Lorna Dee Cervantes

Lorna Dee Cervantes TONIGHT UC Berkeley Featured Poet, Holloway Poetry Series, 315 Wheeler Hall, 6:30 pm!

2012-01-26T12:24:00.000-08:00

TONIGHT! THURS, Jan 26, 6:30 pm, UC Berkeley Campus, Wheeler Hall, Maude Fife Room 315. FREE! Lorna Dee Cervantes will be the first Featured Poet for the Holloway Series in Poetry, reading with PhD student poet, Javier O. Huerta. (Look us up on Facebook!)

I hope to see you all there! Tell your friends! I'll have copies of my new book, CIENTO: 100 100-WORD LOVE POEMS and, if they arrive, copies of the collection of critical essays on my new work, STUNNED INTO BEING: Essays on the Poetry of Lorna Dee Cervantes which includes recent interviews. I'll be reading mostly new work tonight, including from a forthcoming new book of poems, "30-Something of the Cruelest."

My bio doesn't show up too well on this design, so here it is:

Lorna Dee Cervantes is an internationally acclaimed poet. Recipient of numerous awards, honors and fellowships including the Lila Wallace/Readers Digest Writers Award, 2 NEA Fellowship Grants, 2 Pushcart Prizes (another nominated this year) & "Best Book" awards for EMPLUMADA ('81), FROM THE CABLES OF GENOCIDE: POEMS ON LOVE AND HUNGER ('91), and the 5-volume DRIVE: THE FIRST QUARTET ('06) which was nominated for a Pulitzer, her new books are CIENTO: 100 100-WORD LOVE POEMS ('11), STUNNED INTO BEING: Essays On The Poetry of Lorna Dee Cervantes ('11), and the forthcoming SOMETHING OF THE CRUELEST.

A California native (Chicana-Chumash), born in The Mission, Lorna Dee Cervantes was the former Director of Creative Writing at CU- Boulder where she was a Professor of English for 19 years. This year's UC Regents Lecturer at Berkeley, she is home again in the Bay Area writing fiction, essays, poetry & screenplays. Visit her on her blog: http://lornadice.blogspot.com.

"More Than 100 Facts For The 99%"

2011-11-30T13:00:00.000-08:00

More Than 100 Facts For the 99%

Ninety nine percent of all life forms
that have ever existed are now extinct.
99% of The Universe is plasma.

Ninety nine percent of all schools
have computers. 99% of all Shakespeare's
plays have been tapped out by virtual monkeys.

Ninety nine percent of all Santas are jolly,
merry and kind-hearted. 99% of all
lawyers give the rest a bad name.

Ninety nine percent of all felonies are settled
by plea bargaining. 99% of all problems
in communication start with misunderstandings.

Ninety nine percent of all marijuana
eradicated in the US is feral. 99% of all new
online businesses will fail.

Ninety nine percent of all tomato products
consumed in the US come from California.
99% of all river blindness is in Africa.

Ninety nine percent of all bandwidth
on the internet is devoted to child and animal
porn. 99% of Believers would take the gold.

Ninety nine percent of all migrant farmworkers
are members of an ethnic minority. 99% of all
turkeys raised in the US are Broadbreasted White.

Ninety nine percent of all family foundations
have assets under $100 million. 99% of all
human DNA is exactly alike.

Ninety nine percent of all law under
Capitalism has to do with property. 99%
of all profit is made by 1% on Wall Street.

Ninety nine percent of all puppies sold come
from puppy mills. 99% of all public schools
serve lunch from the National Lunch Program.

Ninety nine percent of all calcium in the body
is found in the teeth and bones. 99% of all
freshwater pearls are grown in China.

Ninety nine percent of all Oregon state prosecutions
involving non-violent protesters exercising their rights were
against them. 99% of all hazelnuts are grown in Oregon.

Ninety nine percent of all ghost pictures
can be explained away. 99% of all maternal
deaths occur in developing countries.

Ninety nine percent of all cats deliver
their kittens without assistance or complications.
99% of all US households have a television.

Ninety nine percent of all TVs sold in the US
come with remote controls. 99% of all promotions
are created because somebody has stock to sell.

Ninety nine percent of all land animals eaten
in the US are factory farmed. 99% of all gas consumed
in the US comes from the North American Continent.

Ninety nine percent of all snail species
have shells with whorls that coil clockwise.
99% of all successful businesses require teamwork.

Ninety nine percent of all businesses lose
25%-40% of their profits from mistakes. 99%
of all masturbation involves lust and fantasy.

Ninety nine percent of all virtual forces
affecting our life is invisible. 99% of all
beer cans are made out of aluminum.

Ninety nine percent of all book queries
to agents and editors are rejected. 99% of all
first books are not good enough to publish.

Ninety nine percent of all mass in the galaxy
is taken up by the sun. 99% of all the world's
land ice is in Greenland and Antarctica.

Ninety nine percent of all banking organizations
have assets in excess of $10 million. 99% of all
new jobs since 1990 have been in the service sector.

Ninety nine percent of all the billions
of ants on Earth are female. 99% of all
US prisoners on Death Row are male.

Ninety nine percent of all water on Earth
is ocean water. 99% of all life is invertebrate
and 99% of all invertebrates are extinct.

"Ninety nine percent of all failures come from
people who have a habit of making excuses,"
declared the inventor of the peanut. 99% of all diets fail.

Ninety nine percent of all things that most
of us worry about never actually occur. 99%
of all species that have ever existed are extinct.

Ninety nine percent of all living structures
are built from just 6 elements. 99% of all living
things live within a few thousand feet from the surface.

Ninety nine percent of all newspapers take
their own photos. 99% of all reading
takes place in the brain and not the eyes.

Ninety nine percent of all interactions between
bacteria and host are beneficial. 99% of all
"germs" are killed by hand sanitizer.

Ninety nine percent of all electricity generated
in the world is lost to resistance as it flows
from source to use. 99% of all TVs are unsold.

Ninety nine percent of all personal care products
contain 9,350 chemical compounds untested for safety.
99% of all abortions are performed prior to 20 weeks.

Ninety nine percent of all great inventions
weren't perfect the first time. 99% of all
plastic bags in the US are not being reused.

Ninety nine percent of all Americans listen
to the radio. 99% of all bottled water sold
in the US has only been filtered.

Ninety nine percent of all ingredients in consumer
products are inert or inactive, thus protected
by trade secret. 99% of all wills are uncontested.

Ninety nine percent of all plants still use
3 instead of 4 atoms of carbon for photosynthesis.
99% of all farm animals killed are birds and fish.

Ninety nine percent of all people trying
out for a role in TV, theater or film will not
get the job. 99% of all new businesses fail.

Ninety nine percent of all professional speakers
earn less than $1 million their entire career.
99% of all capital exists only as processor entries.

Ninety nine percent of all tobacco-related
deaths are caused by inhaling tobacco smoke.
99% of all cervical cancer is caused by a virus.

Ninety nine percent of all television sets owned
are in color. 99% of the people who produce,
write and direct for television are white males.

Ninety nine percent of all goods produced in
the world are trashed within six months. 99% of all
US businesses are small and create 75% net new jobs.

Ninety nine percent of all electricity in the world
is produced by running a wire through a magnetic
field. 99% of all baking is applying heat to starch.

Ninety nine percent of all fires on the planet
are lit by humans. 99% of all mothers' milk
contains detectable levels of DDT.

Ninety nine percent of all pesticide poisoning
deaths are caused by developing countries. 99%
of all adverse drug reactions are unreported.

Ninety nine percent of all eligible American
Indians registered to fight in WWII. 99% of all
privately owned hand guns are never used.

Ninety nine percent of all footwear sold in the US
is made by foreigners overseas from foreign goods.
99% of all transactions take less than a minute.

Ninety nine percent of all Medicare dollars
spent are linked to chronic illness. 99% of all
healthcare dollars are spent on illness, not prevention.

Ninety nine percent of all genetics
have been mapped. 99% of all wireless
calls rely upon fixed fiber optic lines.

Ninety nine percent of all US households
purchase milk. 99% of all uranium in the human
body will exit through the evacuation of fecal waste.

Ninety nine percent of all pumpkins
are sold for decoration. 99% of all
people talk to their dog or cat.

Ninety nine percent of all stars will end up
as a white dwarf. 99% of all human
history is a hunter-gathering way of life.

Ninety nine percent of all connections
are now done digitally. 99% of all active
genes in the body are not human.

Ninety nine percent of all problems
can be identified. You are 99% of the
problem If you are not 99% of a solution.

If ninety nine percent of the whole
can be equal to its part, than 99%
of us can be equal to any and all.

Lorna Dee Cervantes
11/29/11

Lorna Dee Cervantes Book Launch for CIENTO: 100 100-Word Love Poems in SF 10/27

2011-10-26T13:13:00.000-07:00

Lorna Dee Cervantes's 1st Book Release Party in 30 Years THURS 10/27 at Kaleidoscope, 3109 24th St., 8 pm!

2011-10-25T13:46:00.000-07:00

I'm having a BOOK PARTY & You're invited!

Lorna Dee Cervantes's San Francisco Book Release Party 10/27/2011

Thursday, October 27 · 8:00pm - 11:00pm

kaleidoscope
3109 24th Street
San Francisco, CA

Come hear Lorna read her latest poetry and celebrate the release of her new book on the last thursday night in October!

Lorna Dee Cervantes will be selling, signing and reading from her new book Ciento: 100 100-Word Love Poems in the intimate performance space at Kaleidoscope in The Mission District of San Francisco. This venue is a close walk east from the 24th Street BART station. Refreshments! Cool people! Music! (Come jam! Piano on site.)

Admission is FREE (but donations to support Kaleidoscope are encouraged!)

Lorna Dee Cervantes is an internationally acclaimed poet. Recipient of numerous awards, honors and fellowships including the Lila Wallace/Readers Digest Writers Award, 2 NEA Fellowship Grants, 2 Pushcart Prizes & "Best Book" awards for EMPLUMADA ('81), FROM THE CABLES OF GENOCIDE: POEMS ON LOVE AND HUNGER ('91), and the 5-volume DRIVE: THE FIRST QUARTET ('86) which was nominated for a Pulitzer.

Lorna Dee has presented hundreds of readings, lectures, performances and workshops in four different countries for over 30 years at most major poetry venues, universities and institutions. She was one 100 major American poets to attend the The Millennium Poetry Event at The White House at the invitation of Hillary and President Clinton. Her work was featured at the Dodge Poetry Festival which included two documentaries, an anthology, FOOLING WITH WORDS, and an interview with Bill Moyers.

Her new book, CIENTO: 100 100-WORD LOVE POEMS was officially released September 16, 2011 by Wings Press which is also publishing a book of critical essays on her work. If you are unable to attend the reading, you can order a copy from them at http://www.wingspress.com/.

Or send $20 to Lorna Dee Cervantes, 3181 Mission Street, PMB 16; San Francisco, CA 94110 and receive a personalized signed copy! Includes shipping and handling.

http://www.facebook.com//pages/Ciento-100-100-Word-Love-Poems/245482028825205
http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=206502819415089

Help Tweet & Share the event!

See you there! PARTY!

-----

for present bio:
http://www.redroom.com/author/lorna-dee-cervantes

http://www.wingspress.com/author.cfm/54/Lorna-Dee-Cervantes/

http://www.wingspress.com/book.cfm/15/DRIVE-The-First-Quartet-%28hardback-edition%29/Lorna-Dee-Cervantes/

CIENTO: 100 100-Word Love Poems Just Released From Wings Press!

2011-09-19T18:24:00.000-07:00

Order your copy direct from the publisher, Wings Press now!

"Between The Rapture And The Rose" (poem draft)

2011-05-22T13:06:00.000-07:00

Between the Rapture And The Rose

Who can believe
between the rapture
and the rose? The road
winds through the brambles,
caramel and sudden, thrushed
and carbon, between the tweeting
and the caverns, between the ash
and the healing waves of rain.

Who can believe? Between
the rapture and the rose,
between the window and the summer
sun, between a child's winnowed
smile and the fallen leaves,
who can believe in the simple
science of you, your turning gyre?

Who does believe
threading their way through folly
and the falling? It's as easy
as the way rainbows slide
their magic, the way I am
into you, the startled starlings
settling home, the flush of bloom,
a filling room. Between the rapture
and the rose is a garden
and a blush.

The softening touch, so much
the sibilant rush, a sensuous
lush response. Something
like belief, like the rapt
heavenly way the earth smells:
the loam of loving you, the pebbled
path of pardon, leafing, like music
between the rapture and the rose.

Lorna Dee Cervantes
5-21-11

Lorna Dee Cervantes Reading at Stanford Floricanto TONIGHT With Stephen Cervantes, Casa Zapata, 8 pm

2011-05-06T16:46:00.000-07:00

Floricanto

an evening of poetry, song, and dance

Featuring
Lorna Dee Cervantes

Steve Cervantes
Dreamer Monologues
Media Luna
Mariachi Cardenal

Casa Zapata Dining Hall - Stanford University

Friday, May 6th, 2011|8:00pm

delicious home-made desserts will served

"Integrity" (7-Minute Poem For NaPoWriMo, 4/7/11)

2011-04-10T19:33:00.000-07:00

Integrity (7-Minute Poem For NaPoWriMo, 4/7/11)

for E. S.

Yours is the integrity of flint,
of steel, of iron. Yours
is the integrity of birds flocking,
whales in their loving pods. Yours
is the integrity of sand, what moves
with the will of you; all your sweet
sweat, your simple construction.
I love the sudden fill of you, your
swell and sway. I love how you do
what you say. You slay me
with your truth. I love the way
we fit together as if I were your
seed. I love the far away look
in your multicolored eyes, the land
and sea of you. I love
the way you look at me, that ancient
shore. I love how I am more
with you, your carbon, the filaments
of your fine hair. I love how you hold
me together, how fast and vast
the ocean of this love in its gentle
tide, the integrity of flesh, of salt,
of we.

Lorna Dee Cervantes
4/9/11

"Radiation" (7-Minute Poem For NaPoWriMo)

2011-04-08T10:07:00.000-07:00

Radiation

Words can stop a meltdown.
Splinters of where we live can heal
a fissure. The expansion
of a sudden mystery, the heart
stunned into being. Words of another
nation, under bark, transformed.

The tree holds, ever after.

Lorna Dee Cervantes
4/6/11

"Strength" (7-Minute Poem For NaPoWriMo, 4/5)

2011-04-06T11:13:00.000-07:00

Strength (7-Minute Poem For NaPoWriMo, 4/5/11)

All I've ever had was strength.
I show it in the cracks. I smooth
out stone on stone, I sheen with use.

All I've ever known was shame
and philosophy: Plato's Republic,
The Birth of Tragedy, Young Werther's Sorrows...

I have an affinity with the sea,
my sailor's blood, my stance:
my wild stallion, the waves

I do not enter lightly. I moan
and creak, the leather of a slave.
I can take the heat; hell, a sudden parting.

I do not know. I hold
fast, the spirit text: the great
death inside us; strong, inside us.

Lorna Dee Cervantes
4/5/11

NaPoWriMo!! It's National Poetry Writing Month! Join Me In Writing A Poem A Day

2011-04-06T11:06:00.000-07:00

NaPoWriMo - Taking Ten For Poetry In April - Poem A Day

(Note: I'm reposting this with today's word or writing prompt. I'll post my poem tomorrow. Scroll down for the new word/s, and scroll down for latest posts.)

Hey all,

I'll be writing a poem a day for April again this year for National Poetry Writing Month and National Poetry Month. This year I'll be posting them here. I'll also be posting daily prompts for you to play along while I post my finished poem the next day. If you have any words or topic suggestions, working titles, etc., go ahead and post them in the comments. Otherwise, I'm just trying to see what comes out, ten lines a day or more.

And, as always, stay to play! Try it on your own blog. Sign up on the official NaPoWriMo site. Sow the seed of your next book. One poem a day keeps the critic away. Or something. Name it. Yea, NaPoWriMo!

I've gone to One Word in the past and just keep writing for 7 minutes. Hey, 7 minutes out of your day for poetry: who says you have no time to write? I type up whatever I've written in one minute (they have a timer) and post it on their site. This year I plan to catch up on my 100 Love Poems To Strangers project as well. But since you're playing along, I'll also be posting prompts.

Here's today's word:

EGO

And the word for 4/2 is:

GALAXY

And the word for 4/3 is:

PLANS

And the word for 4/4 is:

SUCCESS

And the word for 4/5 is:

STRENGTH

And the word for 4/6 is:

RADIATION

GO!

Lorna Dee

ACK!!! Upgrade Remorse!!

2011-04-04T23:59:00.000-07:00

ACK!! I just clicked the wrong button. I did not want to change my template!! Now my sidebars are messed up and I lost all my links! Help!! I can't seem to get it back to the way it was, especially my list of 100 blogs I follow and their respective "rooms" in my house. My recent post list looks like alphabet macaroni and it's late. Grrrrr....

Mercury in retrograde...

"Success" (7-Minute Poem For NaPoWriMo)

2011-04-04T23:01:00.000-07:00

Success (7-Minute Poem for NaPoWriMo)

There's no success like shadows,
like the sun losing the day to moon,
like certain holes in a sandy shore,
like rivulets of green algae banking
on a sunny beach, like basking marmots
above the treeline, like pregnancy.

We who fall silent at the ebb
of night, we who are not afraid
to be whole, we who strive to fill
an afternoon with teardrops, with joy,
with slender needles of medicinal sap,
with cure and sow, with litanies,

We make success in the way we move,
the way we feel about rain, about mud
before it turns to brick. We know sadness
in the fertile soil, in the cull and curry.
We are successful ever after. We are
sucking the cesspools dry, a curing peace.

Lorna Dee Cervantes
4/4/11

Lorna Dee Answers Questions From A Student at Lorna Dice

2011-04-04T22:31:00.000-07:00

Now that I'm back and have access again to my blogs, I'll be posting on my other "official" blog where I answer questions from students, teachers, critics, and others: Lorna Dice (Lorna Says). I just answered some general questions from an English student here.

I'll be posting some that I posted on Facebook a while ago on the poems, "Starfish" and "Love of My Flesh, Living Death." Ha, if I can find them. I'll also be catching up on long (LONG) overdue interviews.

So if you're here visiting for a school assignment, try me over there on my other blog, and search both blogs for answers to your questions first. See you there!

Where In The World Is Lorna Dee? April 5-8th, UC Riverside, Loyola Marymount University, 34th Annual Hispanic Women's Conference

2011-04-04T22:26:00.000-07:00

Spring Reading Schedule, April 5-8th, Los Angeles

Lorna Dee Cervantes

Tuesday, April 5, 2011
1:30–3 p.m.

Location: Arts Building 335
University of California, Riverside

Category: Reading
Description: One of the preeminent voices in Chicana literature and American poetry,
Lorna Dee Cervantes is a dynamic poet whose work draws tremendous power
from her struggles in the literary and political trenches. Her power is channeled
by a keen intellect and careful attention to craft, which allows her to explore the
boundaries between language and experience. Joy Harjo says of her poetry,
"Lorna Dee Cervantes is a daredevil... We are transfixed as she juggles rage,
cruelties, passion. There is no net. Seven generations uphold the trick of survival.No one is alone in this amazing act of love."

Cervantes' first book, Emplumada (University of Pittsburgh, 1981), was a
recipient of the American Book Award. Her second collection, From the Cables of
Genocide:Poems on Love and Hunger (Arte Público, 1991) was awarded the
Patterson Poetry Prize, the poetry prize of the Institute of Latin American
Writers, and the Latino Literature Award. Her most recent work, Drive: The First
Quartet, was published in 2006.

Sponsored by Chicano Student Programs, the Department of English, The Center for Ideas and Society, the College for Humanities, Arts, & Social Sciences, and MALCS de UCR.

For more information contact llasa001@ucr.edu

Open to: General Public
Admission: Free
Sponsor: English Department

Contact Information:
Lisette Lasater
x21456
llasa001@ucr.edu

___________________________________________________________________
Lecture: Lorna Dee Cervantes, Apr. 6

Lecture: Lorna Dee Cervantes

Date: Wednesday, April 6

Time: 4:30 p.m. - 6:30 p.m.

Description: Lecture

Location: Hannon Library, Von der Ahe Family Suite, 3rd floor
Loyola Marymount University
1 LMU Drive
Los Angeles, CA 90045

Admission: Admission and parking are free

Contact: Dr. Eliza Rodriquez y Gibson
Chicana/o Studies
erodri37@lmu.edu

More about this event:

Lorna Dee Cervantes will read and discuss her book, "The Poetry of Improbability: Art Activism & Beauty." Lorna Dee Cervantes is an internationally acclaimed poet.

Refreshments will be served.

________________________________
"Poetry Coffee House" with Lorna Dee Cervantes

34th Annual National Hispanic Women's Conference

Date: Friday, April 8

Time: 2 p.m. - 2:45 p.m.

Description: Poetry Reading & Workshop

Location: Salon 2, 1st Floor
Quiet Cannon
Montebello, CA

Contact: Tatiana Villanueva
Event Coordinator, Mexican American Opportunity Foundation
tvillanueva@maof.org

"Plans" (7-Minute Poem For NaPoWriMo)

2011-04-04T00:40:00.000-07:00

Plans (7-Minute Poem For NaPoWriMo)

What plans do the dead make?
They wile away in their silver linings.
They don't speak, even when spoken to.
Who would believe they matter?
They, who are so sorry and sorrowed.

Fortune today, dust tomorrow.
How many furtive longings? How much
their weight in pennies? Their well-made
beds, waiting in the ether. Royalty
or poverty, the results are always the same

ash. Ash in the ice-tray of forgiveness.
Ash in the spiral galaxy of love. Ash in
the core drum. Ash falling down. Ash
becoming a sea after tsunami.
Wet coal in the lump of the heart.

What plans after the wake
and rush, the sudden hush?

