"The Resurfacing Ernesto Priego


After eight years of daily blogging I decided
to interrogate notions of “aura”, fragility
and permanence in the digital age by performing
a practical exercise: deleting my blog.
I am working on a new personal web site that
will work like a more or less static online
profile representing all the areas of my life
and work, which include academia, journalism,
DJing, comics, essay writing and poetry.

My Twitter account is here.



In the meanwhile, and because I can’t stop this
mortal endless scrolling of online life, I’ll
be dropping some stuff that interests me here.
Maybe something here will catch your fancy too…"

Both You And I

Both you and I
know what we want.

This tiny oh so tiny barrier
keeps us apart.

Funny, but we can not laugh.
Sad, but we can not cry.

We want it so bad,
it's good.

The pain hurts.
The hurt pains us.

Both you and I
know what we need.

Both you and I
know what we want.

Yet,truth be told,
some lovers never become lovers.

Lying in a Hammock at Carol Ann Duffy’s Farm
in Pine Island, Minnesota

Over my head, I hear Iron Butterfly
in a stupor of inagaddadavida

-getting high
on a crack farm-

an overdosed girl on the lawn
shaking like Muhammad Ali

a cop car drives up the hill
I have wasted my life

The Blessing

Just off the highway to Rochester, Minnesota
an aluminum can

had blown back and forth
on the asphalt

had become stuck
against the weeds

and while it rolled around on the road
it had attracted the attention

of a grazing horse
which was now pissing loudly

on the blossoming
wild flowers

parked in his car taking it all in
James Wright breaks wind

The Homicidal Savior

carbon dioxide sweet to a flower
gulping it down

after I release its soft throat
having repented

I move on to the grass
whose blades take on a defensive posture

I prepare for a fight
I am no Wordsworth or Whitman

I do unto others
before they do unto me

with a shovel and hoe
I may yet save the world from do-gooders

Quiéreme. átame. Léeme. Dime. Comienza. Abrígame. Cuéntame un cuento. Encámame. Aliméntame. Llévame de la mano a visitar a tu madre muerta. Cántame. Hazme reír. Oríllame. Vuelve a empezarme. Hazme un hijo. Hazme el desayuno. pónme al sol. Tuéstame. Desarma cada uno de mis argumentos, los ojos. Intuye de qué estoy hecha. Aplástame. Hazme sólida. Toca el centro de mi casa. No contestes el teléfono. Dame de beber. Y tu cuerpo. Tu boca es amplia, cabemos los dos. Deserta. Tiéndeme. Llórame. Dime sí. Nunca sí.
Quiéreme. ábreme. Corrígeme si me equivoco. Dobla mi ropa. órdename. venme a ver. tócame. bébeme. hazme de agua. espésame. llévame los domingos a cualquier lado. embárcame. hazme nave y échame a andar. tírame. duérmeme. enséñame. sofoca el vértigo de mirar hacia abajo. encuéntrame si no me hallas. conjúgame. pregunta por mí. déjame mirarte. Comienza.

by Brenda Rios

Want me.Tie me down. Read me. Tell me. Start. Tell me a story.
Put me to bed. Feed me. Take me by the hand to see your dead mother.
Sing to me. Make me laugh. Start me again. Make me a son. Make me breakfast.
Put me against the sun. Toast me. Debate each one of my arguments, my eyes.
Intuit what I am made of. Crush me. Make me into a solid. Touch the inside
of my house. Do not answer the phone. Give me something to drink. And your body.
Your mouth is ample, both of us fit there. Desert me. Hang me. Cry to me. Tell
me yes. Never yes. Want me. Open me. Correct me if I am wrong. Fold my clothes.
Order me. Come see me. Touch me. Drink me. Make me out of water. Make me
a specimen. Take me anywhere on Sundays. board me. Make me into a ship and
put me out to sea. Throw me. Put me to sleep. Show me. Make me stop looking down.
Find me if you can not find me. Conjugate me. Ask for me. Let me look at you.Start now.


