the short handled hoe crushed between high suns and low wages you're one more hard worker buried under the ground that had been taken from your ancestors today i am witness to your pinpricked fingers as a inch along endless rows of zippers you have been sowing all your life in some poorly lit cell that is stealing your eyes piecework and peonage are stitched into the lining of your eyelids each decade and every century have been your labor camp where you have worked worked worked in varying states of slavery and manipulated cheap labor under an enforced work ethic that declares you lazy and shiftless people of mañana conniving welfare cheaters and you continue to peel the fields for expanding stomachs dig ditches for foundations and piece together fabric for next year's fall fashions while your own belly shrivels in humiliated nakedness as you prepare to dissolve one more time into the dust that will cover you with the fruitlessness of your labor all right um this is titled el macho all right so if you see me out on the street i might not say hi to you because i gotta look tough all right i just i don't smile when i'm out on the street okay i don't eat treats or candy while i'm out on the street because i gotta be a macho you know just kidding just kidding el macho never gets blisters from chopping wood el macho only wears rugged looking shoes el macho wears boots in bed el macho says getting ahead means cheating chumps el macho never eats red sauce cooked by strange women when exasperated a macho sweat is flammable el macho may shape shift into a gentleman to seduce young ladies el macho grows stronger with every emotion he suppresses el macho never loses underwear lest they be buried under a woman's house el macho flirts aggressively to avoid any question of his masculinity in macho land conversations and and abrupt silences el macho can paraphrase feminist and gender schema theory to donnie cardboard hat of gender dynamic consciousness el macho expects food to disappear at to appear at the wave of a belt el macho concludes women who deny him must be lesbians el macho does not speak to kids instead speaks at kids el macho only smiles when his team wins or when he's drunk el macho only weeps when his team loses or when he's drunk i'm in recovery from a slip okay so um a thin line oh excuse me that's not the one um we talked about doing the um gender his his macho goes pretty much with a poem that i have written called when you look at me a brown woman's lament when you look at me you see motel maids changing sheets in the pink and gray rooms your parents stay in you see dark brown women under knees grabbing floors in baha restaurants or standing with a blue eyed child on each hip it doesn't matter if i wear tweed suits and paste the floor on gavinci heels in front of busy chalkboards to you you see lumita lupita the nanny in your tv mind she wears mismatch clothes and slides heavily on leather waraches towards her unwashed children to you i am an aberration that confuses your senses and blurs your vision it is difficult for you to recognize me as doctor you want me to remain nameless silent invisible but i stand before you speaking your language and teaching you things you're not sure of now you must either change the misguided notion of who i am or kill the me that cannot live in your world too when you look at me you see educated nipples intelligent legs a brilliant ass you chica miha chula me until you get beyond the fact that i have a phd in department meetings i call for broad visions and student needs you envision a broad who can meet your needs you are unfamiliar with the woman who can see through your veneer my loud clear voice threatens your ears to you i am expendable like the woman who keeps taking you back like the mother who is always there to feed you like that part of yourself that you thought you destroyed when you decided to become a thin worn metallic chair a conflict without a resolution so this is titled media noche media noche en susurros esperando la luna entre telarañas pesadas con rocio ojos del ivelulas parparean entre indigo y quartz o humeado maria turquesa burbu jea en la bahía rodeada por puentes de acero y oro hojas y alambres raspan contra ladrillo como resuellos de seres etereos rompiendo mi solitud pasos de un inquilino sonámbulo hacen el piso chillar resollar nostalgia de madera antigua por tiempos en que se mesía entre nubes y brisas sazonado por mareas distantes antes que llegaran galeones franciscanos con filamentos que arden y tiemblan y vibran me cae caigo de rodillas is a poem that i wrote shortly after visiting mexico city for the first time i'm ali born and raised and came up as a chicana my parents are both um they're mexican and also born uh one was born in in texas and the other came to texas as a child from mexico and so when i saw mexico city it was like i felt like i found home just the feeling but it was also very um there's identity you know crisis involved in an experience like this like who am i really what am i as a mexican american in the united states compared to being mexican from mexico and and people from mexico didn't always see me as mexican just like many people in the united states didn't see me as being an american either so this is part of that