Ask.

Lorna Dee Cervantes
4/3/11

"Galaxy" (7-Minute Poem For NaPoWriMo)

2011-04-03T02:06:00.000-07:00

Galaxy (7-Minute Poem For NaPoWriMo)

Into your galaxy I fall
heartfirst, fear akimbo,
over and over the tumbling falls
of sensuous rivers inside me.

Take me to your forked places
where the tongue seeks refuge.
Take me into precious highways where
the macadam vanishes into layers of distance.

Lead me to your past, to your dream
sequences, to your black holes
of remembrance. I will mark the trail
with the breadcrumbs of knowledge.

This journey leaves only once. We
are the destination. Here in this sparkling
sea of sky, your shimmering eyes
weave a map of sighs, night whispers.

If I could feel you here: the slow swirl
of your ticking time, the windy whirl of
your breath panting above me, I would
be home, landed. I would plant my flag.

Lorna Dee Cervantes
4/2/11

"Ego" (7-Minute Poem For NaPoWriMo)

2011-04-02T13:03:00.000-07:00

Ego (7-Minute Poem For NaPoWriMo)

Don't go. Refresh yourself.
Be a river through the mesquite
forest, a single tree of wind.

Don't stop. Rehearse your
becoming on a stage of dead leaves.
Take the shell. Speak the entire emptiness.

Don't fall. Sleep in time's shadow.
Be a whale, bask above the tidal
wave. Be frothy and wild. Fly up.

Don't let go. Hold fast
to anger for an instant, love
for as many miles as she takes you.

Don't live alone. Embrace
the wee lives between the boards,
the many mice in the mind's larder.

Don't laugh alone. Tell!
Tell apart the loaves of bread
from the fishes. Be vicious to your sadness.

Don't remind yourself of others,
of lazy ashes in your days, of the way
we live: pomegranates, a single rubied seed.

Lorna Dee Cervantes
4/1/11

Big Poetry Giveaway! Get Your Hot Books of Poetry Now! Celebrate National Poetry Month With FREE Books of Poetry!

2011-04-01T16:07:00.000-07:00

I'll be participating in this year's BIG POETRY GIVEAWAY thanks to one of my favorite po-bloggers, Kelli Russell Agodon at "Book of Kells" (love that name!)

You can win one of my books of poetry along with another book by one of my favorite poets just by commenting below any time in the month of April, National Poetry Month. On May 1st I'll choose someone at random. I'm not yet sure which books. I'm tempted to choose based on who wins. I'll send both books to you absolutely FREE (my current favorite word.) ¡Órale! What do you have to lose but your shelf space?

Good way to give me a shout-out, too. I've missed you all as I've been shut-out of my blog for months until yesterday. But some of you know, I've been playing on Facebook all this time. Friend me there, while I still have about 20 friend spaces yet before reaching the limit. You can also "like" my fan page, and join my group, "I Took A Poetry Workshop With Lorna Dee Cervantes!" (Uh, anyone know how to post a "share" button for Facebook and Twitter on this page?)

"Angels And Saints" - Link To My Poem For ronnie burk (April 1, 1955-2003)

2011-04-01T15:16:00.000-07:00

"Angels and Saints", Poem For ronnie burk

Click the link to read my poem for my friend, Chicano poet & artist, ronne burk, and read about ronnie. (You can also just search my blog for "ronnie burk" to pull up other posts about him. He was a big part of the reason for me starting this blog six years ago: to keep alive the dead. Isn't that the impetus for all poetry? ronnie might add: to keep the planet alive! Gracias, ronnie. You won't be forgotten.

Where In The World Is Lorna? San Francisco TOMORROW, April 2, 8 pm at Precita Eyes Mural Arts Center, FREE Poetry Reading for MAPP

2011-04-01T13:19:00.000-07:00

I'll be reading for MAPP, The Mission Arts Performance Project, Saturday night, April 2, at 8 pm at the Precita Eyes Mural Arts and Visitors' Center located at 2981 24th Street in the heart The Mission. Come by and say hi, buy a book, buy a love poem for you or your love: I'll write one for as low as $10 and it will be published in my book, 100 Love Poems To Strangers. I don't read very often in The City, and as with all MAPP events, this was added at the last minute. Come tour The Mission, check out the other performances and art in the neighborhood, and stay for music and a wonderful art show by former Precita Eyes muralist, Selma Brown. The price is right, it's all FREE. See you there!

From "Angels & Reflections" by Selma Brown

100 THOUSAND POETS FOR CHANGE on September 24. Join us!

2011-04-01T13:04:00.000-07:00

The following is a message from Michael Rothenberg, re: 100 THOUSAND POETS FOR CHANGE, a global event taking place Saturday, September 24, 2011. Come raise your voices for CHANGE! I'll be reading and hopefully organizing something somewhere. Let me know if you'd like to be involved in San Francisco.

Lorna Dee Cervantes

_____________________________
Dear Friends of Big Bridge,

I am writing to you about 100 THOUSAND POETS FOR CHANGE. This is an event I have begun to organize on Facebook and I am now bringing to those of you who are not using Facebook.

100 THOUSAND POETS FOR CHANGE is a community action event scheduled for September 24, 2011, which will include readings, demonstrations, and concerts happening simultaneously throughout the world in the name of poetry and change. We have been working on this project for only two weeks and the response has been inspiring. So far over 12 countries and 25 cities have volunteered to organize an event.

Below, I am posting information on 100 THOUSAND POETS FOR CHANGE as it appeared on Facebook. I talk about “change” and “organizing” to give you some general ideas on how this event can work. If you are interested in organizing a local group, please contact me by e-mail: walterblue@bigbridge.org, or join us at Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=106999432715571, and “friend” me. In a couple of weeks I will be putting up a 100 THOUSAND POETS FOR CHANGE blog for this event where each local event will have its own event page with event information, and poems, journals, photos, videos from events around the world.

Please read the info below and if you have any more questions please feel free to contact me here at Big Bridge.

Thanks for join us!
Best,
Michael Rothenberg
Big Bridge www.bigbridge.org

100 THOUSAND POETS FOR CHANGE

Time: Saturday, September 24 · 11:30am - 11:30pm
Location:The event will takes place in many cities, at the same time and date, outdoors, and of course it will be televised.

Created By Michael Rothenberg, Terri Carrion

Do you want to join other poets around the USA and across the planet in a demonstration/ celebration of poetry to promote serious social and political change? If so sign up here and let's see if enough people are serious about an event like this. If enough people join this, then we can work on specifics, times, dates, descriptions, coordinate and make it real. This will be a good place to gather names and contacts for regional organization. Please post comments and ideas.

MORE ON 100 THOUSAND POETS for CHANGE: UPDATE, MARCH 27, 2011

There is a lot of information developing on this event. If you read some of the wall posts on the Facebook event pages you can stay current. But, people do have two major questions.

1) What kind of a change are we talking about?
2) I want to organize in my area. How do we begin to organize?

“What kind of CHANGE are we thinking about?”

The first order of change is for poets, writers, artists, anybody, to actually get together to create and perform, educate and demonstrate, simultaneously, with other communities around the world. This will change how we see our local community and the global community. We have all become incredibly alienated in recent years. We hardly know our neighbors down the street let alone our creative allies who live and share our concerns in other countries. We need to feel this kind of global solidarity. I think it will be empowering.

And of course there is the political/social change that many of us are talking about these days. There is trouble in the world. Wars, ecocide, the lack of affordable medical care, racism, the list goes on.

It appears that transformation towards a more sustainable world is a major concern and could be a global guiding principle for this event. Peace also seems to be a common cause. War is not sustainable. There is an increasing sense that we need to move forward and stop moving backwards. But I am trying not to be dogmatic. I am hoping that together we can develop our ideas of the "change/transformation" we are looking for as a group, and that each community group will decide their own specific area of focus for change for their particular event.

“I want to organize in my area. How do we begin to organize?”

100 Thousand Poets for Change will organize “participants” by local region, city, or state, and find individuals in each area who would like to organize their local event. Just let me know if you want to be an organizer by sending a message to me directly through Facebook, or to my e-mail: walterblue@bigbridge.org.

If you are an organizer for your community this means that first you will consider a location for the event and begin to contact people in your area who want to participate in the event. Participation means contacting the media, posting the event on the web, in calendars, newspapers, etc., reading poems, performing in general, supplying cupcakes and beer (it’s up to you), demonstrating, putting up an information table, inviting guest speakers, musicians, etc., organizing an art exhibit, and documenting the event (this is important, too), and cleaning up, of course.

Organizers and participants will create their own local event as an expression of who they are locally. Do they want a candlelight vigil or a circus, a march or a dance, do they want absolute silence, a group meditation on a main street; it’s up to the local organization. However, groups should be sure to hold some part of the event, if not all of it, outdoors, in public view. The point is to be seen and heard, not just stay behind closed walls. It is also important that the event be documented. Photos, videos, poems, journals, paintings! Documentation is crucial. The rest of the 100 Thousand Poets for Change want to hear what you have to say about change and enjoy your creativity too! The documentation will be shared through a blog/website that I will set up, a blog/website where groups can share and announce event information, as well as post photos, videos, poetry, art, and thoughts. But an event doesn’t have to involve tons of people. It can be just you (the organizer) and your pet, on a street corner, with a sign. Just let me know what you are planning! Every effort counts!

Each local organization determines what it wants to focus on, something broad like, peace, sustainability, justice, equality, or more specific causes like Health Care, or Freedom of Speech, or local environmental or social concerns that need attention in your particular area right now, etc. Organizations will then come up with a mission statement/manifesto that describes who they are and what they think and care about. When the whole event has taken place all the mission statements can be collected from around the world and, I hope, worked together into a grand statement of 100 Thousand Poets for Change.

That's quick, off the top of my head, summary of where we are now with 100 THOUSAND POETS FOR CHANGE.

Thank you for joining us!

Best, MR

YEA! Lorna Dee is back on the blog!!!

2011-04-01T00:03:00.001-07:00

Thanks, Ed! I can now sign into my blogs once more. Look for beau coup posts from me, Lorna Dee. Meanwhile, find me on Facebook if you haven't already: my regular page, my fan page, and my group, "I Took A Poetry Workshop With Lorna Dee!" Also, you can post to page to post your poems on "Poets Responding to SB 1070."

"Know the Names of Things"

2010-06-27T11:52:00.000-07:00

Know the Names of Things

for immigrants everywhere anytime

Know the names of things.

How 3+1 equals nada

in a barrio flat. How many

unknowns there are in a single

bottle of pills. How much

it costs to breath through

the nicotine, the anxiety,

the three times a million lost

nickels in the foreign exchange,

in a bushel of sterile seed.

Know the names of things.

How to live. How to love

the you in all. How to call

out to the impoverished ancestors.

How to feed a future. Call

it what you will. Call power

in a name. Name the world

to own it. Learn hammer

and sickle. Learn the many

names for drought. Name the

expedient past, the succumbing future.

Name what you will. Will what

you name. The power of the tsunami

in the syllables of truth, the reconstruction

of the hurricane in the uplifting vowels.

Learn the names of all the treaties

never honored by our government.

Name the dead, too.

Know the names of things.

How to count. Count the many ways

life changes life and death

changes nothing and never gives.

There is a way if you name

it. If you follow it the road

will come. Be the strings that hold

up this house of time held

by the wisdom of the abuelas

with words holding taut the strands.

In the beginning was an absence.

Name that, too.

Know the names of things.

How to tell the singer

from the song. How to swear

on a star, become the jury

of one. How to tell over

the cacophony of a thieving

crow. How to chant the mastery

of who enslaves whom, who orders

the gun, the bomb, the shock

and awesome truth. Name this, too.

Know the names of things:

auricle from ventricle, aorta

from vena cavae, arteries from

aurioles; all matters of the heart.

Save with the words for it.

Then be it, a savior

with your words. We,

the named, we, knowers

know the power, the power to name,

to see, to know, belongs

to the perceiver, the receiver

of knowledge — all in a name:

our name, your name, the stolen

names, the original names,

the slaughtered names, the slaughtering

names, names for The People for people

who need no names, who need food,

who need the crystal water

because 3+1 in a barrio flat

equals nada. Name this, too.

Know the names of things.

and heal.

6/11/10

Lorna Dee Cervantes

Unlawful Arrest With Undue Force of Young Latino Man at May Day March In San Francisco

2010-05-01T17:57:00.000-07:00

Today I witnessed the apparent illegal arrest with undue force of a young Latino protester in the May Day march in San Francisco. He was walking backwards and sideways on the side looking back at the marchers. We were on the second to last block of Mission before turning west and left to go to the City Plaza. We were on the side of the street with one way traffic only and all traffic was stopped on the street. We were all marching legally within the boundaries. The young man was very dark with curly black hair dressed in a brown shirt and dark jacket, maybe brown suede. He looked like he could be a student.

There were about four young Anglo-American looking men or older boys who were taken by officers and lined up against a low wall with a cyclone fence. They were sitting there or being taken there. The young dark man was walking alone with a backback and carrying another bag, like a camera bag. There was nothing else in his hands. At no time was he threatening or aggressive in any way. He was marching peacefully with the others.

A police officer ran up behind and pushed him violently, attempting to knock him off his feet. At the same time he grabbed his arm by the wrist, twisted it and pulled it up behind the young man. The young man screamed in pain and yelled, "Hey, I didn't do anything! I'm not doing anything!" as the officer proceeded to pull him by his arm and grabbed him around the neck with his other hand attempting to knock hm to the ground. The young man was crying out in pain, repeating that he "didn't do anything" and to "wait" while the officer slammed him against a tree. Two other officers ran up and grabbed him by the other arm. I could see that he was being pulled backwards by his twisted arm while another officer was pulling in the opposite direction, apparently for no other reason than to inflict pain. The young man was not resisting but he was trying to free his arm from the officer. Two other officers rushed him and knocked him to the cement where he hit his head as another officer fell on top of him with full force. At this time I could see that he was bruised and bleeding and looked very scared, on the ground with foru officers on top of him. He was silent and not resisting. Another officer began pulling items out of his backpack which he opened. This did not appear to be a legal search with due cause.

Other officers appeared with billy clubs out and one pushed me violently from the curb. I hadn't moved during this time. I was about 3 feet from the young man from beginning to end. Another officer began pushing me off the curb so that I lost balance. I hadn't moved. I had a right to stand there. I had a right to march there. I was being pushed for taking pictures of the apparently unlawful arrest. The first officer who pushed me placed his face in front of my camera blocking the view of the arrest and screamed at me to "Get out of my face" as I was moving my camera away from him but he kept pushing his face chest into me in an intimidating manner. At the same time, another officer was pushing a young woman, another witness to the arrest and force and she pushed back and the exchange became heated. I explained to the officers that I was not only an eye-witness to arrest and brutalization of an innocent unarmed citizen and possibly a minor, and that I was also a published writer and a professor. I also explained that I was within my rights to take photographs of the arrest of a fellow protester.

While this was going on, some people were urging people to clear the street and join the march. I gave my contact information as an eyewitness to one of the event monitors and joined the march which, by that time, had reached the rally at City Plaza. About forty officers were present, on bikes, motorcycles and on foot, lining the street and blocking the view as they lead about five young men away. The other four or five were Anglo American looking and were not brutalized in the same way as the young dark Latino -- at a legal march for immigrant worker rights and human rights for all.

I kept thinking of the march on the anniversary of Roe v.s. Wade, the "well dressed" young white man who was screaming at me that he wanted to kill me for my race and for my views. Where were the police then to deal with that assault and unlawful offense? Where were four officers knocking his head against the pavement? Can't imagine it, can you? I kept thinking of a young lawyer for an anti-nuke protest who was pushed, grabbed and knocked to the ground by four police officers who broke his glasses and had him in the same arm-hold and fear of having his arm broken, how he said that from that day after if a client says to him: "I didn't do anything" he would believe it.

The march was also very emotional for me. I'm glad I was wearing sunglasses to hide my tears the entire length, remembering marches in those same streets and in Berkeley 40 years ago. I was 15, same age as many of those around me. The families were so beautiful, the orgullo was so powerful, the gente obreros are so brave and the lucha is so just. As an educator who teaches on border issues besides creative writing, it is painful to me that so many do not know their own history. The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo ought to be standard reading and test material for obtaining a passport or drivers license or any other "proof of citizenship." As a Native American, I say, know your history; act right or GIVE IT BACK!

And, Officers, please, unlearn your fascist ways. Another way of keeping the peace is possible.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

All I could think of is that my son would have been there, walking along at the same place at this guy, the same height and weight and look. He could have been tackled from behind and had his arm pulled of the socket and had his head knocked against the pavement -- which could have killed him, all for doing nothing! All because he was there and looked Mexican while exercising his civil and political and moral rights.

Three Poems For the Earthquake

2010-04-17T08:32:00.000-07:00

Death Themes

Double your leisure

Double your death

Double the bodies

That died in the berths

Double the trouble

Of toil and rumble

Double the slaves

The meek and the humble

All the world's a death

Waiting to happen

All this death's a life

Hoping to remain

All of life asleep

In the supper

All of death alive

In the slumber

We walk through the shadow

Of the Valley of Oz

We are all behind the curtain

We are all because

Double your pleasure

Double your fun

Forget the bodies

In the body of one

All the world's a taste,

A refreshment; a waste

When Liberty's left alone

In a mirrored case

Lorna Dee Cervantes

6/27/09

For Haiti

3 million stories fall

an apocalypse away

the concrete structures fail

the palaces, the guard houses

the poverty pockets buckle

and strap

3 million stories

fall silent and silence the tongues

of those who stay — 3 million voices

rise singing in a dusty song of survival

a hymn to the Orishas, a single

story in a last breath — the people still

their hearts — the people open closed

hearts — the people need to speak

their stories, their ragged endings

the wings of will arise

Lorna Dee Cervantes

1/14/10

Insurance

"The greatest earthquake is poverty."

~ Miguel Robles, survivor of the Mexico City earthquake

The typical American man

doesn't care about Haiti.

The typical American man

doesn't care if Jerico

falls down on Chile.

The typical American paycheck

doesn't allow for donations

of the heart, doesn't count the fallen

or the blood drops of crushed

children or the buzz of the saw

on limbs or the long long wait.

The typical American fellow

wouldn't give water

to a mother and babe. The babe

on the arm of the typical American

male is a sight to behold, to hold,

but might not stop to care.

The usual type in America

texts ten dollars to fill a page

and the paychecks of the admin

while snorting up the rest.

The typical American man will not

be found alone in a jungle digging

out the dead and living dead.

He will not be found hauling

rails to drive the washed-out chasms.

He will not be discovered

with food, with water, with

water, with water, with water

so that a whole pueblo survives.

The normal man will not stand

and hold the shunt, the stent,

the IV to a new way of life.

Another world is possible.

When the rubble is cleaned

and the clearing of the dead

hearts and minds begins.

The typical American man

doesn't know we are

all American.

Lorna Dee Cervantes

3/25/10

April 6 - Luis and Susan Cervantes Day in San Francisco - Remembering My Father

2010-04-06T18:30:00.000-07:00

This was posted two years ago. We still live by your flame. 4/6/10

-------------------------------------------

Today, remembering my dad. He passed away 21 days after this proclamation was made in 2005. I light some sage, copal, and remember his light. He was a brilliant flame. He is still in our hearts.

Luis Cervantes -- Muralist Who Inspired Generations of Artists

--------------------------------------------------
Susan & Luis Cervantes Day in San Francisco - April 6, 2005

PROCLAMATION - City and County of San Francisco

Whereas, San Francisco recognizes the individual achievements of its residents, celebrates their contributions to the community and appreciates their rich legacies of ingenuity, creativity and innovation; and

Whereas, San Francisco owes a debt of gratitude to Susan and Luis Cervantes who established Precita Eyes Mural Arts and Visitors Center in 1977; more than 20,000 students and tourists have passed through their doors as the starting point for mural tours; and

Whereas, Precita Eyes, a non-profit multipurpose community arts organization, holds the distinction of being one of only three community mural centers in the United States; and

Whereas, with its deep rooted community ties, Precita Eyes has added to the beauty, culture and economic vibrancy of the Mission, while at the same time encouraging community residents to embrace all forms of artistic expression; and

Whereas, Precita Eyes offers mual and art classes for children and youth that enable them to develop their individuality and confidence through creative activities and to experience unifying, positive social interaction through collaboration; now

THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED, that I, Gavin Newsom, Mayor of the City and County of San Francisco, on the occasion of Precita Eyes' A Celebration of Community Mural Art, do hereby proclaim April 6, 2005 as...

SUSAN AND LUIS CERVANTES DAY IN SAN FRANCISCO!

IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto
set my hand and caused the Seal of the City
and County of San Francisco to be affixed.

Gavin Newsom, Mayor

--------------------------------------------------

http://lornadice.blogspot.com/2008/04/april-6-luis-and-susan-cervantes-day-in.html

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2005/05/02/BAGO2CIIFG1.DTL

http://www.carnaval.com/sf05/luis_cervantes.htm

http://lornadice.blogspot.com/2006/11/nothing-lasts-new-poem-for-my-fathers.html

http://www.precitaeyes.org/

http://www.susankcervantes.com

Made-Up Interviews With Imaginary Artists, by Alex Stein: Surrounding Himself With Geniuses (featuring ME, Lorna Dee Cervantes!)

2010-03-28T13:01:00.000-07:00

"Made-Up Interviews With Imaginary Artists," by Alex Stein: Surrounding himself with geniuses

By Anna Maria Basquez For the Camera

Posted: 03/27/2010 01:00:00 AM MDT

If you go

What Alex Stein will read from "Made-Up Interviews With Imaginary Artists"

When 8 p.m., Thu., Apr. 8

Where Benders Tavern, 314 E. 13th Ave., Denver

Info 303-861-7070

Boulder-based Author Alex Stein has tapped into the worlds of Chicana Poet Lorna Dee Cervantes and Author Joanne Greenberg among others, getting his readers closer to the way some of the creative and innovative leaders of the day think.