translation by RC

Watercolor Of You Wearing A Pink Top

you wear a pink top
your thighs stormy

it turns out
the stars are just kids---

just a bunch
of fucking kids

Heart Throb

my aunt had a weakness for bobby rydell
posters of him littered the walls of her room

and yet had
to put up with invading Mongols

the room we had been abandoned into
barely had walls

for my brothers and sister
poor would have been a step up

mother dead
father in Califas

it didn’t take a detective
to discover we were orphans

and though all this happened
so long ago

I can’t help
but to swap out the present for the past

against my will of course
and god damn bobby rydell

Fast Food

(Mexicanization Of America)

at her age
la vieja gets more excited about walmart than about sex

a teenage chicana is texting as she drives
no, not about the Alamo, wey

the punk kid tells his suburban tia
where to go ( he thinks he’s a punk)

my finger pulls the trigger
again and again

but its only a poem
it harms nomas the weak

dogs have four
patines, ‘mano

the mamasota crosses the street
on her fists

a pendejo sells crack to a pendejo
under the golden arches

...........................................................
la vieja-the wife
wey-most often a friendly but sarcastic
way(no pun intended) of addressing a buddy
tia-aunt
nomas-only(can't have two onlyies right
next to each other,verdad?)
patines-rollerskates
'mano-brother
mamasota-extra-sexy woman
pendejo-idiot

The Anti-Abuela Poem

you ever hear of a Mexican
killing his abuela

well some vato
has done just that in Chicago

bludgeoned her with a palote
which had been in the family for years

(Tamaulipas,
come get your native son!)

they corralled the grandson
in Tumbleweed, Arizona

fire trucks put out the fire
in the desert of his pantalones

the baboso was sentenced
to life without grandma

by the chili waters
of Lake Michingan

Los Good Old Days

I pull out my mariachis
to serenade you under your window

you shyly tug at the curtains
as if they were made of flesh

I sugarcoat my words with
veinte poemas de amor y una sad song

your smile shines like a lámpara
in the window

suddenly your mother
slams the curtains shut

I’ve learned the facts of life
never serenade a white girl

Top foto:
Angela,Jose Flores Peregrino
and The Black Hat Poet

Middle foto:
Juan Rodriguez
and Angela

Bottom foto:
Nepthali de Leon
reading a tribute poem
(that's Carmen Tafolla
in the background,left
under the hat)

A Musical Tribute for Angela



Juan and Armando Tejeda

At the Angela de Hoyos Tribute last night...




Some of the writers and artists present:
Vangie Vigil
Norma Cantu
Rosie Castro
Carmen Tafolla
Juan Rodriguez
Reyes Cardenas
Nephtali De Leon
Bryce Milligan
Enedina Casarez-Vasquez
and even Julian Castro
the Mayor of San Antonio
showed up.








"WILL NOT HARM THE OZONE"

(for Tato Laviera, with infinite thanks
for the inspiration)

C-a-r-n-a-a-a-l-i-t-o-o-o-o-o-o-o!
Donde 'stas, manito?
llevo horas enteras buscándote. . .
Carnalitoooooooooooo!!! ontás???
Antier también te me perdiste. Sure I know
y'said you was gonna play baseball
con los Rodríguez,
but they told me they hadn't seen you, guy.
Next day, te encontré
in that vacant lot on Colima Alley
but you just walked away aimlessly,
todo ahuitado,
your eyes like splintered glass
la boca de espuma
babbling like crazy
something about how you had seen
Death and the fires of hell.
Right off I knew
you'd been at it again
getting high en ese pinche maldito spray. . .
Y luego te enojaste conmigo
cuz I went and told Amá.
Jiiiiilo, y'shoulda seen her face
when I told her, chavalito.
La cara se le puso ceniiiiiza
y se le rodaban
las lagrimas l á g r i m o t a s
de tristeza o coraje o miedo
—maybe all three.
Pos ella bien que se friega
amarrada a la costura
pa' mandarnos al escuelin.
Y tú?. . . . . playing hookie
perdido en el callejón.
Chale, manito!
Nomás ya no!!!
I don't wanna have to
tell 'er again
that I found you


sniffing paint again
please! not high again
on your fantasy trip
lost to the world.
No quiero verte again
en ese enorme
huevo plástico
tied to the umbile
of the world
with grinning Death
hovering over you
as you whirl
round and round
in your weird orbit in space.
Yes I know, manito, you read the label.
It says: WILL NOT HARM THE OZONE.
But what is it doing to you?

what  is   it   doing  to   you?

by Angela de Hoyos

(From Puerto del Sol, Special Caló Supplement,
Ed. Jim Sagel, Vol. 27, No.1, Spring 1992;
New Mexico State University, English Dept.;
Las Cruces, New Mexico 88003)

M&A Editions ©1993

On The Phone Con La Becky

In a hand-me-down yellow dress
barefoot

I see you leaning
against the dry Rio Bravo

you hold a stick for a doll
your father’s favorite daughter (not you)

is throwing rocks at the stones down there
your smile caught on the fingers

of your stick doll
the sky so far away it’s barely visible

when your mother
calls you in for supper

everybody’s equal
when you eat

you tell me
in my ear

Bashing Czeslaw Milosz

Czeslaw Milosz does not write many bad poems.
But the bastard did write one of the worst poems
about Texas ever. I hear there is an arrest warrant
for him in Williamson County, Texas ( this county
is the home base for the Klan in Tejas). Anyway,
here is the poem, you be the judge, jury and executioner.