and it's it's um in spanish me caigo de rodillas me caigo de rodillas en el país de mexico searching for unanswered prayers lost in the shrill cries of beggars and vendors suffering through rubrable mortuary of ruined time in la lluvia de mi vida que caen torrento sin cesar veo miradas oscuras fragments of a lost language fingers of changing culture no soy de ti pero algo me llama tu lado me pierdo en las palabras lagrimosas de tus poetas en los grandes murales que cubren edificios muriendo en silencio tus pirámides tus castillos de pierda sangre en gotas de mi existencia se revuelvan en la lluvia que nos cesa what do i search for the poison of my country chokes the eagle debilitates the serpent eats at the feathers and skin of your soul conozco bien la pena que se refleja en los ojos inmensos y oscuros de tu gente méxico el gran méxico de mis ilusiones de mis sueños torcidos mi méxico que no es mío todavía tengo sabor de vida dolor de lucha y te voy a dejar y regresar para así llegar a tu lado a beber a beber la sangre que es mía me guess working with memory this is titled soul garden you fumbled crumpled lunch money dollar bills we walked past neon toy sprinkled sandboxes televisions blared melodramatic lovers from a telenovela cars skimmed gently silently in the distance we copped a jay from george the tall dude who wore crisp red converse white walls as he patrolled the block for outsiders we sat in your stepdad's garden surrounded by seedlings incubated in his windowsill nursery an apricot stood ten feet tall chayotes zucchinis corn stalks wound their way into our thoughts little anthony the tempries the delphonics billy steward also anthems dedicated to secret crushes one per song peach fuzz mustache middle school dreamers inhaling emerald breaths i have one for that this is um what adriana said and um let me see if i can find it over here okay huh okay where did it go should be here okay the photograph 22 um and this is also um a little bit of the uh ale chicano flavor with the love story in the back it's called the photograph what antonia said her blustering petticoats rushing down red steps antonia of the saints in her nightmares the lost soul in the beautiful face antonia of the orange lips the french twist the tiny waist above full swirling skirts poised tentatively on spiked heels antonia of the absent self the misplaced alma the searching wound what antonia said as she looped elegant into the shimmering bluefin Chevy chrome shield of earthbound goddess what antonia said to the ego the ego the uncertain myth the constructed man the navigated ego of place and placement the ego of the calloused hands the restless heart the palpitating spear eyes the caged spirit that made him swell each time he looked at antonia sweet chocolate candy beneath the sugar starch stiffness of her musical skirts what antonia said to the ego was i will be tus noches that are filled with bed is prado the platters the eternal strains of cha cha soul i will be your wet dreams and dry eyes at midnight your diosa to cruise fluorescent gaius the fuchsia of noches ansiosas that will sometimes color your face this will be one moment in many sueños del futuro que nunca van ser realizados initials carved into peeling bark of swaying eucalyptus trees sunsets over chinatown hungry kisses in the park this will be august 8 1958 and i will love you forever follow the levy toward the hills down 152 beyond the old land grant mansions before san benito where the road bends turn left the 50s labor camp digs into the ground invisible to the uninitiated two dozen cars lined up mud cake tires track forays into town we met in the damp community room and toured latchkey kids homework assignments after we launched a wheezy basketball from a cement pad through a rusty hoop at five o'clock a woman would strut in with candles and lugging a chip plaster virgin spangled with paper roses she cautioned parents to keep the kids away from the berets near the end of tutoring time her assistants unwrapped candles poured wine and cracked hosts once once she smirked at us as she let her flock around the camp to amass believers clant candles clenched i wanted to read this one a thin line for the women of what is that deals with the um the brutality of femicide that is occurring in not only the northern borders of Mexico but also in Guatemala also in Canada and there's been a history of almost 25 30 years where women are disappearing these are women who work and are disappearing and show if they show up at all their bodies have been tortured and they're dead it is a wide desert and a thin line thin as ropes that bind the wrist of undernourished women it is a vast plane of unmitigated history and a slim knife that cuts off the breasts of would-be mothers it is a motherlode of corporate profit and a ribbon of bleeding throats it is a mass grave of terror and rape and a small slice of our uncertain futures it is large enough to hide the bones of suffocated women but not quiet enough to stifle their cries kill us when you can torture us when you can bury us if you can but the spirits of women who die in battle will return as fierce hummingbirds winged warriors of history hovering memory of your forgotten humanity a border is only an imaginary line all hearts are the