His latest book, "Made-Up Interviews With Imaginary Artists," is one he said he hopes will inspire readers to be more honest in their own self-expression by showing the fruits of interviews with several who already lead by example.

"(Readers) will learn that Lorna Dee Cervantes wed herself formally to the spirit of poetry during her teenage years in a ceremony in a parking lot, presided over by her deepest, secret self," Stein said. " How Pat Ament, to his continuing embarrassment, tore pictures of his favorite climbers out of library books so that he could be nearer to them, and then one day found himself climbing with some of these idols, looking into their real faces as they ascended together.

"How much like a dream one can live inside one's life.

"How a Cecilia Vicuna art exhibit at the Whitney Biennial was understood perfectly by the museum guard who attended it, such that in her absence he was able to explain it to a pair of callow, gum-snapping teenage girls, who palpably did not know, listening to him explain, that they were inside one of the miracles that art can create in the daily world."

"Made-Up Interviews With Imaginary Artists" meanwhile explores the interview as an art form and as a channel for getting people to register the message.

"The art of the interview is really the art of listening. A good interview is really an act of translation," he said.

The opening pages of Stein's work gives the reader a bird's-eye view of some of the most impressed-upon feelings from a student in his days studying for a master's degree in literature. It leads into his formation of a passion for exploring the interview itself as a medium of not just questioning, but listening.

He wants readers to glean that everything is a matter of perspective.

"There is nothing that can make us better than we are," Stein said. "Not honorary degrees, not Nobel prizes. It's a good thing to bear in mind."

With the book, he desired to bring readers, and himself, a little closer to a few notable "geniuses" of our time. Stein's interview subjects in the book include Pat Ament, Peter Grandbois and Cecilia Vicuna. The first part of the book consists of real interviews. The last part is imagined interviews with made-up subjects Stein said are much like himself.

"Especially Lorna Dee Cervantes and Cecilia Vicuna are geniuses with really strong streaks of bravery," Stein said. "I think it's good for people like that to be heard. I think honest, brave people are rare. I wrote the book mostly so I could be near people like that.

The interviewees, Stein said, were a good course in bravery for his own expression.

"That's just what happens when you're around people who are brave," he said. "The models you have around you are really all you have to weigh yourself against. These are people who teach, not doggedly but just by being themselves, how to express the self bravely and truthfully. That's very hard for me, but I feel an obligation when I see people like this to live up to these standards."

The book, Stein's third, also reaches out to readers as an exercise in sincerely listening to, caring about and registering what another has to say.

"It's important people that are aware that to hear somebody else is very difficult," he said. "It's something that has to be practiced, and it takes time and patience for people to hear each other and to listen to each other."

He also stretches to get a reader to grasp a better understanding of language.

"The way Lorna Dee Cervantes and the way Cecilia Vicuna speak is like music," Stein said. "They make themselves vulnerable. They feel that's okay. That human beings should be honest and vulnerable they can be examples of that kind of life."

Ai, There Will Never Be Another Like you, R.I.P.

2010-03-21T13:44:00.000-07:00

Here's what I just posted to my Facebook page:

Lorna Dee Cervantes

is crushed to hear from the unmeasurably talented, Jill Talbot that my best buddy & colleague while at CU has passed in OKL City. OKC! I was there! How didn't I know she was there, if she was there? Oh no, you bit**! Last thing I said to you live was: Now don't go & die on me owing me money! Someday I'm gonna need it." Say'n it 'cause you'd like it. I'll make hella sweet tea for you tonight, Ai. R.I.P. Poems live on

"Angels and Saints" (for ronnie burk, 1955-03)

2010-03-15T14:51:00.000-07:00

ronnie burk at MySpace

ANGELS AND SAINTS

for ronnie burk

Ronnie, they never knew you,
knew the volcano that was you
the Maui Zowie of your wizardry.
Ronnie, they never knew you,
knew the glue that was you
pasting it all together into a collage
of our shredded lives. They never knew
the fine art of you, the fire out
of you. You were the first outlaw.
You were the first out.
You were the first to get sick, the first
to heal us all with your words.
You were the first figure of the barrio.
You, the you they never knew,
what was slammed into the frame
of a not-nice picture. They never knew
the Tejano you, the hick wit you,
the sophisticated lit you, the grinning
through the bite of teeth you.
You were the first, ronnie,
to act out, to act up, to take
your heart into the streets.
You were at home here, ronnie, and
at Spirit with the voice of the sea.
You were a fathom too long,
a galaxy too far, a feeling
too close for the noose.
Ronnie, they never knew you,
knew the passion fruit nopal
that was your prickled heart,
never knew how they locked you
out on the balcony in your underwear
in the icy 'Bur'que night , and
left you there, a sleepless poet
before his first Floricanto. (Where
was la Unidad then, vatos?) Ronnie,
they never knew the real you. They knew
your loving but they never knew
your love. Ronnie, they never
knew you, the loco you, the brujo
you, the you you let loose in the crystal
madrugada. They never knew you.
But I knew you, ronnie. I know.
How well you did know
us then.

Lorna Dee Cervantes
6/26/08
San Francisco

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I'm remembering ronnie this fifth year anniversary of the blog. Ronnie was the impetus for beginning it, for writing for and to and of The Dead, beginning with ronnie. I'm remembering ronnie, too, or rather, he comes to me when I need him, holding my hand as I once clasped his in my own, trying, somehow to pass my strength on to him, to keep him on the planet just a little while longer, just so I could keep hearing those marvelous things coming out of that beautiful head. He was as close to a "Soul Mate" I've ever experienced, my in lak ech, my other I. I saw my beauty in him. Please join me in remembering him this 7th year of his passing. Remember all the Billie Holliday songs you can think of, and sing them loud with us: heartfelt; that's the only way ronnie knew to do things, con ganas. Gracias, ronnie, for our interesection. It was an honor to publish your 1st book.

You can read what I wrote then "The Dead Reux; Or, Remembering ronnie burk" You can also just search this blog for his name.

I'm staring out at the Pacific ocean he so loved, remembering him speaking of the ocean speaking to him once on a ship across Hawaii, how it called out to him for help, for salvation. He spoke of a lifeless swirling widening hole of dead sea that the ocean was showing him. "I'm dying," it said. That was decades before the scientists found a dead hole the size of Texas off the coast near Hawaii.

His advice to young poets: "Learn the mysteries of your ancestors. Go to the root, and you will be blown away at what you find."

"To feed the planet we'll probably all have to quit eating meat." ~ ronnie burk

Lorna Dee Cervantes Will Be Reading Poetry At Wilsey Court, 6 pm for the Event: Mission Muralismo - Muralistas Mujeres, Women Muralists In The Mission

2010-03-05T11:00:00.000-08:00

MURALISTAS! CULTURAL ENCOUNTERS: FIRST FRIDAY NIGHTS AT THE DE YOUNG

Friday, March 5, 2010
5:45pm - 8:45pm
de Young Museum, Golden Gate Park

On FRIDAY MARCH 5TH, the de Young Museum presents another night of music, performance, lectures, and programs in the ongoing series MISSION MURALISMO, in conjunction with the recently published book STREET ART SAN FRANCISCO: MISSION MURALISMO, edited by Annice Jacoby, foreword by Carlos Santana (Abrams, 2009).
The evening, which CELEBRATES WOMEN ALL OVER THE WORLD, features lectures by Annice Jacoby, Susan Greene, Juana Alicia & Maestrapeace, and Mona Caron, as well as live MUSIC by Pakistan’s treasure Riffat Sultana; a muralista community project organized in partnership with Precita Eyes Muralists, a book signing with multiple artists featured in Street Art San Francisco, and gorgeous Mission mural projections in Wilsey Court. Friday night promises to be another fantastic extravaganza following on the heels of the record-breaking February Carnaval event which 4,500 people attended. The expanded Mission Muralismo series is created in partnership with Precita Eyes Muralists as part of Cultural Encounters: Friday Nights at the de Young.

Lorna Dee Cervantes Reading TONIGHT at Univ. of Oklahoma - Y'all Come Down!

2010-03-02T09:28:00.000-08:00

Lorna Dee Cervantes reads for the Mark Allen Everett Poetry Series at the University of Oklahoma, TONIGHT, Tuesday March 2, at 7pm in Norman, Oklahoma. The reading will be held at the National Weather Center Auditorium (NE Corner Jenkins and Highway 9, OU Campus). A reception and book signing will follow.

For Chile, From Her Native Master, Pablo Neruda: "And the City Now Has Gone"

2010-02-28T11:54:00.000-08:00

AND THE CITY NOW HAS GONE

How the clock moves on, relentlessly,
with such assurance that it eats the years.
The days are small and transitory grapes,
the months grow faded, taken out of time.

It fades, it falls away, the moment, fired
by that implacable artillery-
and suddenly, only a year is left to us,
a month, a day, and death turns up in the diary.

No one could ever stop the water's flowing;
nor thought nor love has ever held it back.
It has run on through suns and other beings,
its passing rhythm signifying our death.

Until, in the end, we fall in time, exhausted,
and it takes us, and that's it. Then we are dead,
dragged off with no being left, no life, no darkness,

no dust, no words. That is what it comes to;
and in the city where we'll live no more,
all is left empty, our clothing and our pride.

-Pablo Neruda, trans. Alastair Reid

http://news.yahoo.com/video/world-15749633/18373464

Where In The World Is Lorna? 2010 Readings & Workshops Calendar

2010-02-26T15:43:00.001-08:00

(in progess, will be updated as we go)

Lorna Dee Cervantes Reading Calendar 2010

Saturday, Feb. 27, 10 am

"Building Bridges: The 1st Annual Latino Summit"
Intensive Poetry Workshop
St. Ignatius College Preparatory School
San Francisco, CA

Tuesday, March 2, 7pm

Mark Allen Everett Poetry Series
Poetry Reading
David L. Boren Auditorium at the National Weather Center
Oklahoma University (NE corner of Highway 9 & Jenkins)
Norman, OK

Friday, March 5, 5-8:45 (reading at 6 pm)
Cultural Encounters, First Fridays at the de Young Museum
Muralista Mujeres/ Women Muralists in The Mission and The World
Golden Gate park, San Francisco

Saturday, March 13, 11:30-1 pm

Split This Rock
Workshop: "Poesia Para la Gente/Writing to Save Lives"
(pending other readings, workshops in the area)
Washington, DC

Tuesday, March 16

Speak Art to Power
Poetry Reading for Women of Juarez
(pending other readings, workshops in area)
New York City

Saturday, March 27, 1-4 pm

Mills College
Intensive Poetry Workhop ($25)
(to be confirmed)
Oakland, CA

Sunday, March 28, 7pm

Muchas Voces Una Visión/ Many Voices One Vision
Poetry Reading ($10) at La Peña
Benefit for Relief Efforts In Haiti by Doctors Without Borders
Berkeley, CA

Friday, April 9, 7pm
Poetry Reading
ConTinta Celebration
AWP: Assoc. of Writers & Writing Programs
Denver, CO

Saturday, April 17

Kearny St. Intergenerational/ Interdisciplinary
Writers Lab
(time, location TBA)
San Francisco, CA

Monday, April 19

Poetry Reading
NYC Poetry Fest (to be confirmed)
(pending other workshops, readings in area)
New York City/ Bronx

Saturday, April 24

Kearny St. Intergenerational/ Interdisciplinary
Writers Lab
(time, location TBA)
San Francisco, CA

Sunday, May 1

Poetry Reading & Workshop
Writers Conference
(time, location TBA)
Chicago, ILL

Saturday, May 29

American Language Association
"Something Symbolic Going On"
Panel presentation on Elena Viramontes
(time, location TBA)

Sunday, June 20 - 26

VONA poetry workshop
(price, time, location, TBA)
San Francisco, CA

Saturday, October 16

Poetry Reading
(time, location TBA)
(pending other readings, workshops in area)
New York City

Saturday, October 30

Poetry Reading Hike
(time, location TBA)
(pending other readings, workshops in area)
Tuscaloosa, AL

"On Happiness"

2010-02-26T04:28:00.001-08:00

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1251711/Every-dolphins-gone-surfin-Stunning-pictures-hundreds-glide-monster-waves.html

On Happiness

Dolphins taught the apes to speak
To take comfort in the wait for waves
To flow together in an arch of forgiveness
To pay attention to the past, past
Envy into the hilarity of a new revelation

Joy is the natural state, a constitution
Written with the rags of war, the pangs
Of indecision and a decisive dividing
On the plate. Bliss is the ride in, the free fall
All together now, singing in the element of birds.

Lorna Dee Cervantes
2/21/10

Statement on the occasion of Mission Latina/o poets honoring Diane di Prima's inauguration as Poet Laureate of San Francisco, 2/20/10

2010-02-26T04:24:00.000-08:00

Statement on the occasion of Mission Latina/o poets honoring Diane diPrima's inauguration as Poet Laureate of San Francisco, 2/20/10

I suspect I was invited to participate for my connection to The Mission, poetry, and the early days of MCC, and as soon as I was asked I said to myself: "Oh, you have NO idea!" I spoke of staring into the hideous op-art carpet and sinking into the earth only to find myself when Diane spoke back in '69? '70? at San Jose State. I'm pretty sure I was 16 years old and that she read with Victor Hernández Cruz & Elías Hruska-Cortez. As amazing as they were, they were just the set-up for the grand slam of Diane for me that night. I had come to hear her, having already been familiar with her poetry and other revolutionary letters. I heard her whenever I could. I know it was her voice I heard and spoke with in my poetry for years, maybe to this day--minus the NY accent. She was reading from the beginning of Loba, her ongoing opus. It was healing as well as liberating to be transformed by a woman and her totem. I shadowed her for decades afterward when I'd come to The Mission to see my father. It led me to strange poetry movie nights and other happenings in cavernous dreamscape spaces in the early '70s. It kept me in the library and bookstores just keeping up with her work. It brought me back to Third World poetry and the women's collective. It brought me to the Lower East Side. And, about 15 years later it brought me into her livingroom with her friends and family: poets (white men) I had long admired and read in the "poetry world" who would on any other place on earth not have paid any attention to me at all. She made them listen. And, finally, it led me to Boulder where I was a tenured Associate Professor of English for almost 20 years where I had the pleasure of her company and voice at the nearby Naropa Institute, the creative writing program she had a hand in founding. I have always heard her voice. I am proud, as a second generation Native San Franciscan, to know that my city has the good sense and impeccable taste to name her, Diane diPrima, my Poet Laureate.

Sincerely,

Lorna Dee Cervantes

3181 Mission St., PMB 16
San Francisco, CA 94110

LornaDeeCervantes@me.com
http://lornadice.blogspot.com
http://www.redroom.com/author/lorna-dee-cervantes
http://www.facebook.com/lornadeecervantes

Skype: Lorna-Dee-Cervantes

"Poem For Diane" (Celebrating Diane di Prima's Inauguration as Poet Laureate of San Francisco)

2010-02-23T07:46:00.000-08:00

POEM FOR DIANE

"When spoken (poetry) cuts a shape in time"
~ Diane di Prima

La Loba, you taught me well,
how to survive the hell
of an intelligent woman.
Taught me to spell
my way to her-story, taught
me the world was a word
with out El_Otro, Loba,
you taught me to cherish
my whiskers, my attuned ears,
my long smokey looks when
La Loba just wants to play.
You taught me the mouse
is more than she has at hand,
that many mouths can save an other.
How to howl, Loba, you let me
howl, with your tiny hands
and your enormous heart,
with your no-bullshit vocabulary
and your steel-snap mind,
with your pacing, your waiting,
your ever cool, oh so cool way
of loving, La Lobita, you taught
me by being you. You taught
me the world was more than words
and your word, all.

Lorna Dee Cervantes
02/19/10

(on the occasion of Mission Latina/o poets honoring Diane di Prima's inauguration as Poet Laureate of San Francisco)

Lorna Dee's Intensive Yoga/Poetry/Spirituality Workshop TODAY in San Jose! Come on down! As the Spirit Moves You

2010-02-20T09:46:00.000-08:00

Come to my intensive yoga/poetry/Spirituality wkshp TODAY, 1-4, 510 S. First in SJ. Bring $25, 15-20 copies of a poem to wkshp, writing materials for poems & notes, comfortable clothing to sit, recline or stretch. Uh, & tip$$ for the poet as this is an unpaid gig & a benefit for scholarships from the Art of Living Fellowship's City Leadership Corps. This is a rare opportunity for me to discuss Spirit, Spirituality, language, breath & the conditions & experience of faith as it relates to poetry unfolding in the world and the art of living. I'm looking forward to it. (This is a non-denominational, non-religious, all-levels, all-ages, bilingual poetry workshop.) Just come with an open mind and heart and be prepared to write! You don't even have to move... as the Spirit moves you.
-----------------
Lorna Dee Cervantes Writing Workshop

Scholarship Fundraiser for Art of Living: City Leadership Corps
Type:
Education - Workshop
Date:
Saturday, February 20, 2010
Time:
1:00pm - 4:00pm
Location:
San Jose, CA
Street:
510 S. First St.
City/Town:
San Jose, CA
View Map
Description

LORNA DEE CERVANTES will be teaching a one-day writing workshop for ALL backgrounds and skill levels on Saturday, February 20th at MACLA in downtown San José. The workshop, from 1 - 4 p.m., costs $25.

The fundraiser is for the Art of Living's City Leadership Corps Fellowship.

DO NOT MISS this rare opportunity! PLEASE COME THROUGH!

EVEN IF you are not going to take the workshop, come by and leave a donation or buy some YUMMY home baked goods : )

Contact: Melissa Lozano
Art of Living's City Leadership Corps Fellow
Mills College
mlozano@mills.edu

Contact: Adriana Garcia
MAIZ Movimiento de Acción, Inspirando Servicio
maiz_mex@hotmail.com

Lorna Dee Cervantes is an award-winning Chicana-Native American poet who is considered one of the major Chicana poets of the past 40 years. She was born in 1954 in California and grew up in San Jose, speaking English exclusively. This was strictly enforced by her parents, who allowed only English to be spoken at home by her and her brother. This was to avoid the racism and genocide that was occurring in her community at that time. Lorna is a dynamic poet who draws tremendous power from her struggles in the literary and political trenches. She has received two National Endowment for the Arts poetry fellowships, a prestigious Lila Wallace Readers Digest Fellowship, and two Pushcart Prizes.
_____________________________

Contact me at me dot COMmercial suffix at LornaDeeCervantes if you'd like to host your own poetry workshops in your own space. HAVE POEMS. WILL TRAVEL. I'm especially interested in DC & NY venues beginning to mid-March. $25 per person minimum depending upon travel expenses: make it a fundraiser or house party. Contact me about readings, presentations, workshops at your university, college or other venue. (I'm beginning to give up on colleges, etc., as they don't pay for months, especially in CA, but hey, I'm a yogi, I'm flexible.) I'll be posting my travel & readings schedule soon. Poetry On!

How Far Is Heaven?

2010-02-20T09:45:00.001-08:00

Latina/o Poets Celebrate San Francisco's New Poet Laureate, Diane di Prima, TONIGHT, 6 pm (7 reading) w/ Lorna Dee Cervantes & former SF Laureates

2010-02-19T02:26:00.000-08:00

Fog In Pacifica (Haiku)

2010-02-19T02:16:00.001-08:00

Fog In Pacifica

Noisy neighbors. Now
Starlings replace hermit thrush
Nesting. I miss you.

2/18/10

St. Valentine's Day In San Francisco (more Mission Haiku)

2010-02-19T01:57:00.000-08:00

ST. VALENTINE'S DAY IN SAN FRANCISCO (more Mission Haiku)

Happy Japanese
Guy dances and composes
Down 24th Street

___

New red Camaro
Hangs a left because it can
Home for Mom today!

___

Love Hurts

Couples walk their dogs
Hot capuccinos in hand
Kissing and dripping

___

People think real hard
On this street days before pay
Men sell red roses

___

Redondo

Sunday's best in Spring
Everyone's a flower post rain
Two men pass a can

Two men pass a can
Everyone's a flower post rain
Sunday best in Spring

___

In Passing

Running man, tiny
Black shorts, holds stopwatch, lights past
Hip hop Adidas

___

So many flowers today!
People pass dressed Sunday best
One's in love wear red

___

Foreigners today
Walk slow past the church. Future
Artists in strollers

___

Fast

Curly-haired guy eats
A banana, walks past old
Guy who looks like him

___

Men with ice cream cones,
Chicharron: hard to believe
The blood on the streets

___

Someone's looking. All
Think of it. The pregnant one
Rubbing her belly

___

Yellow taxi takes
Or brings back home. MUNI bus
Just misses the hit

___

"This Sucks"

Sweeping up the trash
On Valentine's Day, cute
Guy makes it an art

___

On Harrison

The pelota man
Runs fast past Humphry Slocombe,
Heavy cart tinkling

___

Humphry Slocombe sells
Jalapeño mango scoops
Same as man from cart

___

Dogs bother the old
Woman dressed for church. Blond Grrrl
Doesn't apologize

___

A single man sings
Drunkenly down the street
"AH-MERRY-KAH!" loud

___

Oompah tuba sounds
From the taquería blare
Ranchera love songs

___

Too many drunk guys
I think I'll go home to my
Dog tonight: True Love

2/14/10

* note: Any resemblance to any person, living or dead, is purely poetic; but do let me know if you see yourself.

Did A Black Haitian Ex-Slave Immigrant From New Orleans Rebuild San Francisco in 6 years after the 1906 Earthquake? The Edison of Bernal Heights

2010-02-02T13:21:00.000-08:00

I am now officially 100% on Mission, in the The Mission and on a mission. Exciting news in the last week. Major breakthroughs in all areas. True serendipity. What treasures you find when you least expect it, when you aren't even looking: the power of intent. "God is alive; Magic is afoot" as Buffy St. Marie sang it. Ecopoetics is not a literary style. It's a way of knowing, a way of being, a way of "seeing." It's how the multiverse gets things done. We have an advantage most matter doesn't, we have hands and we can move.