Texas

I came back from Texas.
I had been reading my poems there.
Nowhere else than in America do they pay so well
for reading poems.
Next to my signature I put the date 2000.

Old age clings to my feet like dense pitch.
The mind resists, but that signifies consciousness.
And what can I do with it, unveil it to whom?
The best strategy is to say nothing.

I have experienced the shame of the recollected illusion
of loving, hating, aspiring, striving.
And now I can hardly believe
that I managed to live through life.

by Czeslaw Milosz

Ok, ok! I’ll come clean. Milosz has indeed written
a second lousy, unforgiveable poem. I’m going to post it
here, but please do not tell anyone else about it. I don’t
want the Euro Trash Poets to come after my ass.
Here’s the other stinking poem:

To Robert Lowell

I had no right to talk of you that way,
Robert. An émigré’s envy
Must have prompted me to mock
Your long depressions, weeks of terror.
Presumed vacations in the safety of the wards.
It was not from pride in my normalcy.
Insanity, I knew, was insinuating itself
In a thin thread into my very being
And only waited for my permission
To carry me into its murky regions.
And I was watchful. Like a lame man.
I used to walk upright to hide my affliction.
You didn’t have to. For you it was permitted.
Not for me, a refugee on this continent
Where so many newcomers vanished without a trace.
Forgive me my mistake. Your will was of no use
Against an illness that held you like a stigma.
And beneath my anger was the vanity,
Unjustifiable, of the humiliated. A bit belated,
I write to you across what separates us:
Gestures, conventions, idioms, mores.

by Czeslaw Milosz

Orale! Even, you, shy readers, must admit that the
ending sucks!

A SOUND.

      Elephants beaten with candy and little pops and
and chews all bolts and reckless reckless rats,this is this.

by Gertrude Stein

Rima

No puedo decirte
ni con el silencio,
ni con las palabras,
ni aun con la música
mas desesperada.

Tal vez con la luna
o con un aroma
de violetas, húmedo
de vino y de música,
sufriendo, nocturno.

Tal vez con la noche,
cuando es solamente
un rumor de hojas
con viento y estrellas
para el desvelado.

Tal vez con la luna,
si la luna oliera
a vino y violetas.
Tal vez con palabras
nocturnas,
y si las palabras
miraran.

No puedo decirte.

por Eduardo Carranza
(Colombia, Nacio-1913 - Colombia, Murio-1985) fue un poeta colombiano.Empezó a ser conocido en el campo literario por la publicación de sus poesías en 1934.Fue periodista, catedrático, diplomático y precursor del movimiento Piedra y Cielo. Promovió varias publicaciones culturales y dirigió con gran éxito la Biblioteca Nacional.Su poesía muestra cuatro temas fundamentales: patria, muerte, amor y tierra.

Rime

I can not tell you
not with silence,
not with words,
not even with the most
desperate music.

Maybe with the moon
with its violet aroma
of wet wine and the suffering
of night music.

Maybe with the night’s
rumor of leaves
with the wind and stars
of an insomniac.

Maybe with the moon,
if the moon smelled
of wine and violets.
Maybe with midnight
words,
if words
could see.

I can not tell you.

translated by RC

Check out Come Bien Books.

Superbowl: Tackling Che

Poets struggle to define Che. Here John Berryman vacillates
between admiration, ridicule and disbelief.

“so I’ll pretend I’m you thro certain lines
and maybe I’ll improve.”

and a few stanzas later,

“I’m screwed if I’ll praise you;
enjoy and fear you;”

but Berryman is stuck with the message. And of course
the messenger must be killed even if he has to kill himself.

Che

I make a connexion: in your death and life
I see the Third Temptation overcome,-
foreseen (which bulks out as remarkable enough
for poor men rarely aimed) and overcome;

so I’ll pretend I’m you thro’ certain lines
and maybe I’ improve. You can’t object,
you are Bolivian molecules, dim slime
so far as judgement comes, it’s ruined years now

and many across our world sweating to “read” you,
over some slobs of which I claim advantage
as sequent: Sticking to your goddamn word
I couldn’t care less except to save myself.