center of the universe we had it planned out and now that it's like open on my where I go what do I do okay so this is an ode to the angels uh or Boyle Heights is a piece I wrote a long time ago to the smell of dormant drains along dusty drags to the sound of people talking laughing among the sounds of steel and churning wheels to the warm air that streams down narrow streets refreshing the passerbys from the sidewalk sadness and arid sherbert sunsets to the surprise of a bird song and a warthead city trees scarred by pocket knives and runaway shopping carts to the people with smiling caramel faces that fill the streets on their way to unknown places to my susanna jones who told me from jerry times to iridescent nebula and solar eclipses to the elementary school kids whose innocence reminds me of times that once were and of those that are yet to be to the sirens that call out for justice only to find the night lit by stars and orange street lamps to the rain that brings a smell of wet earth to feet exhausted from trading cement and asphalt to the land that has become the grazing pastures of sitcom caricatures to the buildings countless like grains of rice in a dusty bowl that cracks under desert suns I hear a lot of like similarities in our even images have you been reading all my stuff and copying me okay something a little more uplifting mehikles which is a um it's a slang term for mexico mexico city and this is the first poem I did that was so lamenting that was one of my first trips to mexico city this is a more recent one and has a lot to do with my love for dance and and dancing I would have loved to dance with you mehikles in the plaza at meet la rumba around thick columns pirouetted in corners that zigzagged across ancient walls those geometric intersections I would have loved to dance my red face turned upwards towards the sun black dress swirling in the heated wind my heart a palpitating drumbeat while my feet performed an offering to the death and rebirth of things I would have loved to dance with you mehikles mehikles in the kiosk of oaxaca with pineapple princesses around me in the elegant sway of their smiles or atop the pyramid of the moon undulating torso captivating movements in rhythmic search for the lingering face of the mother I would have loved to dance oh how I would have loved to dance in garibaldi square with a lusty mariachi squeezing the strains of violins like milk through my thighs harocho high and intoxicated by the perfume of brandy coronas and mescal I would have loved to dance with you sweet mehikles the quick hot jump of Aztec in my toes bracelets of chachayotes on my wrists drumbeat staggering eternally in my heart corazón pumping mehikles to the epidermal layers of stone and clay I would have loved to dance my obsidian eyes wide as night sky flicking gold off my tongue my legs pulsing to the music music pumice stone makes inside the temples of the otewakan but my feet were still as my spirit raced up the steps of monte alban slipping into zapotec tombs and inching through chambers of omec jade but my feet were still deer hoof poised for sudden explanations of time and space past and future the quinn cunts of light that makes spirits rest inside the mouth of ketzel koat now so far away from your sun and moon the border that gave me birth holds your memory like music a song in search of a dance replays in my soul a song that has waited in the distance for the instrument of my legs to give it life in this land so needy of spirit I give birth to the dance I carry deep within me a boisterous and feral palpitation your magic is my life force as my feet activate currents of light in my ankles and electricity in my body the colors of your red clay and gold mountains wrap around my feet in my kitchen I am dancing in my bedroom I am dancing in my living room I am dancing in the streets I am dancing the dances you gave me there where the earth pulsates and waits for the dances to come mehikles your melody is life rhythm and music movimento quinto sol thanks thanks for coming out since titled bellesian rain walking in bellesian rain making friends while winding along brittle asphalt ribbons by bus smiles handshakes laughter I'm a new old friend lost in bellesian rain my heart is silent isolated it speaks walking in bellesian rain I'm a new old friend koel shawky again ceremonial koel shawky this I've written a poem and it's an offering to koel shawky in both English and Spanish and so we'll I'll be ending with this one okay moon goddess woman black obscured divine occultress of night mistress of light in unleashed into blue plate night offering of sugar flame and of thin smoke rising enter the gateway of flowing hair portal of leaving enter and fill basket of fruit glass of water lake of light enter the circle queen of night and souls broken enter create spiral of stardust provide me your power my ancient song ceremonial koel shawky I'm a new old friend lost in bellesian rain making friends with me my new old friend lost in bellesian rain making friends with me my ancient song ceremonial koel shawky in both English and Spanish and so we'll I'll be ending with this one okay. y de almas quebradas. Entra, criadora de sueños, espiral de estrellas. Dame tu fuerza, mi antiguo canción. Thank you.