As for the tease? I can prove it. And there couldn't be a better time for it. Chronicle Books? Oprah Winfrey. It's a story I will love to tell.

HAPPY NEW NOW! HAVE A VERY MERRY EVER!

2009-12-31T15:50:00.000-08:00

... and I resolve to be a better blogger in the future with a whole new look. (Heck, I may even reclam my domain name.) Meanwhile, join me on Facebook for work and play and edumacation.

Peace on Earth. Good will to women and all the men in their lives. 2012 means: Time for change. Change for Time.

Happy New Now! Have a very Merry Ever!

Where In The World Is Lorna? TONIGHT w/ Francisco X. Alarcon

2009-12-05T09:58:00.000-08:00

Join me, Lorna Dee Cervantes & Francisco X. Alarcón who will be reading his poems from the new book featuring Precita Eyes Muralists & maestra muralists Susan Cervantes & JuanAlicia, San Francisco Street Art: Mission Muralismo TONIGHT, 8 pm. Come MAPP crawl, stop into The City's only neighborhood Visitors Center at Precita Eyes. Come spread the vision. Come get your book, especially artists & writers who are in it who will be signing. The De Young event was a smash success. I couldn't even get in the room where the artists were signing. People were turned away at the door for over-crowding (an art museum!) As Susan says, "If it's hanging in a museum it's not a mural." Come experience the real thing. Come early, walk around. Then come eat & look & listen. Come move. Community art moves. Community art creates the VISION we want to see. Come support community art & artists in all ways we walk.

Great gifts for all ages: cool clothes, fine art, affordable prints, calendars, cards, PAINT for your heart's rainbow. And where else are you going to get Homes 4 Homies?

Francisco will also have his exquisite bilingual children's books available.

And I'll have LOVE FOR SALE. Personalized original love poems to you or yours for the holidays: an affordable gift that keeps on giving. All will be published in my book, 100 Love Poems to Strangers.

----------------------------
Date: Saturday, December 5th
Time: 7:00PM - 11:00PM
Place: Precita Eyes Mural Arts and Visitors Center, 2981 24th street, San Francisco, CA
Cost: FREE!

Precita Eyes Muralists are proudly hosting the Holiday Artist’s Bazaar, a fun event to participate in the mural art community and shop for some truly unique gifts by local artists this holiday season. Precita Eyes Muralists partners with Mission Arts and Performance Project (http://www.facebook.com/l/970c9;www.sfmapp.com ) on Saturday, December 5th for a very special night of music by DJ Special K, live poetry readings by Lorna Dee Cervantes and Francisco X. Alarcón, a book-signing by Precita Eyes Muralists for Street Art San Francisco: Mission Muralismo, t-shirts and original mural merchandise, and affordable original artwork for sale by Precita Eyes Muralists and friends. ADMISSION IS FREE!!!!!!

Precita Eyes Contact:

Ariana Terrence
ariana_terrence@yahoo.com
(415) http://www.facebook.com/l/970c9;285-2285www.precitaeyes.org

Where In The World Is Lorna? Revised Fall/Winter Schedule: Sonoma State University, TODAY, 1-3:30pm

2009-11-20T00:10:00.000-08:00

Nov. 20

Sonoma State University, Friday, 11/20, 1:00 - 3:40 pm, Stevenson Hall, room 2001; Rohnert Park, CA.

Nov. 28

Rosas en el Mar: Lorna Dee Cervantes, MamaCoatl, Avotcja, and others. 6-10 pm, Dance Mission Theater, 24th Street & Mission, San Francisco, in honor of INTERNATIONAL MONTH FOR THE ELIMINATION OF VIOLENCE TOWARD WOMEN AND GIRLS.

Dec. 2

Lorna Dee Cervantes w/ Francisco Alarcón & José Montoya at Stanford University. Dr. Yvonne Yarbro-Bejerano's class.

Dec. 5

Lorna Dee Cervantes w/ Francisco Alarcón, DJ, bar & more: book party for STREET ART SAN FRANCISCO: MISSION MURALISMO; artists signing books! Mural art show, MAPP event, Friday, 7-11 pm, at Precita Eyes Muralists Center, 2981 24th Street (& Harrison), San Francisco.

Where In the World is Lorna? Lorna Dee Cervantes Fall Poetry Readings Calendar

2009-11-06T14:41:00.000-08:00

Lorna Dee Cervantes Readings:

Nov. 6

• Kickoff Extravaganza: “Mission Muralismo: The HEART of the Mission, A Celebration of Art and Community” celebrates Street Art San Francisco: Mission Muralismo, edited by Annice Jacoby with a foreword by Carlos Santana, in partnership with Precita Eyes Muralists; this will be one of the most ambitious book signing events ever hosted by the de Young, featuring many of the artists, photographers, and writers showcased in the book, with live music by Dr. Loco’s Rockin’ Jalepeño Band; poetry and performances by Lorna Dee Cervantes, Stephen Cervantes, Francisco X, Lori B. (Bloustein), Andrew Voigt; emceed by Jael de Prado, Arts Host, Current TV; talks by Street Art San Francisco editor Annice Jacoby and artist/writer Jaime Cortez, projections of thousands of archival and current Mission murals including a ten-year span of the “deAppropriation” wall, art activities for people of all ages and more, Café and no-host bar, deYoung Museum of Fine Art, 50 Hagiwara Tea Garden Drive, SF, program takes place in the free zone of the museum, 5:30-8:45 (www.famsf.org/deyoung)

Nov. 7

Fund raiser for the Haight Ashbury Literary Journal features poetry readings by Lorna Dee Cervantes, Drive the First Quartet: New Poems 1980-2005, California Poet Laureate emeritus Al Young, Something About the Blues, Q.R. Hand Jr., Whose Really Blues, and Laura J. Moore, F-Stein, hosted by devorah major, food and silent auction, All Saints Church, 1350 Waller Street, between Masonic and Ashbury, SF, $10 sliding scale, 7:00-10:00 (Gail Mitchell: 415/863-4878)

Nov. 11

El Camino College Compton Center, Dept. of English presents Lorna Dee Cervantes, Wednesday, November 11, 2009, at 11 a.m. in the Student Lounge. 1111 E. Artesia Boulevard, Compton, CA

Nov. 12-14

Intensive Poetry Workshops with Lorna Dee Cervantes. South Central Community Farm, Los Angeles. TBA. $25 Contact LornaDeeCervantes@mac.com

Nov. 15

Fire and Ink: An Anthology of Social Action Writing reading at Bookshop Santa Cruz, 7-9 pm. Santa Cruz, CA.

Nov. 16

Lorna Dee Cervantes reading for the Creative Writing and Social Action Program, Cal. State University at Monterey Bay, Nov. 16th, 7-9 pm.

Nov. 28

Rosas en el Mar, Lorna Dee Cervantes, MamaCoatl and others. 6-10 pm, Dance Mission Theater, 24th Street & Mission, San Francisco.

Dec. 2

Lorna Dee Cervantes at Stanford University. Dr. Yvonne Yarbro-Bejerano's class.

15 Years Ago Today...

2009-09-29T15:31:00.000-07:00

...my one and only baby was born. HAPPY BIRTHDAY! May all your passages be smooth.

I'm back in Boulder, feeling odd and strange to be back for a few days after 2 years and a few months away. Looking at my office again, I'm trying not to feel overwhelmed at the task of moving. Just gathering my papers together will take a LONG LONG TIME. (hmm, my capital letters agree.) I might consider looking for a house swap or sublet or house-sitting situation here in Boulder while I pack.I was just going to sell things. But I still like them. Ha, well. Time to get steak and lobster. No internet at the old house.

Then, I'm off to Alabama, hitting UAB and 4 other local colleges before headed down to Mobile where I'll be offering a workshop on Saturday, Oct. 10 and attending the Gulf Coast Poetry Stage at the Writers Festival. Then, perhaps, extra special secret mission in Memphis.

Then, back for a reading at San Francisco City College Oct. 15, and performing at the Indigenous Peoples Night of Resistance at UC Berkeley on Oct. 16. Then, it's Compton Community College the morning of Nov. 11. Join me!

Susan Cervantes, Master Muralist, Gets Her Own Day In SF. Precita Eyes Muralists Desperately Need A Van!

2009-09-23T15:54:00.000-07:00

September 19, 2009, Susan Kelk Cervantes Day in San Francisco!

My step-mother, Susan Kelk Cervantes, was awarded a proclamation from Mayor Newson Gavin at the Precita Eyes Muralists Gala, "Community Art From the Heart" for her many contributions to the culture and quality of life in San Francisco.

You can sign up now for the rare opportunity to take a Master Class from her in mural painting, Oct. 1 - Nov. 1: http://www.precitaeyes.org/cmpw.html.

Now, Precita Eyes Muralists and SUSAN CERVANTES DEPERATELY NEEDS A VAN to replace their old one which broke down, never to run again, Saturday afternoon right before the Gala. A van is necessary to get supplies and people to mural sites. PLEASE, if anyone has or knows anyone who has a van they can donate to the Center, please pass on this information. The contribution is tax-deductible. You will be helping to help make community art from the heart possible. Contact me or Susan at the center as soon as possible at precitaeyes.org.

100-Word Love Poems to Strangers: Poems for Francisco X. Alarcon On His 20th Anniversary

2009-09-23T10:48:00.000-07:00

100-Word Love Poem to Javier

for Francísco X. Alarcón

I was alone in shadows,
a thief in the shadows,
a regiment of one in
the shadow of you on
the night you appeared. You
grasped me from the shadows
like the migra grabs lives
out of the transatlantic water.
I am no longer drowning
in the shadow of you.
I am alive to your
shadow, to your flank and
file. I am no longer
groveling in anyone's shadow while
yours lies luxuriously in my
sun. I am enormous with
shadows until the sum of
your tongue. You lick up
the galaxies in my me,
my confidant, compañero de sí.

8-15-09
Lorna Dee Cervantes

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Luna: 100-Word Love Poem to Francísco

For Javier on the 20th Anniversary

All my life I have longed
to touch it, to place
my hands upon its face,
to look up into stars
and rise above it all.
I have longed to tell,
to moonquest and shadow envy,
to lay down in silver
glow, to expand into my
hands. I have touched earth.
I have handled the mud
and daub. I have waited
too long to become what
I am. Before your glow
I was no one at
all. I was a lone
supernova waiting for your comet
as an animal awaits in
the shadow of your eclipse—
Moonlove, longing for your face!

8/25/09
Lorna Dee Cervantes

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
You, too, can get some love. Send $10 or more to:

Lorna Dee Cervantes
3181 Mission Street, #16
San Francisco, CA 94110

(or drop a check in the mailbox at 2983 24th Street, next to Precita Eyes Muralists Center, SF)

And I'll write you a love poem, to you or yours. Hey, I'll even write one to your little dog, right, Linda? Include your name, name of love, email, date, and what you'd like the poem to express. You can also add any images, phrases, thoughts, including words for the senses: touch, taste, sight, sound, smell; and even if there's any particular form you'd like. Or, you can just say, right me a poem however you want, as Francisco and Javier did. Be sure and include your mailing address so I can send you a hand-written copy of the poem on nice paper. Guaranteed to be valuable. And, don't be surprised if you and your poem get in the book, 100 LOVE POEMS TO STRANGERS.

Love,

Lorna Dee

LornaDeeCervantes at mac (you know what)

Lorna Dee Cervantes: Top Poetry Blog Award

2009-09-23T10:44:00.000-07:00

Top poetry Blogs

Thanks to The Daily Reviewer and all who nominated me and voted.

Precita Eyes Muralists Gala Sat. Night, 6:30 @ SOMArts - Support Community Art From the Heart

2009-09-18T23:09:00.000-07:00

Please Join Precita Eyes Muralists

Saturday, September 19, 2009
6:30 - 9:30 PM
SOMArts Cultural Center
934 Brannan Street (near 8th Street)
San Francisco

"Community Art from the Heart"

Book Premiere: "Street Art San Francisco: Mission Muralismo"
Silent and Live Auction, SS Participatory Musical Performance

Contributing Celebrities: Mayor Gavin Newsom,
Peter Berg, Senator Dianne Feinstein, Judy Goldhaft,
Charlie Varon, Geoff Hoyle

GENERAL TICKETS $35 · VIP TICKETS $50

For advanced tickets & more information, call (415) 285-2287 or visit www.precitaeyes.org. Tickets available now or at the door.

Precita Eyes Muralists Arts & Visitors Center
2981 24th Street, San Francisco, CA, 94110

Where In The World Is Lorna? Writers With Drinks TONIGHT @ The MakeOut Room, 22nd. St., SF, 7:30-9:30. Next Sat. @ Precita Eyes Muralists Gala, 9/19

2009-09-12T12:33:00.000-07:00

Come on out and get your own original personalized love poem to you or yours written by Lorna Dee Cervantes for her book, 100 LOVE POEMS TO STRANGER. $10+

--------------------------------
Writers With Drinks, the city's most alternative reading series according to American Airlines' inflight magazine, is back!

When: Saturday, September 12, 2009, 7:30 to 9:30 PM
Who: Michelle Richmond, John Shirley, Jeremy Adam Smith, Lorna Dee Cervantes and Christy Chan
Where: The Make Out Room, 3225 22nd. St. between Mission and Valencia, San Francisco
How much: $3 to $5 sliding scale, all proceeds benefit the CSC.

About the readers/performers:

Michelle Richmond is the author of the New York Times and international bestseller The Year of Fog, which was a Kirkus Reviews top pick for reading groups, one of Library Journal's Best Books of 2007, a Washington Post A-List selection, and a San Francisco Chronicle Notable book. Her most recent novel is No One You Know, and she's also the author of The Girl In The Fall-Away Dress and Dream Of The Blue Room. Her stories and essays have appeared in Glimmer Train, Playboy, Oxford American, The Believer, Salon.com, The Kenyon Review, The Missouri Review, and elsewhere. She received the 2009 Hillsdale Award for Fiction from the Fellowship of Southern Writers and the 2006 Mississippi Review Fiction Prize.

John Shirley's most recent books include Bleak History, the lost cyberpunk classic Black Glass, and the story collection Living Shadows. He's also the author of Demons, Crawlers, Spider Moon, Transmaniacon, City Come-Walkin', Eclipse, Eclipse Penumbra, and Eclipse Corona, The Brigade, A Splendid Chaos, Three-Ring Psychus, Dracula in Love, Cellars, In Darkness Waiting, Wetbones and Silicon Embrace. He's written lyrics for the Blue Öyster Cult and episodes of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, VR5 and Poltergeist.

Jeremy Adam Smith is the author of The Daddy Shift, and co-editor of the forthcoming books The Compassionate Instinct and Are We Born Racist?. He's senior editor of Greater Good magazine, published by the U.C. Berkeley Greater Good Science Center, and founder of Daddy Dialectic, a group blog that explores the experiences of twenty-first-century dads. His essays, short stories, and articles on parenting, popular culture, urban life, and politics have appeared in The Nation, BusinessWeek.com, Mothering, San Francisco Bay Guardian, San Francisco Chronicle, Utne Reader, Wired, and numerous other periodicals and books.

Lorna Dee Cervantes' poetry collection From the Cables of Genocide: Poems on Love and Hunger was awarded the Patterson Poetry Prize, the poetry prize of the Institute of Latin American Writers, and the Latino Literature Award. She founded a literary journal and a small press, both called Mango. Her poetry has appeared in hundreds of literary journals, plus the anthologies Daughters of the Fifth Sun, ¡Floricanto Sí! A Collection of Latina Poetry, Unsettling America: An Anthology of Contemporary Multicultural Poetry, and No More Masks!

Christy Chan is a Virginia-born filmmaker and writer whose film Wash 'n' Fold has appeared in many film festivals. She's also done storytelling at the Porchlight Reading Series and elsewhere. She's an affiliate artist at Sausalito's Headland Center For The Arts.

About Writers With Drinks:
Writers With Drinks has won "Best Literary Night" from the SF Bay Guardian readers' poll five years in a row and was named "Best Literary Drinking" by the SF Weekly. The spoken word "variety show" mixes genres to raise money for local worthy causes. The award-winning show includes poetry, stand-up comedy, science fiction, fantasy, romance, mystery, literary fiction, erotica, memoir, zines and blogs in a freewheeling format.

Hostess Charlie Jane Anders blogs about science fiction and futurism at io9.com. She's the author of the Lambda Award-winning Choir Boy (2005 Soft Skull Press) and the co-editor, with Annalee Newitz, of She's Such A Geek (Seal Press 2007). She also publishes other magazine.

A Love Poem to El Tecolote

2009-08-27T19:00:00.000-07:00

A Love Poem To El Tecolote On The 39th Anniversary
for Eva Martínez/Juán Gonzáles?/you?/auction?/in honor of Her Honor, Sotomayor?

El Tecolote means death
to some. It's hoot to take you
away. For the people of this land
it brings life, life lessons
from the dead. Messages from
the ancestors within this ground.

For the others
Minerva's owl sits
on the left shoulder
of Justice, Athena
under its gentled heels.
She flies out
in search of the true
and good, truth and beauty,
the twin towers of the law
(while the Angel of History turns away.)

Here, on earth,
on this earth we are blessed
with the presence of El Tecolote:
vision, accuracy, attentiveness,
and a gentled, gentling Spirit.

Under the reddening gardens
of love, on the earth
and under the sun, under
the spread wings of her peace
and feast, una tecolote is
on a mission in The Mission.

And I remember
another time under the trees,
another season when I was in
my summer. I sat
on the hillside, a head
full of Hegel and Kant;
a tenuous thread that stitched
me to my raza loosening
and pulling, snug
and lax as a purled sweater
made strong by my mother's hand.
I pondered my existence, the irony,
alive in an interesting time
researching and documenting
my demise and slaughter:
so many hundreds of millions of native peoples
and chicanada I couldn't count
(the bodies would reach the moon.)

I found a pearl
without a hole, a fossilized
frog egg or roe: opalescent
(many-colored) with the translucent white
color of a single drop of semen.
It was then that I read
it, el tecolote there
in front of me in the field
where I had just found
my tiny treasure. There
on the spot to remind me
of something or someone
there, alive or dead,
living or in another matter.
No matter. El tecolote,
so important to my people,
auspicious and sealed
in waxy plumage. Giant
owl, law of the land,
justice on the wing.

I could have reached out
and stroked it. I put
my arm around it, tried,
so familiar its face,
our long look of recognition,
the turning away
to take in the beauty
of the land
despite the books
of destruction
between us.

You are like this owl.
For 39 years (40 years
of resistance within 517), bearer
of missives from the
true and good, of truth
and beauty, with accuracy,
attentiveness and una visión,
a gentling gentle espíritu
in the community,
ever vigilant for justice,
fierce and relentless
in the hunt, you have been Connector
Between Worlds; Bringer of News
of the living and dead across
a split hemisphere
and the gulf between the many
for whom life
no se vale nada
and the few who own
the world, I am thankful
for your presence. Sigue.

8/23/09
Lorna Dee Cervantes

My Life According to Pablo Neruda

2009-08-25T01:14:00.000-07:00

Thanks to Sesshu Foster for the following meme. Spread it around!

My Life According to Pablo Neruda

Using only POEM titles from ONE POET, answer these questions. Pass it on to 12 (or a million) people you like. You can't use the poet I used. Do not repeat a title. Repost as "My Life According to (POET)."

Are you a male or female?
Brown and Agile Child

Describe yourself:
Enigmas

How do you feel:
I'm Explaining Some Things

Describe where you currently live:
In My Sky At Twilight

If you could go anywhere, where would you go:
The Heights of Macchu Picchu

Your favorite form of transportation:
Poetry

What's the weather like:
A Song of Despair

Favorite time of day:
Leaning Into The Afternoons

Your relationships:
The Light Wraps You

Your fear:
Nothing But Death

What is the best advice you have to give:
Love

If you could change your name, you would change it to:
Water
(or Magellanic Penguin)

My soul's present condition:
Tonight I Can Write

Acteal Assassins Released From Prison!

2009-08-24T01:25:00.000-07:00

This news just in. Some of you know my long "Coffee" poem on this murder.

What is wrong with the world today is that a few own it.

~ LDC

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Date: Sun, Aug 23, 2009 at 8:49 PM
Subject: Mexico Week In Review: 08.17-08.23
To:

Mexico Week In Review: 08.17-08.23
=================================================================
Published since 1994, 'Mexico Week In Review' is a service of the
Committee of Indigenous Solidarity (CIS). CIS is a Washington, D.C.
based activist group committed to the ongoing struggles of Indigenous
peoples in the Americas. CIS is actively supporting the struggles
of the Indigenous peoples of Mexico while simultaneously combating
related structures of oppression within our own communities.

To view newsletter archives, visit:
http://lists.mutualaid.org/pipermail/mexico-week/

"Para Todos, Todo; Para Nosotros Nada"
=================================================================

ACTEAL UPDATE I: ASSASSINS RELEASED FROM PRISON; WITNESSES THREATENED

In an unprecedented ruling that overturned a lower court on
legalistic rather than constitutional grounds, the Supreme Court
released 20 prisoners serving time for the infamous Acteal massacre
in which paramilitaries gunned down 45 indigenous members of Las
Abejas, a pacifist group, on December 22, 1997. At least 30
additional paramilitary members will be released in coming days as
Justices complete paperwork. In its 4-1 decision, the Supreme Court
ignored eye witness evidence from survivors, focusing instead on
mismanagement of the investigation by the Federal Attorney General
and fabrication of evidence by presiding judges. "This tribunal is
not absolving anyone of guilt," claimed Justice Jose Ramon Cossio.
"We determined that the complainants did not receive due process,
which is not equivalent to a pronouncement of innocence." However,
dozens of paramilitary members, many who confessed to their crimes,
are now free, and some have threatened to return to seek revenge
against survivors of the massacre who testified against them. Human
rights groups universally criticized the decision on three grounds:
confessed assassins were released from prison, eye witnesses are now
in danger, and the intellectual authors of the massacre have never
been brought to justice.