So saying, I burn myself out of my way.

I wonder where rich Mother fetched her blood-
from Aragon or Huelva? –obstinater,
proud to all hurrying deaths, seductive, amusing,
reckless as a pampas fire, follow-the-leader…

Fuck my dry father’s, you wind up with me
breathless, fighting for breath,
sucking from dipped chalk in (said to be fatal),
seeking out companionable lepers up the Amazon.

O vampire bats with rabies, bite not me,
I’m not that brave. We enjoy less & less
tortoise feet daily with the toenails off,
incredible rapids & loud jaguars.

You thought it all for pure joy, anyway,
sacrifices, the bit. I’m screwed if I’ll praise you;
enjoy and fear you; you open a hope
we’re not contemptible necessity.

No, Matthew 4:10 was the point & the only point:
to head for what but fearlessness and love,
anything less or other become the Devil himself
to suck the ample anus of, & sign in:

“Lost soul. Sold, for something less
than man.” From Siempre, a gross U.S. map
all mouthing faces, all but a baffled Chief
and sorry yippee, with mouths drawn down shut.

Begin with shame. The woman or man not revolutionary
isn’t. Where he found “no will to fight,
leaders corrupt,” he went Elsewhere,---
versatile as the word “set” & as single.

Stuck with a message. Stuck, worse, with a witness.

by John Berryman from Henry's Fate



Paul Maritnez Pompa (late arriving crowd) tries desperately
to revise Che even though he claims he can not do it. “Daddy,
daddy, you do not do, barely daring to breathe or Achoo..”
First he makes him into a Christ-figure, and yet in frustration
he turns him into a mere decoration. Eventually he chooses to
look the other way like the rest of us though he himself has
told us,

“Nothing truer
than a poet who resists
on paper.”

Pompa is not willing to be the condemned messenger that
Berryman was so eager to become,

ON THE SIGNIFICANCE OF CHE,
DEAD IN THE LAUNDRY HOUSE
OF THE VALLEGRANDE HOSPITAL,
NUESTRO SENOR DE MALTA

In the photo your corpse is draped over
a wash basin as Bolivian soldiers stare

and poke, careful not to get too close
to your sunken chest. Your Jesus

veneer tempts the nuns to clip a lock
of hair before an agent is ordered to take

a saw to your wrists. Fingers to fall
like bullets in formaldehyde. The tale

of your body varies with each voyeur’s
attempt to write it. The photo blurs

& I realize I cannot revise an icon
permanently cast as mere decoration.

Let near poets dismiss you as ironic trend,
I have nothing to say not already said.

by Paul Martinez Pompa
from My Kill Adore Him

La pureza


Yo no voy a decirte que soy un hombre puro.
Entre otras cosas
falta saber si es que lo puro existe.
O si es, pongamos, necesario
o posible.
O si sabe bien.
¿Acaso has tú probado el agua químicamente pura,
al agua de laboratorio
sin un grano de tierra o de estiércol,
sin el pequeño excremento de un pájaro,
el agua hecha no más que de oxígeno e hidrógeno?
¡Puah!, qué porquería.
Yo no te digo pues que soy un hombre puro; yo no te digo eso,
sino todo lo contrario.
Que amo (a las mujeres naturalmente,
pues mi amor puede decir su nombre),
y me gusta comer carne de puerco con papas
y garbanzos y chorizo y huevos, pollos, carneros, pavos, pescados y mariscos,
y bebo ron y cerveza y aguardiente y vino,
y fornico (incluso con el estómago lleno).
Soy impuro. ¿Qué quieres que te diga?
Completamente impuro. Sin embargo, creo que hay muchas
cosas puras en el mundo
que no son más que pura mierda.
Por ejemplo la pureza del virgo nonagenario..
La pureza de los novios que se masturban
en vez de acostarse juntos y desnudos en una posada…
La pureza de los clérigos,
La pureza de los académicos…
La pureza de los que nunca tuvieron blenorragia
ni un chancro sifilítico.
La pureza de la mujer que nunca lamió un glande.
La pureza del hombre que nunca succionó un clítoris.
La pureza del que no engendró nunca…
En fin,
la pureza
de quien no llegó a ser lo suficientemente impuro
para saber qué cosa es la pureza…

by Nicolás Guillén

more here.