Religious leaders affiliated with both the PRI and PAN organized the
legal defense of the paramilitaries under the Center for Economic
Research and Teaching (CIDE). CIDE is suing the Fray Bartolome Human
Rights Center, community leaders from Mitziton, and Hermann
Bellinghausen, reporter from La Jornada, for defamation of character.
The religious leaders are affiliated with the Eagle's Wings and the
Army of God, evangelical groups who claim as members the
paramilitaries who carried out the Acteal massacre.

Source: Mexico Solidarity Network Weekly News Summary: 08/03-16
====

ACTEAL UPDATE II: AMNESTY SAYS NEW INVESTIGATION IS ESSENTIAL

The Mexican authorities must begin a new independent investigation
into the Acteal massacre in order to ensure that all those
responsible are brought to justice, said Amnesty International. The
statement follows the Mexican Supreme Court's decision to release 20
of those convicted for the Acteal massacre, in Chiapas state, where
45 Tzotzil Indigenous people were killed in 1997. The prisoners were
released on the grounds of irregularities in the collection of
evidence during the investigation and trial.

"This is yet another example of the serious deficiencies of the
Mexican justice system, which seems to be incapable of investigating,
prosecuting and punishing through a fair trial those responsible for
human rights violations," said Rupert Knox, Mexico researcher at
Amnesty International.

According to information obtained by Amnesty International, the
irregularities in the investigation into the Acteal case and into
many others were apparent from the beginning and led to unsound
convictions that could be quashed, leaving the culprits unpunished.

On several occasions, Amnesty International has denounced the
investigation carried out by the Federal Attorney General's Office
(Procuraduría General de la República, PGR) into the Acteal case as
flawed and continues to urge the authorities to conduct an exhaustive
investigation, with all the guarantees necessary to establish the
truth and responsibilities at all levels, including the role of the
senior officials and members of the army suspected of involvement in
the massacre by failing to prevent it or by acquiescing with the
perpetrators.

"It is essential to immediately clarify exactly what happened in
Acteal, to punish those responsible, after a fair trial, and to
provide reparations," said Rupert Knox. "Without justice, the
authorities are condemning the community to the danger of more
violence."

Background Information
On 22 December 1997, in Acteal, Chenalhó municipality, Chiapas State,
the authorities armed members of the illegal armed or paramilitary
groups responsible for the killings and failed to prevent the
massacre despite ample opportunity. The investigation into the Acteal
massacre by the PGR resulted in the conviction of approximately 80
indigenous individuals from neighboring communities directly involved
in the attack. Fourteen junior public officials were convicted and
served sentences of between three and eight years for murder and
wounding by omission or for carrying firearms supposedly for the
exclusive use of the army. However, no senior official or member of
the army has ever been held to account for their suspected
involvement in the case.

Source: Amnesty International Press Release: 08/17
====

Getting To Know You/Or, Facing Facebook: Another Meme From Me to You

2009-08-05T14:05:00.000-07:00

getting to know you...

I've deserted you. I know that. I've been meaning to write. You mean a lot to me. Thank you for being you and for your presence. But, frankly, after the divorce two years ago, it's all become very personal at last. It's harder not to feel someone reading over my shoulder beside the fact that that's the point. You know I love you.

I have to say that I am, by nature, a bloody hermit.

But come and visit me when I'm not at home at (say it) Facebook where I hang out and play. Part work, part fun, part distraction, part practical and a way to keep all those little slips of paper in one place, and most part sound serendipity. It reminds me of the novelist, Frances Jose Farmer, who wrote the Riverworld series about a river along which everyone who ever lived is alive again. And they interact. Begin again. Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain) teams up with a neanderthal with psychic powers and meets Cyrano de Bergerac and they build stuff like airplanes across the river.

We will reach the other side. And soon.

Meanwhile, won't you come out and play?

Here's a sample, posted last night/this morning.

Provecho!
-----------------------------
Getting to Know You

If you've been tagged or you are reading this, you have the honor of copying all these goofy questions, writing your own response, and tagging 25 other victims. You have to tag me so really you just need 24 more people. If I tagged you, it's because I want to know more about you - but not in a creepy stalker kind of way. And nothing is to be assumed by the order of the tagging.

To do this, go to “notes” under tabs on your profile page, paste these instructions in the body of the note, type your title as "Getting to know each other!", tag 25 people including me (tagging is done in the right hand corner of the app) then click publish.

1. What time did you get up this morning?
Around noon. But I went to bed around 7am.

2. How do you like your steak?
On the cow.

3. What was the last film you saw at the cinema?

Oddball films, "strange sinima", everything from "Welcome to LA" from the 50s to a film about Sri Lankan buddhism. I go to Stehen Parr's on Capp Street. I hate seeing movies by myself in a theater, and this is more like hanging out at an eccentric friend's house with a bunch of projectors and 10,000 movies (literally.) Last time I saw a movie in a theater was with my son who's been back in Boulder for months (sob), so maybe one of the Depp pirate movies, or the second to last Harry Potter movie. Sad, huh?

4. What is your favorite TV show?

I don't own or watch tv. But I follow Ugly Betty online, and a handful of others, mostly the ones about very smart people. Or, Hell's Kitchen, going, "I can do that!"

5. If you could live anywhere in the world where would it be?
Rollin' in my sweet baby's arms.

6. What did you have for breakfast?
Spinach and egg whites.

7. What is your favorite cuisine?
Crosscultural, with at least 3 different regional or ethnic influences. Organic, of course.

8. What foods do you dislike?

At age 13 I figured my 1984 menu for torture, from apps to dessert: raddish & turnips w/ wasabi dressing & black walnuts, borsht (beet soup) w/ rye bread, brussell sprouts, lima beans, eggplant, fried liver and onions, butterscotch pudding out of the box. The menu still stands. (shudder)

9. Favorite place to eat?
In bed with company. (don't ask). Favorite way to eat? Cross-legged.

10. Favorite dressing?
Mango.

11. What kind of vehicle do you drive?
Sheer will-power.

12. What are your favorite clothes?

Something black. Currently, my little blue palm tree dress w/ black leggings and my black hoodie that makes me look I joined an Aztec biker clan.

13. Where would you visit if you had the chance?
Macchu Picchu. Haha, Carlos Santana.

14. Cup 1/2 empty or 1/2 full?
Full with emptiness after I drank part, gave part to the parched & watered a plant with the rest.

15. Where would you want to retire?

Uh, I think I am retired, home in the Bay Area. Or, a writer never retires. Or, it's a thin line between self-employed and unemployment. Or, give me a gig, please.

16. Favorite time of day?
Dusk.

17. Where were you born?
I left my placenta in San Francisco.

18. What is your favorite sport to watch?

Used to be men's swimming when I was young, hot & horny. (Wait a minute, that's now.) I don't watch much, much less sports. I like the Olympics, though.

19. Who do you think will not tag you back?
Philip

20. Person you expect to tag you back first?
You.

21. Who are you most curious about their responses to this?
Everyone. All writers are nosey.

22. Bird watcher?

Haha, with a book like Emplumada? I'd love a bird-watcher as a mate. I could get into it, minus the goofy clothes. Sure, I'm a bird-watcher. They watch me back, too.

23. Are you a morning person or a night person?
Night. But I usually wake up early. "I wake to sleep and take my waking slow." ~ Dylan Thomas

24. Do you have any pets?

A dog & cat in Boulder, who may not be "mine" anymore. A little "terrorer" in Pacifica. All rescued, the dog in Boulder rescued from Isla Mujeres.

25. Any new and exciting news you'd like to share?

"It's none of your business." ~ Grandma. Actually, a new book of poetry from Wings Press in production, a critical work about my poetry from same publisher, and I'm almost done with the young adult book, BEST IN THE WORLD.

26. What did you want to be when you were little?
An herpetologist.

27. What is your best childhood memory?
I'll go with Mine's answer: "good childhood memory? hmm..."

28. Are you a cat or dog person?
I AM a cat. A dog-loving feline.

29. Are you looking for love?

"None of your business!" ~ Grandma. (I'm afraid the answer to that will appear on my literary tombstone, and be the topic of a couple of dissertations. Sigh) One of my favorite quotes from childhood, "Make your heart a nest and love will come." Author unknown. I found the obscure book of Jewish-American fiction in a Goodwill box.

30. Always wear your seat belt?
Yes. But it always makes me think of my Most Beloved Ex who would always remind me, sadly.

31. Been in a car accident?
No. Wait. I was hit from behind while in a taxi, very minor but upsetting.

32. Any pet peeves?

Nazi's & fascists; although, I wouldn't call it a pet or a peeve. Oh, yeah, typos or out-right poor grammar in the newspaper; it's becoming almost unbearable to read anymore.

33. Favorite pizza toppings?
Spinach, feta, garlic, basil, black olive, artichoke hearts & mozzerella on spelt crust. Mmm, now I'm hungry.

34. Favorite flower?
Outside: yellow daffodils (makes me think of Wordsworth); inside cut flower: stargazer lilies.

35. Favorite ice cream?
Balsamic caramel from the place on Harrison & 24th St.

36. Favorite fast food restaurant?
The tamale lady.

37. How many times did you fail your driver's test?

Once and only. Instead I got a D+ in the compulsory driver's ed class because I swore on my mother's body that I had no intention of ever driving a car. I only failed out of creative non-cooperation. I got a perfect score on the written exam.

38. From whom did you get your last email?
Eva Martinez.

39. Which store would you choose to max out your credit card?
Some independent bookstore. Haha, bike shop. Maybe the Apple Store. Oops, wait, I don't have a credit card to max.

40. Do anything spontaneous lately?
Always. Daily. The after I do whatever it is I like to keep doing it. At heart, I'm a creature of habit.

41. Like your job?
I'll go with Mine's answer once again: "i do. if i didn't, i'd be jobless :) " And, I am. Got one to spare?

42. Broccolli?
Fixident?

43. What was your favorite vacation?
Chicanas don't do vacations. Best place to travel: Isla Mujeres & the Yucatan in general.

44. Last person you went out to dinner with?
Dave Dike.

45. What are you listening to right now?

Listening to the sounds of silence (rare in The Mission at this hour.) "Hello silence, my old friend...." I was listening to old doo wop girl groups from the early 60s.

46. What is your favorite color?
Pale teal, the universal color of the universe.

47. How many tattoos do you have?
None, I don't like to mess with my symmetry.

48. How many are you tagging for this quiz?
I have no idea. I have almost 2000 from which to bug.

49. What time did you finish this quiz?
1:21 am.

------------------------
And, speaking of symmetry and because tomorrow's my birthday (Hiroshima Day, newsreels of bomb victims after every party), I'm adding

50. What are you doing for your birthday?"

I have no idea.

Where In The World Is Lorna? Benefit for El Tecolote on 24th St. TONIGHT!

2009-08-01T12:33:00.000-07:00

Join us TONIGHT, Aug. 1st, 6-10 pm., for another music & poetry benefit for EL TECOLOTE community newspaper with me, Lorna Dee Cervantes, Avotcja, Alfonso Texidor, and others with music by MANICATO. Help keep the media free for free people: SUPPORT EL TECOLOTE! This is a MAPP event. Come and perceive performance en La Misión!

Get a love poem written for you or yours by Lorna Dee Cervantes, $10+ with half going to El Tecolote. Get in my book: 100 Love Poems To Strangers.

And, catch me, Lorna Dee, at Avotcja's birthday bash at La Peña in Berkeley tomorrow night, Aug. 2.

Still Time to Register for Lorna Dee Cervantes's Intensive Poetry Workshop This Sunday, 7/12, 10-4 pm, Live Oak; 7/14 Reading in Bookshop Santa Cruz

2009-07-10T10:32:00.001-07:00

Now Is Your Chance to Sign Up for the Poetry Workshop with Lorna Dee Cervantes
Sunday, July 12, 2009, 10:00 AM to 4:00 PM. At a private residence in Live Oak near Capitola.
Lorna Dee Cervantes is an internationally acclaimed Chicana poet from San José, California. Her poetry has appeared in nearly 200 anthologies and textbooks, including The Norton Anthologies of Modern, American, English, Contemporary & Women’s Poetry, and in hundreds of literary magazines. She founded and directed “Floricanto Colorado,” showcasing Xicano & Xicana literature in Denver and surrounding school districts, which, among other events, helped to bring about the proclamation of “Abelardo ‘Lalo’ Delgado Day in Denver.” The recipient of two NEA Fellowship Grants for poetry, several California and Colorado State grants, and a Pushcart Prize for Best Poem, she was recently a finalist for Poet Laureate of Colorado, along with Reg Saner and Mary Crow, who holds the position.
Cervantes holds an A.B.D. in the History of Consciousness. Her first collection of poetry to appear in 15 years is Drive: The First Quartet (Wings Press, Jan. 2006). She is currently Associate Professor of English at the University of Colorado in Boulder where she is finishing sick-leave and beginning a sabbatical to complete her book of literary nonfiction, I Know Why the Quetzals Die: An Education. She is presently confounded by the prospect of peddling her screenplay, Pigmeat: The Life and Times of Memphis Minnie, a 20-year project, to Oprah.

The workshop will include writing new work and response to a poem brought in by each participant. Participants should bring to the workshop 14 copies of the poem for which response is desired. They should also send that poem and four others as an email attachment by Friday, July 10, indicating which one is for response.

Cost: $50. Limited to 13 participants. Advance registration and payment required. To reserve a place, call Adela Najarro at (831) 600-7319. Email: adelanajarro@comcast.net. Checks made out to Poetry Santa Cruz should be mailed to the address below. Call first to make sure there is room. Then send in your check to hold your place.

Adela Najarro
1610 Thompson Ave.
Santa Cruz, CA 95062

Where In The World Is Lorna? To Quote Michael Jackson...

2009-07-04T15:49:00.000-07:00

I'll be there.

Alfred Arteaga (May 3, 1950-July 4, 2008)

2009-07-04T15:17:00.000-07:00

"The sorrow of war inside a soldier's heart was in a strange way similar to the sorrow of love. It was a kind of nostalgia, like the immense sadness of a world at dusk. It was a sadness, a missing, a pain which could send one soaring back into the past. The sorrow of the battlefield could not normally be pinpointed to one particular event, or even one person. If you are focused on any one event it would soon become a tearing pain."

~ Bao Ninh, THE SORROW OF WAR: A Novel of North Vietnam

He would have hated
Dying on the 4th. How sad
He'd say. And then he'd laugh.

His last words to me:

"We could drive home together. I'll tell you some lies."

Rest in color, mi companero.

Alfred Arteaga

May 3, 1950-July 4, 2008

Fourth of July In The Mission

2009-07-04T15:13:00.000-07:00

Fourth of July In The Mission

for Alfred Arteaga

Fireworks and sirens
A little girl screams, "Daddy!"
Cries. You died last year

Everyone going
A pink velveteen jumpsuit
She's already gone

Because you loved me
All the colors remind me
Of ones you wanted

Where is hummingbird?
You loved like that: a bright
Awakening. You?

Too soon. Your laughter
On this morning an echo, a trace
Derrida's stammer

You would have hated
Dying on the 4th. How sad
You'd say, and then laugh

How lit up I was
That first foto, your return
From the dead. Again

For you I would have
Dyed my hair, magenta or
Chartreuse, would have dyed

Not so morose, your
Memory, last words to me
"I'll tell you some lies"

Why didn't I go?
"We could drive home together"
Would have been our last

Discolándia
Open. Manú o Maná
I'll buy one for you

Today I'll toast to
Revolution at Sunrise
Watch men with your hair

This Fourth of July
I'll think of you, relove you
Fireworks and sirens

7/4/09

Michael Jackson: Defense Rests

2009-06-25T18:37:00.000-07:00

This is a poem I wrote in May, 2005, right after Michael Jackson's acquittal and after a collage portrait of Michael Jackson by Rosie O'Donnell which is no longer available. I thought I'd post it here again. RIP. LDC
http://lornadice.blogspot.com/2005/05/michael-jackson-defense-rests-mixed.html

------------------------------------------------------------------------
Michael Jackson: 'defense rests' (a mixed media on wood, a 3x5 Portrait)

~~~~~(from a portrait by the artist, Rosie O'Donnell)

You, laid out like a crazy
pathwork quilt on a bordered bed, a number
stamped in the left-hand pocket: "to prison,
with love." They got yours
slapped on like brown pigment,
the stain of your famous face
in caricature, a caricature of Am I Blue,
Little Boy? Little bouy, (blue?)
bobbing in the photos, the snap
shot of you, a graffittied plaque against
the Real McCoy. Perpetrator
of a Love Supreme fractured
against the pawl. Against the pale
portraits of a king, recessed
in flame and flourish, hides a checker
board past flaring in the distance
between a father and his dancing
son.... Between the sheets, a child's love
lies. Between the press, the next morning,
of the palate knife, centuries aged,
some duotone of passion and burn, some law
writ in the land and heart, that forgiven
species. And health: the child. What lies
ahead?

c May 27, 2005 by Lorna Dee Cervantes
All rights reserved between consenting adults in the privacy of your own home.

Ecopoetics: A Poet's Way of Knowledge, Intensive Poetry Workshop with Lorna Dee Cervantes, Sat., 6/27, Wash., DC

2009-06-22T12:23:00.000-07:00

Split This Rock and the Sunday Kind of Love reading series invite you to participate in a writing workshop with Lorna Dee Cervantes (who is reading at Sunday Kind of Love on Sunday the 21), Saturday, June 27, from 1-4 pm. Thanks to support from the DC Commission on Arts and Humanities, the cost is $25. The workshop is open to all levels of writing from beginning to advanced—and will be geared towards helping you generate new work. (Our next and final writing workshop of the season will be in August with Terrance Hayes... stay tuned for more details on that).

Register today; send an email to melissa.dcpaw@gmail.com.

Workshop Description: Ecopoetics: A Poet's Way of Knowledge

There are about as many ways to write a poem as there are people on the planet. In poetry, as in love, there are no absolutes, and that's the only absolute. So, how does one make sense of the plethora? How, when faced with the whole enchilada, does one go about the process? For poetry is a process, above all else. As Coleridge once wrote, "Poetry is the pleasurable activity of the journey itself."

In this workshop we will map out the journey by dividing the poetic universe (multiverse) into four distinct phases of the creative/critical process: GENERATION, SELECTION, Re-VISION, and CRITICAL EVALUATION. Much the way we splay out the patterns on a globe into east, south, west and north in order to get anywhere, no individual phase is more important than another and each has its own distinct character and unique phenomena. We will participate in exercises designed to match each phase of the process - rather than focus undue or premature attention upon poetry as product. We will discuss and consider many roads leading us there, to the finished poem ("finished" in the orgasmic sense rather than as executioner or, worse, as taxidermist.) We should, by the end of the day, come away with at least 4 new poems and a sense of our own patterns and patterning (for better or worse) and we will acquire a new toolbox of techniques and methods, a new confidence and playfulness, a new sense of our own strengths and weaknesses as writers, and maybe even become acquainted with our own inner critic as well as become accustomed to the sound of our voice as well as our own individual "Voice" as a poet.

Each workshop will be unique to its participants. This workshop respects all and expects such from participants. Expect diversity. Expect to learn how to pleasure yourself - so to speak.

Lorna Dee Cervantes is the author of DRIVE: The First Quartet (Wing Press, 2006), From the Cables of Genocide: Poems on Love and Hunger (Arte Público Press, 1991) and Emplumada (1981), which won an American Book Award. Her work has been included in many anthologies including Unsettling America: An Anthology of Contemporary Multicultural Poetry (eds. Maria Mazziotti Gillan and Jennifer Gillan, 1994), No More Masks! An Anthology of Twentieth-Century Women Poets (ed. Florence Howe, 1993), and After Aztlan: Latino Poets of the Nineties (ed. Ray González, 1992). In 1995 she received a Lila Wallace-Reader's Digest Writers' Award.

Where In the World Is Lorna? Berkeley City College TONIGHT 7:30 6/19 w/ Al Young & Busboys and Poets DC 6/21, wkshp 6/27 Split This Rock, DC

2009-06-19T09:35:00.000-07:00

Join me tonight as Al Young and I kick off the Summer Creative Writing Intensive at Berkeley City College, June 19, 20, 21 and then on-line for six weeks. Spend the summer exploring poetry, play and fiction writing, earn 3 units of transferable college credit and still travel.

Friday, June 19 at 7:30-9:30pm reading and discussion byprofessional writers: poet and musician Al Young, former Poet Laureate of California and author of numerous books including _Coastal Evenings and Inland Afternoons_ and _Something about the Blues_and poet, publisher and cultural critic Lorna Dee Cevantes, _Emplumada_ and _From the Cables of Genocide: Poems on Love and Hunger_.

Sign up for English 10, Creative Writing taught by Sharon Coleman, MFA in
Poetics, editor at Poetry Flash, poet and essayist, or English 70: Autobiography
into Creative Writing taught by Robyn Brooks, MFA in English and Creative Writing (with a focus in Poetry), poet and playwright. Cost is $60 for California residents. For Information, email:
scoleman@peralta.edu or rbrooks@peralta.edu. You must sign up in advance: www.peralta.edu or at Berkeley City College, 2050 Center Street, Berkeley (one half block from Downtown Berkeley BART)

--------------------------------

Washington, DC: June 21st, 4-6 pm., Father's Day (Bring your dad! Buy him a love poem from me to him!) - "A Sunday Kind of Love" at Bus-Boys and Poets with my favorite poet (I don't know how she buses), Reb Livingston! Join us for good eats and good poetry. Guaranteed to be hot and spicy in the Langston Room.

Intensive Poetry Workshop: "Ecopoetics, A Writer's Way of Knowledge" With Lorna Dee Cervantes, June 27th, the following Saturday, 1-4 pm. in Washington, DC for Split This Rock. Sign-up info to follow; or, come to the reading!

--------------------------------

July 12th: Intensive Poetry Workshop with Lorna Dee Cervantes in Santa Cruz, 10 am - 3 or 4. Info to follow. Don't miss this rare opportunity, thanks to Poetry Santa Cruz which also presents:

Lorna Dee Cervantes and Francisco Alarcon, Tuesday, July 14 at 7:30 PM, Bookshop Santa Cruz, 1520 Pacific Avenue, Santa Cruz. $3 suggested donation to Poetry Santa Cruz.

Come and buy my love. I'll write you a personalized love poem for whomever, whatever, or, just for you. Hey, it's all for the book... 100 LOVE POEMS TO STRANGERS.

--------------------------------

Your gig? Book me now! Have Poems. Will Travel. I'm looking for whatever in the East: DC, VA, NYC, NY. I'll be staying near NW VA, flying in an out of DC or train out of VA. I can stay through early July.

Also: COLORADO. Come on, homies. Boulder? I still need to move, and, frankly, haven't been able to afford it.

I'll be in Alabama the first week of October.

I'm available anytime for anything ASAP.

AND, I have a new book! 100 100-WORD LOVE POEMS maybe from my favorite press... (shhh, announcement to follow.)

I'm producing 150 self-designed books hand-stitched in signatures in its own gift box. Desperate times require desperate measures, requires love. These are lovingly produced and all about love. Desperate price of $10 each. $12.50 to mail ($15+ if you're nice.) Send by snail to:

Lorna Dee Cervantes
3181 Mission Street, #16
San Francisco, CA 94110

I may even write you a hay(na)ku on each one.

$25 for a signed copy of DRIVE: The First Quartet (while they last!)

Email: I don't like to post it due to the bots. Just send to my full name, don't forget the dee, at MAC, the usual dot and the typical COMmercial domain. You can also send to same AT ME and the usual. Don't ask. They changed. It's all the same. It's all good. Hope to hear from you soon. Or, see you there!

Lorna Dee's Keynote Address to El Sausal Middle School Promotion Ceremony, 6/10, Salinas, CA

2009-06-11T15:00:00.000-07:00

Keynote Address to El Sausal Middle School Promotion Ceremony,
Salinas, California, held at Hartnell College, June 10, 2009

8th grade was the worst year of my life. I'm fifty-four now. Perhaps when I'm 86 I'll have a worse year than 1968. That year nothing happened and everything happened.

(sings): "Willow, weep for me./ Willow, weep for me./ Bend your branches down,/ down to the ground and cover me."

Yeah, I liked that goofy song. I wanted the willow to bend down and cover me. I saw myself in the willow trees that grew along the creeks and empty lots. Skinny, but strong. I liked to think I had a changing beauty, too, just like that willow tree growing green to yellow to brown and back to lime-colored swishing in the wind.

To bend, but never break. That's what the willow represents to me. El Sausal, a sacred tree to my native California ancestors who wove baskets and fishing gear from its leaves and limbs. Adaptable, able to change with the conditions and forces. To bend, but never break.

I come here today to wish you the Spirit of the willow; The Spirit of change; The Spirit of strength; The willow's protection; To tell you, as a poet once told me, when he was 86: "It gets better."

It gets better. 8th grade was the worse year of my life. Bad things happened. But people change. I changed. And you CAN change for the better. I learned that you may not be able to change what happens to you, but you can change how you're going to react. You can change what you become.

I became a poet. Maybe because I liked that song (sings): "When the shadows fall/ hear me, Willow,/ and weep for me." Maybe because the poets I read always seemed to be writing songs that wept for me.

You can weep. You can bend. You can change for your friends. You can change for your family. You can change for yourself. You can change for the better. You can't change somebody else. But you can set an example, just like the willow sets: el sausal, fuerte y suave; To be strong and never break; To do right; To hold.

You will hold. This is just one of many promotions. You are kids of el sausal, the willow. You may bend, but never break. You have seen nothing and you have seen everything. And, just like the willow tree, the kids of El Sausal will grow strong and give back.

Thank you for inviting me.

(shares closing poem written in 8th grade):

THINKING

I think I grew up last year
or maybe today is just a phase
like autumn's bright red foliage
just before winter's death.
Sometimes I think that life is nothing
but one big phase waiting for the next
and death is what you have
when you run out of phases.
I think that maybe I did grow up
some.

Fall, 1968

Lorna Dee Cervantes
June 10, 2009

Where In The World Is Lorna? Berk. Com. Coll. w/ AL YOUNG! 6/19, DC: Bus-Boys & Poets, 4-6 pm, 6/21 & wkshp 6/27; Santa Cruz wkshp 7/12, 7/14

2009-06-09T10:42:00.000-07:00

Summer Creative Writing Intensive at Berkeley City College, June 19, 20, 21 and
then on-line for six weeks. Spend the summer exploring poetry, play and fiction
writing, earn 3 units of transferable college credit and still travel.

We'll begin Friday, June 19 at 6:00-9:30pm with a reading a discussion by
professional writers: poet and musician Al Young, former Poet Laureate of
California and author of numerous books including _Coastal Evenings and Inland
Afternoons_ and _Something about the Blues_and poet, publisher and cultural
critic Lorna Dee Cevantes, _Emplumada_ and _From the Cables of Genocide: Poems
on Love and Hunger_.

On Saturday June 21 from 10:00 am to 6:00pm will be writing, discussion, and an
introduction to three genres. From 7:30-9:30 are reading by novelist Shawna
Yang Ryan, _Water Ghosts_ (_Lock 1929_) and poet and novelist Jerry Ratch,
author of 14 books of poetry and one novel. His _A Body Divided: A Memoir on
Growing up with Polio_ comes out this year.

Sunday afternoon from noon to 3:30, we discuss workshopping, public readings and publishing.

For the next six weeks, you'll write two pages of creative work per week
and comment on the work of four other students. By July 31, you'll turn in
a twelve page portfolio of creative writing in any or all of the genres.
We'll also have a potluck and open mike on Friday July 24 from 6:30-9:30.

Sign up for English 10, Creative Writing taught by Sharon Coleman, MFA in
Poetics, editor at Poetry Flash, poet and essayist, or English 70: Autobiography
into Creative Writing taught by Robyn Brooks, MFA in English and Creative Writing (with a focus in Poetry), poet and
playwright. Cost is $60 for California residents. For Information, email:
scoleman@peralta.edu or rbrooks@peralta.edu. You must sign up in advance: www.peralta.edu or at
Berkeley City College, 2050 Center Street, Berkeley (one half block from
Downtown Berkeley BART)

--------------------------------

Washington, DC: June 21st, 4-6 pm., Father's Day (Bring your dad! Buy him a love poem from me to him!) - "A Sunday Kind of Love" at Bus-Boys and Poets with my favorite poet (I don't know how she buses), Reb Livingston! Join us for good eats and good poetry. Guaranteed to be hot and spicy.

Intensive Poetry Workshop: "Ecopoetics, A Writer's Way of Knowledge" With Lorna Dee Cervantes, June 27th, the following Saturday, 1-4 pm. in Washington, DC. Sign-up info to follow; or, come to the reading!

--------------------------------

July 12th: Intensive Poetry Workshop with Lorna Dee Cervantes in Santa Cruz, 10 am - 3 or 4. Info to follow. Don't miss this rare opportunity, thanks to Poetry Santa Cruz which also presents:

Lorna Dee Cervantes and Francisco Alarcon, Tuesday, July 14 at 7:30 PM, Bookshop Santa Cruz, 1520 Pacific Avenue, Santa Cruz. $3 suggested donation to Poetry Santa Cruz.

Come and buy my love. I'll write you a personalized love poem for whomever, whatever, or, just for you. Hey, it's all for the book... 100 LOVE POEMS TO STRANGERS.

--------------------------------

Your gig? Book me now! Have Poems. Will Travel. I'm looking for whatever in the East: DC, VA, NYC, NY. I'll be staying near NW VA, flying in an out of DC or train out of VA. I can stay through early July.

Also: COLORADO. Come on, homies. Boulder? I still need to move, and, frankly, haven't been able to afford it.

I'll be in Alabama the first week of October.

I'm available anytime for anything ASAP.

AND, I have a new book! 100 100-WORD LOVE POEMS maybe from my favorite press... (shhh, announcement to follow.)

I'm producing 150 self-designed books hand-stitched in signatures in its own gift box. Desperate times require desperate measures, requires love. These are lovingly produced and all about love. Desperate price of $10 each. $12.50 to mail ($15+ if you're nice.) Send by snail to:

Lorna Dee Cervantes
3181 Mission Street, #16
San Francisco, CA 94110

I may even write you a hay(na)ku on each one.

$25 for a signed copy of DRIVE: The First Quartet (while they last!)

Email: I don't like to post it due to the bots. Just send to my full name, don't forget the dee, at MAC, the usual dot and the typical COMmercial domain. You can also send to same AT ME and the usual. Don't ask. They changed. It's all the same. It's all good. Hope to hear from you soon. Or, see you there!

I'm Writing A Book For Carlos Santana

2009-05-28T11:19:00.000-07:00

On Yesterday's Franklin Planner Page:

My New Goal:

Write the book for Carlos Santana.

I'm Writing A Book For Carlos Santana

Not just any book: The Book. Don't ask me if, how, when or why. I don't know. It's today's dream. A epiphany I had while gazing down on 24th Street Discolandia while applying for any writer job at all.

"I'm writing The Book for Carlos Santana."

I'm just putting it out there, on the net and in the cosmos, into words which our ancestors knew were the bridge to reality, the rope holding up the ceiling of the world.

There. Don't I sound like Carlos Santana?

Maybe I'll just channel him. No. It wouldn't be the same. And "ghost" is not the right word. Midwife the Spirit. That's it.

Carlitos, you listening? Let me write it for you.

* Pssssst, spread it around. Habla la palabra!

Where In The World Is Lorna? Acentos: Hostos College (Bronx), free wkshp! Noon TODAY! 11th St. Bar (E. Vill) 7pm Monday, NYC.

2009-05-16T23:08:00.000-07:00

Workshop - Lorna Dee Cervantes
When:
Sunday, May 17, 2009 12:00
Where:
Bronx

The Acentos Writers Workshop was established with the purpose of nurturing the newer voices in the poetry community. With writers from across several genres donating their time, the workshop encourages newer writers to hone their craft, establish and create community, and perform their work in front of growing audiences. The workshop accepts writers of all backgrounds and skill level to foster growth and maximize their full potential and grow as writers.

The workshops are free. RSVP is required. Email fish at louderarts dot com.
Venue

Venue:
Hostos Community College
Street:
450 Grand Concourse
ZIP:
10451
City:
Bronx
State:
NY
Country:
Country: us

Description

Hostos Community College - Building C, Room 456

By subway:
Take the 2, 4, 5 IRT trains to 149th Street (Eugenio María de
Hostos Boulevard) and the Grand Concourse.

By bus:
Take the Bx1 or cross-town Bx19 to 149th Street (Eugenio María
de Hostos Boulevard) and the Grand Concourse.

By car:
From Manhattan, take the FDR Drive north to the Willis Avenue Bridge
to the Major Deegan Expressway (87N). Proceed north to Exit 3. Take
the right fork in the exit ramp to the Grand Concourse and proceed
north to East 149th Street (Eugenio María de Hostos Boulevard).

From Queens, take the Triborough Bridge to the Major Deegan
Expressway. Continue north to Exit 3. Take the right fork in the exit
ramp to the Grand Concourse and proceed north to East 149th Street
(Eugenio María de Hostos Boulevard).

From Westchester, take the Major Deegan Expressway south (87S) to Exit
3. Turn left at the light. Turn left again at Grand Concourse and
proceed north to East 149th Street (Eugenio María de Hostos Boulevard).

From New Jersey, take the George Washington Bridge to the Major Deegan
Expressway south to Exit 3. Turn left at the light. Turn left again at
Grand Concourse and proceed north to East 149th Street (Eugenio María
de Hostos Boulevard).
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Monday May 18 Lorna Dee Cervantes is the featured poet with Alison Stine and Lyrae Van Clief-Stefanon. The reading starts around 7 PM at the 11th Street Bar (510 East 11th Street, between Avenues A & B, http://www.11thstbar.com/). Here is more information about how to get here: http://www.readab.com/directions.html.

"17 REASONS why?"

2009-05-04T22:01:00.000-07:00

17 REASONS why?

Because the wind smells like jasmine
through the pools of dog shit
when people can't afford to feed;

Because you live another day though your dreams
are punctuated with the sounds of rusty shopping
cart wheels and destiny smells like frijoles con ajo;

Because freedom's just the change in your pocket
and the poor are rich but nobody feels this,
but a smile is the passport, buenas, the plane;

Because heaven lives on Harrison and school
children skip through the rituals on Valencia
and my mom is not afraid to walk alone under moonlight;

Because you are living in interesting times
in interesting ways as an interesting force and even
the pigeons acknowledge this, and are interested;

Because Destiny doesn't stop here anymore,
she took off with Mañana who then eloped
into Yesterday and Whatever, La Reina, reins;

Because the corner store will stock anything you want
and the produce is cheaper and better and comes from
a local garden where all the bugs have an understanding;

Because ColorChrome is still stored in someone's garage
and on the door of La Misión una Visión is overheard
while the people paint The Constitution into Acts of Art;

Because art isn't a fantasy on 24th Street
and the boleros and beat box intertwine and harmonize
despite themselves and teknopop parrots dance La Guacamaya;

Because busses chug a grime on the windows
which screens out the decay into a magical hope
for a sweet breath, sweet life, sweet remembrance;

Because charros murmur of horses en la madrugada
and a mother's hands grind into la masa
and many tongues huddle inside the mouth of the Mission;

Because food is the universal language
and everyone knows the cost, curanderos
on the corners sell lilies and cure cuando quiera;

Because even though the blanched walk through
the lives that seem strewn here, they come away
with the seeds in their cuffs, they eat their words;

Because La Palabra is the only currency
and the Super Mercado of the empty aisle or alley
is where a treasury is founded on what others leave behind;

Because you leave behind, like a husk of dung
beetle coming anew, all those webs and pupae
puddlings, and everyone's an extinct butterfly, rediscovered;

Because you uncover the unknown self
you knew all along at your neighborhood dive
where every breath is one and the hips, El Mundo;

Because every head's a mundo, every eye, a
telescope, everyone sees what's coming down:
the change is going to come because it's already here.

Lorna Dee Cervantes
5/4/09

--------------------------
Please join Mission17 Gallery & BARGE at a special reading held in conjunction with the exhibit "17 Reasons Why," an ongoing residency exploring the cultural politics of the Mission district, hosted by David Buuck & BARGE. Come for prose, poetry, & conversation-- hope to see you there!

Michelle Tea (*Valencia*)
Alejandro Murguía (*This War Called Love*)
Lorna Dee Cervantes (*Drive*)

Saturday May 9, 4-6 pm
Mission17 Gallery
2111 Mission Street @ 17th, 4th Floor

mission17.org
buuckbarge.wordpress.com

--------------------------

BARGE - The Bay Area Research Group in Enviro-aesthetics - was started by David Buuck in 2003. BARGE has organized several (de)tours around the Bay Area, investigating regional sites & spaces that are underrepresented & overlooked in more conventional touristic, commercial, & socio-political notions of place & public space. See davidbuuck.com/barge for more information.

"People's Park Reunion"

2009-05-04T10:07:00.000-07:00

People's Park Reunion

Welcome home.
Some of us never came back.
We caught a star (a missed mantra),
a one-way ticket
to delirium. This is what
all falls out
when you shake it,
what jingles away
when you empty the rainbow.
Come here, Jingle Jangle
Man. Let the good times roll.
And all the ones who did
their part, they're walking
around with a shopping cart
and it all comes marching home.

Lorna Dee Cervantes
4/17/09

"The Miracle of Water" (after Emoto)

2009-04-28T18:45:00.000-07:00

The Miracle of Water

(after photos from The Miracle of Water by Masaru Emoto)

Truth is a crystal.
The devil is a black hole.
Love will make you beautiful.
Hate is crystalline,
but it blocks you inside.
Affection is a snowflake
growing out of an arbor.
Rage and murder forms
a figure of an assassin
with his cock and bow.
Unhappiness is a word
which should be avoided.
Do it! makes a crater
in the heart, a volcano.
Let's do it harbors a peace
sign in the middle, is a bright
flower of fern leaf growing,
cuttings of lit evergreens.
Happiness is refined
and highly detailed, sharp,
in focus. The soul, in Japanese,
is created by combining
to speak with Evil Spirit.
(Evil Spirit is a toad-shaped
boot print in the mud,
a melanoma blotch.
The soul looks like friendship,
fleshy crystals circling
a black hole turned into portal.
Friend is a single star
of the same crystals,
a single point of light,
a platinum stamp for sealing
wax on the envelope.
Thanks to you is the perfect
reason for living, which tries
but is stunted, a hexagram
of melted snowflake
(a growing darkness forming
a hurricanes eye in the middle),
a target, a Tibetan mandala.
I'm sorry is thanks collapsed
in on itself, crumpled
around a jagged-mouthed void.
Peace of mind is a stable crystal,
is a woman beneath the roof
of her home, a leaf emerging,
a shaft going down to the core,
to the rich vein, simultaneously.
Self-love is more involved:
all hands raised in all directions,
is many-faceted, many paths
full of energy, each one
tending its own forest.
Spousal love is twinned,
one nestled within the other's
peace of mind, one
protecting the other, six
spokes aligned in the overlap.
Family love is an outward
spiral, three layers of water
building, bee-like, from
a single source.
Neighborly love is shining harmony,
is a kaleidoscope of trace
and chance, an endless play.
Love of country is the pentagon
inside a hexagram inside the swords
of fleur d' lis, a single crown
off to the right; all inside a giant planet
(the sun?) with a sawed-off handle.
The love for humanity is a beautiful
formation, an engagement ring
with an arena in the center.

A Buddhist sutra will
get you an Indian yarn painting,
a God's Eye of light, the pegs
it's strung on, the shape
of a woman's legs, as if all
is hooked by birth. It's all there.
The circle and the infinite
form, the weave and the blocking:
namu-amida-butsu.
Namu-myoho-renge-kyo
will turn tap water
back into snowflakes,
both crystal and web.

Love and gratitude
will get you back,
back from bacterial mold,
back from water left sitting
in front a television, away
from the ringworm watermark
in front of a constant computer,
the bombed out petri dish
look of the microwaved drop.

Love and gratitude will grow
you from the unforma
of your cell, will create
something from the womb
of possibility, a fetus
under the sonar of your voice.

A new being, a new light shed'
A new thirst and the incessant quenching.

Namaste.

I love you. I thank you.
I wish you harmony and happiness.
May you find your peace of mind.

Lorna Dee Cervantes
4/18/09

I'll be returning to this with the photos these were written from; almost like the poetry of water. Things speak to us. We should at least have the manners to speak back.

Where In the World Is Lorna? UC Berkeley TONIGHT, 4/24 & Stanford SATURDAY, 8pm, Casa Zapata & MONDAY Class, Reading & Workshop

2009-04-24T09:02:00.000-07:00

3rd Annual Noche de Flor y Canto
come for the legendary poets, stay to hear new legendary poets in the making...

Friday, April 24, 2009
7:00pm - 10:00pm
Maude Fife Room, 3rd floor of Wheeler Hall
Berkeley, CA

This year, our Noche de Flor y Canto (Night of Flower and Song) will feature:

Opening Songs by ALL NATIONS DRUM

Poet Laurete of Aztlan ALURISTA

Legendary Xicana poet LORNA DEE CERVANTES

our own Robert "Bob" Reyes

possible appearance by YOSIMAR REYES

a special performance by

BIG Dan from BRWN BFLO

and many, many more...

This year's event is especially significant because we will also be honoring our fallen brother, Alfred Arteaga.** To commemorate Alfred and his generosity as a friend and mentor in helping establish Flor y Canto and the Xicano Working Group, we will name our undergraduate poetry contest in his honor: The Alfred Arteaga Poetry Prize. This award will be granted to an undergraduate poet whose writing reflects the beauty and strength of Chicana/o culture.
___________

**Alfred Arteaga (1950-2008 y PRESENTE) was a poet and professor of Ethnic Studies at UC Berkeley. His books include Chicano Poetics, Cantos, House with the Blue Bed, and Frozen Accident. He was awarded the Pen Oakland Josephine Miles Award and the National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship. Alfred offered an unconditional friendship and mentorship to XWG and its members. As a humble gesture to honor him, our organization has unanimously decided to name our annual florycanto poetry prize after him. Te queremos Alfred.

***Brought to you by the Ethnic Studies 5th Account, The Graduate Assembly, the departments of English and Chicano/Latino Studies, the Center for Race and Gender and The Townsend Center.

The Xican@ Culture Working Group is for graduate students from all disciplines interested in engaging with Chicana/o cultural production (art, music, literature, film, dissertations, teatro, activism, and poetry)
-------------------------------------
AND

*Encuentro Xican@ *

*&*

* Noche de Flor y Canto*
*Xican@ Love and the New Familia: * *Gender, Sexuality, and **Alliance***

* *

*University** of **California**, Berkeley · **Friday, April 24, 2009***

*9:30 - 5:00** Tilden Room, MLK Student Union (Encuentro)*

*5:45 - 6:45** Reception, 330 Wheeler Hall *

*7:00 - 10:00** Maude Fife Room, 315 Wheeler (Flor y Canto)*

Does La Raza love all its members –regardless of sexual
orientation—equally? Through dialogue and discussion the second annual
Encuentro Xican@ will explore tensions and alliances among queer, straight, male, female, and transgender Xican@s. How can alliance be redefined as familia, without the fetters of gender roles, with all its tensions and all its loves?

*2nd Annual Encuentro Xican@: Tilden Room; MLK Student Union*

10-10:45 Opening Keynote—Carla Trujillo

10:45-11:45 “Tonanztin & Spirituality” Workshop (Xinaxtli)

11:45-12:45 Performances by Luna Maia

& Fe from In Lak Ech & MDM

Lunch

1:00-2:30
“Crossing Genders: Towards a Feminist Latinidad" Workshop

2:30-3:30
“Navigating Latinidad: Notions of Selfhood Before and Against The
Institution" (XWG)

Moderator: Jose Saldivar

Luis Ramirez (UC Davis) & Melissa Moreno (Woodland Community
College): "Power, Language, & Latino Young Adult Men in a Community
College Context"

Agustin Palacios (UCB): "Undoing the Coloniality of evolutionary
mestizaje OR this xicano has no love for Mestizofilia"

Javier Huerta (UCB): "In Praise of the Mouth": Oral Love in the
works of 3 Chicano Gay Poets"

3:30-4:30
“Coming out of Two Closets: At the Intersection of Immigration &
Sexuality” Workshop (YQUE & MALCS)

4:30-5:15 Closing Keynote—Yosimar Reyes

*3rd Annual FlorYCanto Wheeler Hall*
6:00-7:00 Reception (330 Wheeler)
7:00-10:00 FlorYCanto (Maude Fife Room; 315 Wheeler)

All Nations Drum

Lorna Dee Cervantes
Alfred Arteaga Poetry Prize winner: Cecilia Caballero
alurista
Big Dan (from BRWN BFLO)
Yosimar Reyes
Alfred Arteaga Poetry Prize honorable mentions: Edgar Mojica and Ana Cansina
Robert Reyes
Xamuel Banales & Dejarnia Cruz

Both events are free of charge. All are welcome.

Organized by UC Berkeley's Xican@ Culture Working Group (XWG), Mujeres Activas en Letras y Cambio Social (MALCS), Xinaxtli: the Seed that Grows, and Young Queers United for Empowerment (YQUE), with additional sponsorship by The Graduate Assembly, The Townsend Center, ES5th Account, The Center for Race and Gender, and the Departments of English, Chicano/Latino Studies, and Ethnic Studies.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
APRIL IS FLORICANTO MONTH!

SATURDAY, 8 pm
Casa Zapata - Stanford University
Lorna Dee Cervantes
with Steve Cervantes, musician

MONDAY, 4-6
Cherríe Moraga's class, Memorial Hall
6:30 - ? dinner & workshop, Casa Zapata

Come and get your own personalized love poem!

Not Fade Away

2009-04-18T12:29:00.000-07:00

Not Fade Away

I gonna tell you how it's gonna be
You're gonna give your love to me
I'm gonna love you night and day
Well you know my love is not fade away
Well you know my love is not fade away

And my love's bigger than a Cadillac
I try to show it and you're drivin' me back
Your love for me has got to be real
Before you to know just how I feel
Love is real not fade away
Well love that's real not fade away

(Instrumental)

I gonna tell you how it's gonna be
You're gonna give your love to me
Love that lasts more than one day
Well love is love and not fade away
Well love is love and not fade away
Well love is love and not fade away

(Instrumental)

song by Bo Diddley
copyright by Buddy Holly & The Crickets, 1957

I've long been fascinated by this song: as performed by Bo Diddley who I'd heard play around the Bay Area way before I heard the Crickets. (But who can resist Mick's, uh, maracas? And that guitar from that guy before his body was taken over by aliens! But, mostly, that harp drive.) I've been thinking of it lately, it's influence. There's something really sexy about a male singing it. Provecho!

I'm off to People's Park 40th Anniversary!

Finish The Sentences Facebook Meme (just because)

2009-04-15T02:23:00.000-07:00

Yes, I know I've been neglecting you. So I'll post this Facebook meme just because. Or, play with me over there, too. Can you say, "procrastination?"

Finish the sentences. Then re-post it as "Finish the sentences" when you're done!

1. I've come to realize that my last kiss... was too friggin' long ago.

2. I am listening to... the heater: rare silence in the Mission at 1am. Now a car revs by. I just finished listening to the Blues Biography Muddy Waters.

3. I talk.... when I feel like it.

4. I love.... I loved. I will love. (so what's it to ya?)

5. My best friends.... are persistent, very smart and very sensitive.

6. My first real kiss… has been on my mind since I'm writing about 14 year olds. Michael Naillon, where are you??

7. Love is.... "but a song we sing. Fear's the way we die."

8. Marriage is.... getting the State involved in your personal life.

9. Somewhere, someone is thinking.... "I have to pee."

10. I'll always remember.... so much I forget. (Ok.Ok. The day/night my son was born.)

11. The last time I really cried was because.... of love.

12. My cell phone.... is an anomaly. My friends think that pigs are going to fall out of the sky.

13. When I wake up in the morning.... I think about who I'd like to snuggle against...

14. Before I go to bed.... I brush my teeth. And then who knows, I like to be unpredictable.

15. Right now I am thinking about.... whether or not I'm revealing too much and the relationship between ekos and poesis simultaneously.

16. Babies are.... babies. Truthfully, I never paid too much attention to them until I had my own. I used to like Robin William's impression of a baby. I think of it often at odd moments and I smile.

17. I get on Myspace.... less frequently these days. I don't like the new format. It's too easy to fall into checking out all the neat bands and musicians. I get a lot of spam when I visit there. Here, too.

18. Today I.... thought about doing my taxes and went to get the forms. I wrote some notes for my never completed dissertation. I bragged about my new old bicycle. I went to hear a non-fiction talk/reading where I didn't know a soul.

19. Tomorrow I will be... procrastinating on my taxes. Probably. Maybe I'll paint my door. I will be tempted to ride my yellow bicycle if the wind stops. I might go to Berkeley. Or Santa Cruz. Whatever it is, I'll be sorry I didn't write it down, but not sorry I did whatever I did.

20. I really want to be.... a brain surgeon. (Not really. I really want to be the poster child for predilective labor.)

21. I am allergic to.... my poor sweet kitty back in Colorado, but I know I should eat better and stay away from wheat.

22. I am annoyed by.... people who step on me because they pretend I'm not there. Hey, it happens. Don't ask unless you want to talk suppositions of race, class and gender.

23. One food I refuse to eat is... fried liver and onions. (I've got a entire menu of 1984 style torture foods.)

24. The most recent thing I've learned is.... (hmm, hard one: what don't I already know? Lots. Problem is, what did I learn today as my grandma always told me I do? That I should have written it down. It had to do with the number of jobs lost since the end of 2001. Oh yes, I learned that hundreds of dolphins surrounded a Chinese ship in Somalia and kept them from pirates by leaping out of the water at once. The pirates went away. I learned that dolphins have learned the art of civil disobedience and are saying, "Basta ya!"

25. The number one thing on my bucket list is.... who knows? since I didn't see the movie. I don't really think of such things. I'm too much of an existentialist. Oh yes! Since a child: 1.) watch a condor in the wild in my native land; 2.) watch big-horned sheep in the wild (done); 3.) own a black (blue?) racer (snake) (hey, I was 8 years old with an ambition to become a herpetologist); 4.) Go to Ireland; 5.) ascend the heights of Macchu Picchu; 6.) become a man-of-letters (I'd say, done); 7.) Own my own land and let all the plants and animals do what they want on it (done, but not in the way I expected); 8.) write a novel (so close I don't want to jinx it); 9.) live the "good life" a la Aristotle; 10.) (ready for it? drum roll...) find true love. As I've aged, my list has reversed in order of importance.

26. Something I've always wanted to learn to do is.... Navaho weaving/speak my native language/play the banjo

27. I have a high tolerance for.... eccentric people.

28. I have a low tolerance for.... fascists/fascism

29. My wish... is none of your business.

30. One person I would happily make a fool out of myself if I ever saw in person.... Okay. This is supposed to be fast first answer. First thing that crossed my mind is "Michael Moore."

Lorna Sells Love (Poems) at 24th St. Fair Today - Cesar Chavez Day Parade From Dolores Park, SF, 1-5 pm

2009-04-04T10:00:00.000-07:00

Come visit me at the 24th Street Fair in The Mission, corner of 24th and Harrison, after the César Chávez Day March from Dolores Park at noon. El Poeta, José Montoya is the Grand Marshall. I'll be selling original personalized love poems for a collection I'm working on, 100 Love Poems to Strangers. Come and get your love!

Cesar E. Chavez
Holiday Parade & Festival 2009
Commemorate & Celebrate
the Life and Work of
Labor & Civil Rights Leader
Cesar E. Chavez
March 31, 1927 - April 23, 1993

Saturday, April 4, 2009

11 a.m. - Assemble for Parade
Dolores Park - 19th St. / Dolores

12 noon - Parade

Grand Marshal Jose Montoya
and the Royal Chicano Air Force

Danza Azteca Xitlalli

24th Street Fair
1 p.m. - 5 p.m.
24th Street / Harrison-Bryant

Kids Arts & Crafts, Music, Entertainment
Community Service, Information,
Arts & Craft Booths

Classic Car Show
Featuring The Dukes - SF Finest

Music by Louie Romero Y Su Grupo
Mazacote

"Manzo" & Members of Malo

Native Elements

Lorna Dee & Steve Cervantes at UC Berkeley Indigenous Peoples' Night of Resistance, 4/2, 7:45 pm

2009-04-02T09:38:00.001-07:00

Thursday, April 2, PAULEY BALLROOM (Bancroft and Telegraph at UC BERKELEY)
5:30-10:30PM ALL AGES WELCOME!!

Indigenous People’s Night of Resistance is a night to honor all people who walk with the earth to protect and defend it. Indigenous peoples from Africa, Asia, Native America, and the Pacific Islands are not of the past but continue to live with dignity and continue to hold a great responsibility in sharing the knowledge of our ancestors who resisted colonialism in order for us to be here today. We envision a world without borders and seek to unite all marginalized communities through the intellectual, cultural and spiritual resistance that runs in our veins. Through our music, dance, art and spoken word we will share our experiences in hopes of building a more inclusive world-view within this university and all social systems at large.

ALL AGES WELCOME!

THIS IS A COMMUNITY EVENT. ABSOLUTELY NO DRUGS OR ALCOHOL. NO COLORS - NO RED OR BLUE.

MCs (our very own xinaxtli guerilleras): Crissy Gallardo & Alison Dorantes-Garcia

opening prayer by:
Spirit Drum
Danza In Xochitl In Cuicatl

Performing Live:
Gaby Erandi Rico
Lorna Dee Cervantes
w/ Steve Cervantes
The Fullness
Sistahailstorm
Ise Lyfe
& many more to be announced!!

Speakers representing:
Indigenous Premaculture Project
Indigenous Identity & Muxeres from El Salvador documentary

Vendors:
Dignidad Rebelde
Chiapas Support Committee
Xinaxtli
Huaxtec
Inkza Crafts
Brown Berets
Henna & Art by Rachel-Anne
Art by David Tofella
SNAG Magazine
& many more!!

RAFFLE= tight prizes!! stay tuned for details

**t-shirts will be available for a small donation to complete the funding of this event, please be generous**

Where In the World Is Lorna? LA Tomorrow: Pitzer College 3/5, Mujeres de Maiz 3/8 - SF: Lunada, Galería de la Raza w/ Cherríe Moraga & Sharon Doubiago

2009-03-04T04:04:00.000-08:00

Thurs., 3/5 - Pitzer College, noon-1:30 pm at Gold Student Center, Multipurpose Room
Reception 2-3:30 - CLSA Lounge

(click on images to enlarge)

Sun., 3/8 - Mujeres de Maiz Live Art Show, 6-10pm at Metabolic Studios (FarmLab), 1745 N. Spring St., LA 90012
($10-15 sliding scale)

LUNADA: Mango Toast & Jam for International Women’s Day

Featuring Sharon Doubiago, Cherrie Moraga and Open Mic.
Curated and co-hosted by Lorna Dee Cervantes.

Date: Tues., Mar. 10
Time: 7:30pm
Admission: $5 or free w/food dish/ Galeria membership
Galería De la Raza
2857 24th St. @ Bryant
San Francisco,CA 94110
info@galeriadelaraza.org | 415.826.8009

In honor of International Women’s Day, the Mission’s own, Lorna Dee Cervantes, curates and co-hosts one of the most incredible LUNADAs ever! A trifecta of feminine literary power, featuring Lorna Dee along with award winning, renowned writers Sharon Doubiago and Cherri Moraga. Lorna Dee brings back her “Mango Toast & Jam,” tradition in March.

“Years ago when I was running my press, I would have these ‘Mango Toast & Jam’ events. I'd invite poets from all over for pot-luck spin-the-bottle readings. Over 60 people in my little one bedroom house and yard.” –Lorna Dee Cervantes.

Lorna Dee Cervantes is the author of Emplumada, From the Cables of Genocide: Poems on Love and Hunger, and Drive: The First Quartet which was nominated for a Pulitzer. Among her many awards and fellowships, she has received the American Book Award, Paterson Prize, Latino Literature Award, Balcones Award, two Pushcart Prizes and the prestigious Lila Wallace Readers Digest Fellowship. Her poems have appeared in hundreds of anthologies and collections. Cervantes, a printer, editor and publisher, founded the influential Chicana/o press, MANGO and was the first to publish Sandra Cisneros, Jimmy Santiago Baca, Alberto Rios, Víctor Martínez, and many other major poets. A former Associate Professor of English and Director of Creative Writing at CU Boulder, she currently lives on 24th St. where she is writing a novel set in the Bay Area in the early 70s and completing a young adult novel about life in the Mission. She is a trained philosopher, considering a treastice on axiology (the study of value/s) and the philosophy of love. She will be writing love poems for strangers for $5-$20 for a new collection, 100 Love Poems to Strangers. Love for sale! Come and get your love.

Sharon Doubiago is the author of numerous collections and book-length poems including Hard Country, South America Mi Hija - which was twice nominated for the National Book Award, The Husband Arcane: The Arcane of O, and a new prize-winning collection, Love on the Streets: Selected and New Poems. Doubiago holds three Pushcart Prizes for poetry and the Oregon Book Award for Psyche Drives the Coast. Doubiago is a long-time activist involved in solidarity work and was an influential member of San Francisco's Third World poetry movement of the 70s and 80s.

Cherríe Moraga is a playwright, poet and essayist whose plays and publications have received national recognition, including a Theatre Communications Group Theatre Artist Residency Grant in 1996, the NEA's Theatre Playwrights' Fellowship in 1993, and two Fund for New American Plays Awards. Moraga has also published extensively as an essayist and poet. She is the co-editor of the ground-breaking anthology, This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color, which won the Before Columbus American Book Award in 1986, and was re-released in a twentieth anniversary edition in 2002. She is the author of Loving in the War Years: Lo Que Nunca Pasó Por Sus Labios (1983) and The Last Generation (1993). She is currently teaching at Stanford University.

Somebody Buy Me This Banza! Please

2009-02-22T22:49:00.000-08:00

Somebody buy me this banza! Pretty please.

And for a pretty please please take a listen to this beautiful one of a kind instrument, a cross between a Persian kemancheh and an African gourd banjo, a banza. This unique instrument, the Yayli banza, is bowed or plucked and features a goatskin head. Check out the link and listen to the youtube videos.

Oh please, oh please, poetry lessons for life. Opening bids start at $900.

Fun With Blog Buddies: My BBC List of Read Books

2009-02-18T12:22:00.000-08:00

From C. Dale Young via Peter Pereira via Teresa Ballard:

Apparently the BBC reckons most people will have only read 6 of the 100 books here.

Instructions:
1) Look at the list and put an 'x' after those you have read.
2) Add a '+' to the ones you LOVE.
3) Star (*) those you plan on reading.
4) Tally your total at the bottom.

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen x
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien x+
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte x
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling x
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee x+
6 The Bible- x
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte x
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell x+
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens x
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott x+
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy x
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller x+
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare x+
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier x
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien x+
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger x+
19 The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot x
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell x+
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald x+
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens x
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy x+
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy x
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh x
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky x+
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck x+
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll x+
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame x
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy x+
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens x
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis x
34 Emma - Jane Austen x
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen x
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini *
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden x
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne x
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell x+
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez x+
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery x
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy x
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood x+
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding x+
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert x
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen x
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon *
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens x
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley x+
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez x
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck x+
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov x
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold *
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas x
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac x
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie *
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville x
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens x
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker x
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett x+
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce x+
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath x+
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola x
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray x
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens x
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker x+
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert x
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White x+
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Alborn
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle x
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad x+
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery x+
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams x
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole x
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas x
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare x
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl x
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo x

(98 is obviously a trick question)

I've read 82 out of 100 of these books, and there's only one I haven't heard of, so, not bad for a lit prof, eh?

Lorna Dee's Best Random Thing On The Net: Clinton's Lamb Chop & A Work of Mirth

2009-02-09T19:12:00.000-08:00

Hey, how very cool. Jeffry the ThingMeister has selected one of my 25 Random Things About Me as the "Best on the Web in today's entry: Just Plain Funny: Today's Best Random Things Stories.

Here's a little piece I wrote last year that tells more of the story behind the factoid. Enjoy!

A Work of Mirth

I miss his laugh the most. I miss making him laugh, the way I could make him laugh daily. I miss that strange power of our mutual mirth. Hearing it again brought back our first time. He'd picked me up at the bus stop near his house and drove me through the city-suburb maze to get there. On the way I told him my story about meeting Clinton. How we were both the last two at the banquet buffet table, both former poor kids, now laden with baby lamb shanks (my vegan downfall) and delicate cookies. He held a lamb chop in one meaty fist and a tiny plate piled high like a mini earthworks sculpture. He gazed longingly at the cookies, set down his plate after trying to hold it along with the chop, and, not seeing any room on his plate for the cookies, grabbed a huge handful and stuffed them in the pocket of his expensive suit (no cares for dry cleaning bills with Bill); and then he noticed me, also still eating, and sheepishly saluted me with his lamb chop. The President with a pocket full of cookies saluting me with a greasy lamb chop! The Secret Service, tugging at his sleeve and talking on their phones at once. "Yes, he's on his way..." "Why don't they just wheel the whole table into his office?" I thought. "I'm sure he's done worse."

It was funny the way I told it to him. In real life it was surreal, or like a skit on Saturday Night Live, the one where he jogs into the local Burger King and asks the guy at the counter, "Are you going to eat those fries?" And grabbing a handful. Yup, someone who knows Bill well wrote that skit. He had to pull over, he was laughing so hard. We were laughing until the tears made it hard for him to drive. Every word I said just seemed to him to be funnier than the last. That was the way it was with us. When we did talk; me, making him laugh. He thanked me, after he had composed himself enough to drive again. A widower, he said it felt good to laugh again. He hadn't laughed for years, thought he'd forgotten how. After that, I considered it a wifely duty.

Yesterday, on the phone, our easy connection. I don't remember what I said, telling some story or other, that brought back that laugh, a huge wheezing guffaw that made it hard for him to catch his breath. We laughed the entire difficult conversation (a finalized divorce, a house that still needs to be sold, some form needing a notarized signature) - an hour of laughter, catching up on the year. I remember what I'd written to someone: I'd like to find that again. Someone who gets my jokes and vice versa. Someone for whom I am both vice and verses. Someone I can make cry with my laughter. Nice work if you can get it. And, anything but logical. I want to dance in that surreal reel again. What, with the real realm, hey, sometimes you just gotta laugh.

Got any?

11/16/07
Lorna Dee Cervantes

Internet Dating Haiku

2009-01-31T16:44:00.000-08:00

Internet dating:
Find the love of your life now.
Hurt someone. Get hurt.

1/22/09

Alfred Arteaga, Raulsalinas & Other Writers Remembered Today

2009-01-31T04:27:00.000-08:00

I'll be remembering my dear friend, Alfred Arteaga, today at "Writers Remembered" at 1pm in the SF Public Library - perhaps I'll see you there?

• Writers Remembered, an annual literary event with readings, personal stories, and reflections by Bay Area authors on some of the writers, poets, editors and journalists who died in 2008, including tributes to William F. Buckley by Tom Barbash, Hayden Carruth by Barbara Berman, James Crumley by Peter Plate, Mahmoud Darwish by Deema Shehabi, Tony Vaughan by Jack Hirschman/Agneta Falk, Reginald Lockett by Al Young, Raulsalinas by Alejandro Murguia, Studs Terkel by Gerald Nicosia, John Trumbo by Sharon Doubiago, Dave Church by A. D. Winans, and Alfred Arteaga by Naomi Quinonez, Koret Auditorium, San Francisco Public Library, 100 Larkin, at Grove, SF, 1:00-4:00 (415/557-4277, sfpl.org)

25 Random Things About ME (and a secret)

2009-01-29T15:29:00.000-08:00

For those who asked:

25 Random Things About ME (and one secret)

1. Birds "talk" to me. It's a family trait.

2. My earliest ambition (age 8) was to become a herpitologist.

3. I worked with what was termed "severely retarded" children aged 12-19 with developmental aptitudes of 2-6 month olds. All had their own language.

4. I was saluted by Bill Clinton with a lamb chop in the White House.

5. I always wanted to live in the wilderness. I'd make a good hermit.

6. I'm scared of cows (but you knew that.)

7. I used to be afraid of ants.

8. Otherwise, I'm brave.

9. I was born with a curl like Sweet Pea.

10. I'm a printer and I miss it.

11. I can fix a press and if I drove I'd be a mechanic.

12. I've never applied for a driver's license.

13. I'm a trained philosopher.

14. I expect to learn how to play the sax at 60.

15. I had imaginary being friends, and a mailbox for them.

16. I still have a serious romantic and erotic crush on a cartoon character (Sherman).

17. My father wanted me to become a lawyer.

18. I couldn't tell my left from my right foot as a child. I still make mistakes giving directions.

19. I have an excellent sense of direction (if I'm walking.)

20. I sometimes believe I'm the reincarnation of Dylan Thomas; It would serve him right.

21. I wrote a 54 page paper, a feminist analysis and critique on penis envy & homosexuality in Sigmund Freud for my high school English class (to make up for spending all my time in the bleachers - without a game.)

22. I graduated with high honors from SJSU & wrote a 78 page paper on John Dewey, "Experience as Art in A Nuclear Age" while having no idea I was in the honors program. I still haven't picked up my gold key. I skipped graduation.

23. I'd be a brain surgeon if I could have gotten through a statistics course.

24. After high school I vowed never to think in numbers.

25. I read everything there was to read in the children's library by the time I was 11, then was thrown out of the adult library for attempting to check out A History of Yoga which was about as big as me.

Bonus (secret): I didn't weigh up to 98 lbs until I was 24 and married. (Oops, that's a secret!)

Your turn.

House Rescue Benefit for Norman Zelaya Tonight, 7pm, 2957 24th St., SF

2009-01-23T16:47:00.000-08:00

Join me tonight & get a unique Valentine Day gift: I'll write you or yours a love poem to benefit Norman's family. ~ LDC
--------------------------------------
Silent auction, so to bring $$$ for Guayaberas by Lucha, 2 dinner certificates for two courtesy of Baobab!, Posters from Nicaragua's Sandinista Revolution, and some other really cool goodies for a cause!

Jazz genius MARCUS SHELBY
Flute player MASARU KOGA
gosple trio BAY CITY LUV
and Steve Cervantes (Lorna Dee's brother)

PLEASE COME OUT EVERYONE TO SUPPORT OUR BROTHER NORMAN!!!

House Rescue Benefit: Fundraiser for Norman Zelaya and Family
Friday Jan 23
7pm
Galeria de la Raza
2857 24th Street @ Bryant
$10-$20 donation requested (give more if you can!)

A night of love and generosity featuring music, poetry, comedy and visual art to help Norman and family get into a home as soon as possible.

Cash bar.

Featuring:
The one and only Norman Zelaya
Lorna Dee Cervantes
Marc Pinate
Karim Scarlatta
Lariza Dugan Cuadra
Ariel Vargas
Paul S. Flores
Elena Vasquez

Dj Lucha Grande
Dj Aztec Parrot
Dj Danny V
And more being added all the time.

10 Recent Searches Leading to Lorna Dee (and find me tonight)

2009-01-23T12:36:00.000-08:00

the state of love poems
Lorna lluvia
Musica de Lorna
live in the moment poem
Who are the Indians?
"calls him Princess"
Nazis Quetzaltenango
explorer negotiator
forget about us throwing myself away lyrics
Lorna boobed
-----------------
You can find me tonight, 7 pm, at the Galeria de la Raza on 24th Street at the House Burning Benefit for Norman Zelaya. I'll be writing love poems for strangers. (Wait, don't I already do that??) Come and get your love.

LEONARD PELTIER SEVERELY BEATEN UPON ARRIVAL AT CANAAN FED PEN!! (and I've been locked out of my Facebook account while trying to post this news)

2009-01-21T12:43:00.000-08:00

Please help! I am only forwarding this information, I have no other knowledge or contacts. Please do not contact me unless I know you. Investigate. Reflect. - LDC P.S. I was weirdly locked out of my Facebook account while trying to forward this post. Please do not open anything from me from that account after 1 pm pst. It's probably not from me. You'll know when you get something in my usual goofy tone.

-------------------------
Dear Leonard Peltier Supporters

Leonard was severely beaten upon his arrival at the Canaan Federal Penitentiary. When he went into population after his transfer, some inmates assaulted him.
The severity of his injuries is that he suffered numerous blows to his head and body, receiving a large bump on his head, possibly a concussion, and numerous bruises.
Also, one of his fingers is swollen and discolored and he has pain in his chest and ribcage.
There was blood everywhere from his injuries.

We feel that prison authorities at the prompting of the FBI orchestrated this attack and thus, we are greatly concerned about his safety.
It may be that the attackers, whom Leonard did not even know, were offered reduced sentences for carrying out this heinous assault. Since Leonard is up for parole soon, this could be a conspiracy to discredit a model prisoner.

He was placed in solitary confinement and only given one meal, this is generally done when you won’t name your attackers; incidentally being only given one meal seriously jeopardizes his health because of his diabetes.

Prison officials refuse to release any info to the family, but they need to hear from his supporters to protect his safety, as does President Obama.
His attorneys are trying to get calls into him now.
This attack on LP comes on the heels of the FBI’s recent letter, prompting this attack by FBI supporters as an attempt to discredit LP as a model prisoner.
Anyone who has been in the prison system knows well that if you refuse to name your attackers or file charges against them, then you lose your status as a victim and/or given points against your possible parole and labeled as a perpetrator.

It is not uncommon, in fact is quite common for the government to use Indian against Indian and they still operate under the old adage “it takes an Indian to catch an Indian”.

In 1978, they made an attempt to assassinate him through another Indian man who was also at Marion prison with LP. But Standing Deer chose to reveal the plot to him instead of taking his life in exchange FOR A CHANCE AT FREEDOM.
When Standing Deer was released in 2001, he joined the former Leonard Peltier Defense Committee as a board member.
He also began to speak on Leonard’s behalf until his murder six years ago today.
Prior to his murder, Standing Deer confided with close friends and associates that the same man who visited him in Marion to assassinate Peltier, had came to Houston, TX and told him that he had better stay away from Peltier and anything to do with him.

We are aware that currently, the FBI is actively seeking support for his continued imprisonment of Leonard Peltier and also also seeking support from Native People. So please be aware, and keep Leonard in your prayers.
The FBI is apparently afraid of the impact we are having.

If they will set him up to blemish his record just before a parole hearing, what will they do when it looks like his freedom will become a reality? We need to make sure that nothing happens to him again!

Please write the President, send it priority or registered mail. Email to Change.gov or email President Obama.

Call your congressional representatives and write letters, not email, to them. Do what you can to get the word out to insure that LP is receiving adequate medical attention for his injuries.

I am asking you, supporters of Leonard and advocates of justice at this time to help. I don’t know what else to do. Please Help!

Thank you
Betty Peltier-Solano
Executive Coordinator
Leonard Peltier Defense Offense Committee

Also call and request Leonard be treated with dignity and respect.
Canaan Federal Prison

Pursuant to Betty Ann Peltier Solano's letter about her brother,
let the Bureau of Prisons know that the public will hold them
accountable for the safety and wellbeing of Leonard Peltier.

Warden Ronnie R. Holt, Warden
USP-Canaan
U.S. Penitentiary
3057 Easton Turnpike
Waymart, PA 18472
Phone: 570-488-8000
Fax: 570-488-8130
E-mail address: CAA/EXECASSISTANT@BOP.GOV

D. Scott Dodrill, Director
Northeast Regional Office
Federal Bureau of Prisons
2nd & Chesnut Streets., 7th Floor
Philadelphia, PA 19106
Phone: 215-521-7301
E-mail: NERO/EXECASSISTANT@BOP.GOV

Harley G. Lappin, Director
Bureau of Prisons
U.S. Department of Justice
320 First Street, NW, Room 654
Washington, DC 20534
Phone: 202-307-3250
Fax: 202-514-6878

Ask President Obama to investigate this incident:

The Honorable Barack H. Obama
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20500
Comments: 202-456-1111
Switchboard: 202-456-1414
Fax: 202-456-2461

Lorna Dee Cervantes On Cover to Cover, KPFA, 3 pm today

2009-01-02T11:36:00.000-08:00

Tune in to KPFA (94.1) today, friday, Jan. 2 at 3 pm for "Cover to Cover." I'll be interviewed by Nina Serrano for the first "Open Book" "Poet to Poet" broadcast of the year. You can stream it here or go to www.kpfa.org. I'll be reading a couple of brand new poems and being interviewed. It will probably be archived for a while, too, if you miss it.

A Poet In The Window

2008-12-08T14:23:00.000-08:00

Lorna Dee Cervantes in her office in The Mission, 12/2/08

2008-12-08T14:08:00.000-08:00

Morning Mission Haiku

24th & Harrison

The man pushing cans
Order a single taco;
Gets half pound of meat.

~~~~~~~~~~

Grandma is sweeping
Front of Discolandia.
She does a good job.

~~~~~~~~~

Bombed truck sprouts its paint
Everyone wants to get moved
By portable art.

12/4/08

More Morning Mission Haiku

Old hippie, balding,
Redoes ponytail string in
Record store window.

--------------

Viejitos staring
At Homes For Homies wonder:
"Los de abajo!"

--------------

Fluevog boots click past
Alcoholic Indian: high heels
Unheard since a boy.

12/5/08

Evening Mission Haiku

Mission palms inscribed,
The withered more than the rest:
Names of the dead.

--------------

Christmas tree on roof,
A car loses gas, baby
Crying in the back.

------------

Blonde boy in a dress
Swings a tasteful handbag hard.
No money for poor.

------------

Drivers inch into
spots, legal or not. White car
in back, bumper stained.

-----------

Old man wears old
Miners hat. Was that my ex
Driving down the street?!

More Mission Haiku

Lone quadriplegic
Man in a motorized chair
Wears his Santa hat.

----------------

Double-parked for half
An hour, the man who lives there
Gets his spot at last.

---------------

Late for work again
The pretty girl running past
Stops to brush her hair.

12/05
---------------

Caged parakeets in
The Mission learn teknopop.
Moroccan men rock.

---------------

December snowstorm
Strands tourists. Sunny all day
On 24th Street.

--------------

Copal smoke weaves dead
Ancestors, sends messages
Across the faultlines.

12/06
-------------

Danzantes dance on,
Keeping the calendar days
Sacred. People pass.

12/08/08

Today's Search Words Which Led to This Blog

2008-12-08T13:54:00.000-08:00

Christmas coffee poem
love poem words
poems about ice skating
Jessica MYSPACE NAME creative & invocative type
J F Kennedy & Corky Conzalez
dirimens copulatio examples
poems of being replaced
indigenous decree of 1972
the Mission poem (from Korea)
Lorna Dee Cervantes Love of My Flesh explanation
deceased fifth anniversary poem
comic strip Lorna
many stages of grief
poem about belonging
pomo

Oh My! I Think I'm In Love With The BlogSlut: On Genius

2008-12-05T14:35:00.000-08:00

"If you are lucky enough to run into someone who is beautiful and crazy and misguided and deranged and brilliant and honest enough to do this, with no fallback, with wings that might not work, buy them a sandwich."
~ end of GENIUSCIDE: READING MY SO-CALLED FREELANCE LIFE BY MICHELLE GOODMAN by Elizabeth Bachner

(click on above link to read her take on Michelle Goodman's How-To book, "My So-Called Freelance Life")

I just scanned it, taking a break from writing, and hungry.

Lorna

Mission Haiku

2008-12-03T03:02:00.002-08:00

24th Street Haiku

Men in The Mission
Don't all walk alike. Each one's
Sole punctuation.

Monday After Thanksgiving

Pigeons flock over
24th Street. Released folk
Roll suitcases home.

~~~~~~~~~~

Some walk by, lonely,
Stared at; so many ways love
Discovers its trust.

5:03

Bus passengers pass
Weaving shadows as they walk;
Lone skater dares all.

~~~~~~~~~~~

Girls sing down the street,
Dress darkly in uniform,
Silence in shadows.

~~~~~~~~~~~

The Mission smells like
Meat in the late afternoon,
Frijoles at dawn.

In This Season

Lots of older men
Walk slowly with their head bent down:
Caracoles all.

12/1/08

Indigenous Wisdom Block Party Today In The Mission, Capp & 24th - End Violence Against Women & Girls

2008-11-29T12:41:00.001-08:00

Indigenous Wisdom Block Party today in The Mission, Capp St.
I'll be at the Indigenous Wisdom Block Party in honor of the U.N.'s "International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women and Girls." The final event of three days' of observances, including prayer circles, film screenings, press conferences, and more, focused largely on the shockingly underreported femicides in Mexico and Guatemala, includes lots of live music, from Steve Taylor-Ramírez, Manicato, Chemystry Set, and others; healing ceremonies performed by curandera and curator Mamacoatl, and danza Azteca.

Come and check it out. Today until 5pm on Capp Street between 24th & 25th in SF - in The Mission.

"They're Going Home In the Mission" (an election poem)

2008-11-05T20:14:00.001-08:00

They're Going Home In The Mission

On the 48 bus no one would think
to stare, no gawking in the windows
of the poor. The poor that hate
that phrase; they wouldn't use it.

I gawk out the glass, hawking
my wits, for sale in this post-election
Mecca of my birth. My placenta dumped,
buried here 50 years over, fish into flesh

in the bay. Trumpets weave through traffic.
The ocean comes to visit in the eternal
spray, a fine mist curling the pages.
Quintana/24th to 3rd+20th, at every stop, the walkers.

How far is it to Paradise? Each
holds a different map. The birds know
the way, have traveled here, remember, tell stories.
Some told of a better future and had their tongues cut out.

Now, a pink Hello Kitty rolling backpack sounds
the calaca ritmo of Oyoyotl ascabeles, Ayoyote foot rattles.
Something sacred in the skin painted by heat,
the desire for peace, for prosperity, and for all.

Now, the calling of a single conga,
persistent with clarity reminds
of African roots; something strong in the afterword,
afterworld. A blood red armored vehicle passes.

This, too, shall pass: the strong-legged gente,
the eager children, the industrious truck
chugging away. I still wear my "I Voted!"
sticker, proudly. I like its blood red face.

Now, in this window, I remember my relatives,
all my relations, my ancestors, their guttural whispers
in the velas; how I sang to the dead
in an ancient ritual. And they heard, and confirmed.

"Ceremonies heal." And here, in the ceremonial
streets, the dead come home, heavy on their feet.
They board the bus (the yellow "First Student"
is packed.) They hustle and bustle, alive in the smile.

A new stretch limo snakes toward Mission.
Drugs? Fortune? Or fame? The skaters dare
their youthful bodies to the husky frame of an SUV,
the moving van. How far it is to the Great Highway!

My ancestors would walk. Some still do.
Some practice the art of projection. Some
handle the path of projectiles. Another eight slain
on the streets. Dripped concrete remembers the taste of blood.

The pigeons come home to roost, flagrant
in the fog. My new neighbors celebrate the passing
of a human rights bill for chickens while we humans mourn
the passing of an act to re-criminalize love.

The pigeon coos through a motorcycle cop's discussion;
his black hog blinking like an UFO. Today, red, white and
chrome are the National colors of The Mission. The Chicano cop laughs,
says to "Have a nice day!" Cantiflas mustache crooked with smile.

There is a new mission in America, here where the Américas
represent through the four directions. The colors
of the rainbow in a mural, in the murales, the many
missions of the Spirit. Here, where the heart lasts.

Here, the Quantum of Silence is silhouetted in the shadow of a gun.
The few and far between stitch the fate of a community
while the many, united, can turn the hand home.
Here, in the celebration of the many, united, going home.

Lorna Dee Cervantes
November 5, 2008
6:08 pm

"America..."

2008-11-05T16:39:00.001-08:00

America, we are the poem waiting to happen.

TODOS SON AMERICANOS! Fasting for Human Rights With Fair Trade & No More Raids

2008-11-04T11:43:00.001-08:00

I'm on day 2 of a 3-day fast in solidarity with people all over the US who are fasting, some for 22+ days in order to encourage people to vote for immigration reform, support those affected by ICE raids, and to educate themselves as to the history and issues of the U.S./Mexican border. TODOS SON AMERICANOS! I'm fasting for fair trade and basic human rights. Won't you join me and donate?

Lorna Dee Cervantes
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Subject: State News Article

7 in E.L. fast for immigrant rights

By Keiara Tenant
The State News
Published: November 3, 2008

Recent nationwide raids conducted by Immigration and Customs Enforcement to apprehend immigrants illegally working in the U.S. have prompted immigrant rights groups across the nation to take a stand.

On Oct.15, RISE, a nonviolent immigration rights organization based in Los Angeles, began one of the largest hunger strikes in America to encourage people to vote for immigration rights and support those affected by the raids.

More than 100 people are fasting and will continue to fast until at least 1 million people have signed a pledge to vote for immigrant rights.

Kai Newkirk, an organizer of RISE, said thousands of people have pledged thus far.

“We know that when people make personal sacrifices for a cause that’s true and just, it moves many other people to take that seriously and go into action and that’s what we’re seeing,” he said. “Thousands of people have signed it and we know that the pledge is the tool to help take the story and the sacrifices and the power of the fast and channel (it) effectively to mobilize people to get out there and vote.”

On Saturday, seven community members and members of Chicanos y Latinos Unidos, or CLU, committed to a four-day fast.

“I feel really good,” said Gabriela Alcazar nearly two days into the fast. “People don’t realize how much hunger is a psychological thing. … Every once in a while I get the urge to put food in my mouth, but it’s not really hunger.”
The fast, which permits only water, will end at midnight Nov. 5, said Alcazar, finance committee co-chair of CLU.
To help the families affected by the raids, CLU also is asking for $5 donations for each person fasting. The group has raised $150.

“The people who are being taken away from these homes are the main breadwinners in their households,” Alcazar said. “People have to get by, and we’re trying to help the families that are being affected as much as we can.”
Alcazar added she hopes the demonstration will raise more awareness about the way Immigration and Customs Enforcement has performed the raids.

“What we’re fighting for is not whether people are legal or not legal, whether they’re documented or not documented — it’s an issue of human rights,” she said. “People being raided in either their homes or workplaces and they’re doing absolutely nothing wrong, and they’re being treated like worst criminals ever.”
Ruth Verdin, political action co-chair of CLU, added that if more people know about the issues, it would better their chances of ending the raids all together.

Verdin said after speaking with the wife of a man who was recently deported, she fears for her own safety.

“I could see the pain in her face and the fear of not being able to walk around. It’s devastating,” she said. “I don’t feel safe in my own community, and that’s something I just can’t stand.”

Published on Monday, November 3, 2008

3 100-Word Love Poems

2008-11-01T09:28:00.001-07:00

These were posted on the Heretical Consumer Researchers site; I've been reading them in here in Washington state so I just thought I'd post them here. Provecho!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

100 Words Against Poverty

I’m not afraid of poverty.
I have your golden touch.
I have your threadlike hair.
I have the gold coin
and gentle rain of you.

I’m not afraid of poverty.
I could sip your soup
all day. I would play
with your remains, twist you
into endless mouthfuls, love you.

I’m not afraid of poverty,
not with this filling music,
not with these eyes, lips
that could cradle a tongue,
all that lean of you.

I’m not afraid of poverty.
I have your meaty heart.
I have the best of you.
I have your art
of loving back, have you.

5/4/08
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

100 Words Past Poverty

You were meant for me.
The rest is just poverty,
a piss poor way home,
a basket of backyard oranges,
fat potatoes, too many eggs.

You were born for me,
born to the losers class,
born to sorrow, born full
of all that you’ve been
missing, born half-way there.

You were waiting for me,
waiting to eat your fill,
waiting out tomorrow, a future
tense, a perfect reunion: you,
last splash in the present.

You were once my destiny, my
one-way ticket out of poverty,
a full tank of gas,
a brimming goblet, a lotto
love for you—for me.

5/4/08

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

100 Words for Money

Baby, you don’t need money.
You need me, my siren
in the surf, my song
in the dawn for you.
Who needs money? Anyone’s got
money. Ah, but who you
are, your inner change, that
spare coinage when you speak,
the enchanted gold of your
tongue — and its place! Baby,
who needs money? You’ve got
a gal like me, even
for a bargain. You, my
blue light special: with those
raptor eyes, lackadaisical sighs, wise
assed smiles in the comments;
every hundred dollars in your
heartbeat, that shirtful of soul;
Baby, who puts a price
on a heart like that?

10/1/08

Lorna Dee Cervantes

Where In the World Is Lorna? Seattle Today: Open Books; Tieton Tomorrow: LitFuse: Master Class, Keynote Talk, Reading

2008-10-30T10:21:00.004-07:00

I'm in Seattle today, getting ready to go present for a high school class; then a reading tonight at 7 for Open Books, Seattle's only all-poetry bookstore.

Tomorrow I'll be in tiny Tieton giving a Master Class: "Writing Down the Dead" and a keynote talk at the banquet, and a reading on sunday for the close of LitFuse, the second annual literary conference in the Yakima valley. I'll be joined by Michael Halperin, Jim Bodeen, Sam Green, Elizabeth Austin and others. Come on out! The master class is full, but, hey, come on out and talk; maybe we could work something out.

Where In the World Is Lorna? SF Today - 13th Heretical Consumer Research Performance

2008-10-22T08:12:00.001-07:00

I'll be performing poetry for the 13th Heretical Consumer Research Performance gathering today in San Francisco where Basquiat meets Baudrillard in the dump, Beuys meets the Fortune 500 on the run and Frida will not appear this afternoon for lunch at noon at the B Restaurant, upper terrace of the Yerba Buena Gardens on Howard across from her inimitable much imitated display. It will be a heretical happening. (What ever will I wear?)

Actually, this is a very exciting happening. I'm worried because I'm having trouble with my ankle which I badly sprained last month. The tendon seem to be popping - or something - with excruciating pain and an inability to walk. I'm hoping it will be okay by then.

For their 14th, they ought to invite the found puppet genius, Liebe Wetzel and her Lunatique Fantastique.