Short, Not Sweet
What you get when my hard drive is threatening to die on me
“We know now how vulnerable we are. We understand now that new terrors — and old terrors wearing new guises — will always rise up and come for us…Thank God for our poets.” Margaret Renkl, The New York Times
Inside this issue:
Thanks & as much as I could squeeze in before my hard drive had to go to the doctor
The poems of Karla Cordero and Alfredo Aguilar
POEM SHARE REQUEST! Send me a poem that spoke to you- it can be a link or the actual text. Next week, I will close out the last weekend in National Poetry Month with your suggestions. Thank you in advance!!
First and foremost: thank you for all the messages and honesty you shared with me after last week’s post. Most of us, it seems, are not immune to some darkness and confusion as we emerge from the past year. It helps to hold hands across cyberspace as we make our way.
I arrived at my desk this morning ready to spend some quality time with you as I do every Friday morning (even though you don’t realize it until Saturday). I found myself confronted with a black screen on my computer with a tiny white disk revolving endlessly. I’m typing on borrowed time after a kind Apple help person got me started and then made an appointment for me a the nearest Apple store that starts in an hour an a half. Something is happening that is NOT RIGHT so I’m racing against the clock or the final death throes of my hard drive, whichever happens first.
So we will leave me out of this week’s newsletter. All the thoughts I had to share with you will hold another week.
I will share, though, the colors I saw when my husband led me out into the world on Monday and up to the Carlsbad Flower Fields where there are millions, yes, millions of ranunculi. I love that word. I love the singular even more: ranuncula. It’s a little roller coaster of sound that ends in a flourish. The visit was therapeutic. Also: we picked blueberries. There was something deeply satisfying to tickling ripe berries from the vine into my little pint-sized box.
Most importantly, I will use the space and time remaining to share the poetry of Karla Cordero who, in turn, shares a poem by Alfredo Aguilar. These poems are to be savored, not for their sweetness, but for the fire that burns within them.
And finally, here is a link to a single short read from Margaret Renkl of The New York Times, a very short, from-the-heart tribute to poetry that packs that added gift of link after link to poems that help to name what we have trouble, sometimes, naming.
“We know now how vulnerable we are. We understand now that new terrors — and old terrors wearing new guises — will always rise up and come for us.
Thank God for our poets, here in the mildness of April and in the winter storms alike, who help us find the words our own tongues feel too swollen to speak. Thank God for the poets who teach our blinkered eyes to see these gifts the world has given us, and what we owe it in return.” - Margaret Renkl, “Thank God for the Poets” in The New York Times.
National Poetry Month Project
Karla Cordero is a descendant of the Chichimeca people from Northern Mexico, a Chicana poet, educator, and ARTtivist, raised along the borderlands of Calexico, CA. She is a three-time Pushcart nominee and offered fellowships from VONA, Macondo, CantoMundo, The Loft Literary Center, Community of Writers and Pink Door Writing Retreat.
Karla is the editor of SpitJournal an online literary review for poetry and social justice and founder of Voice 4 Change a reading and writing workshop series promoting diversity and cultural competency. Karla is also the CFO and Social Justice Equity Coordinator for the non-profit Glassless Minds, an open mic venue in Oceanside, CA, serving historically underserved youth.
Her poems have appeared and forthcoming in The Boiler Journal, PANK, ANMLY, Tinderbox, Bettering American Poetry, The Acentos Review, the Bernie Sanders 2020 Campaign Rally, The BreakBeat Poets Volume 4. LatiNEXT Anthology, among other publications. Karla is the author of the chapbook, Grasshoppers Before Gods (Dancing Girl Press 2016) and her first full length collection titled, How To Pull Apart The Earth (NOT A CULT. 2018) is a 2019 San Diego Book Award winner and awarding-winning finalist for the 2019 International Book Awards and finalist for the 2020 International Latino Book Awards. She currently serves as a Professor of Creative Writing and English at MiraCosta and San Diego City College.
Hear and watch Karla Cordero read her poem, “Calexico” from her book
How to Pull Apart The Earth.
Karla Cordero’s Poetry Share: Alfredo Aguilar
“Alfredo Aguilar is a brilliant honest poet native to San Diego and son of immigrant parents. Alfredo's poems reflect the complications in attaining the American Dream, and how children of immigrants battle their whole lives for social acceptances in a multiplicity of spaces when it comes to being both American and Mexican, a relatable struggle that many people face today. This poem gives people the ability to build allyship and connect with those who need to feel a little less alone in the world.” [This poem is from Alfredo Aguilar’s collection On This Side of The Desert.] - Karla Cordero
My Mother Drove Us Into Tijuana for Dentistry
because we didn’t have
american health insurance.
past otay mesa check point
were billboards in spanish
& narrow rutted streets.
on our left were rows of cars
waiting to enter the u.s.—
our dentist, ignacio, was a friend
from my mother’s childhood & often
they’d reminisce about their small town.
folks they knew, folks that had passed—
how the town looked so different now—
how their lives led them here,
with my mother leaving the country.
i sat in a dental chair & ignaico mixed putty
until it was pink. he needed an impression
of my top teeth for retainers. i tasted
a cold metal tray that kept the mold
in place. after a minute he unwedged it
& my mouth smacked of chalk. before leaving
my mother asked ignaico about
a new denture—the one she had was old.
until that moment i never knew
my mother had false teeth.
in our car, in the middle
of an expanse of cars
waiting to get back into the u.s.
my mother said i lost a lot
of my teeth when i was young.
she removed her top denture—
smiled at me, revealed a dark gap
between rows of ivory.
she tried to say something &
it came out jumbled. she laughed
not covering the gap
then i laughed with all my teeth
& she pushed hers back into her mouth—
i’ve worn these for a long time.
i don’t want that for you.
from the window
i watched older men
push carts between
stopped cars. they sold balloons,
bright popsicles, aguas, dulces.
a currency exchange booth
announced all i could buy
with just one american dollar.
i looked at my mother—
noticed her denture
yellowing at its edges
& saw her without it.
my mother left—
came to america—
had crossed for this.
The books of Karla Cordero and Alfredo Aguilar can be found at on the Spark Community Recommendations Page at bookshop.org where every sale supports local bookstores and, in this case, two vital American poets. Proceeds also help us towards out goal to support literacy programs.
That’s it for this week. Next week, we’ll be back up and running. I hope. In the meantime, please let me know how this week went for you, what you are thinking about, what you are reading, what you plan to read.
And send me a poem that has stayed with you.
I love hearing from you.
Gratefully,
Betsy
P. S. And now, your moment of Zen…A poem that works from the bottom and the top
Once more, writer Judy Reeves, provides us with a moment of Zen with a spine poem she created from the books on her shelves to mark “a year+ of the pandemic.”
Calling for Your Contribution to “Moment of Zen”
What is YOUR moment of Zen? Send me your photos, a video, a drawing, a song, a poem, or anything with a visual that moved you, thrilled you, calmed you. Or just cracked you up. This feature is wide open for your own personal interpretation.
Come on, go through your photos, your memories or just keep your eyes and ears to the ground and then share. Send your photos/links, etc. to me by replying to this email or simply by sending to: elizabethmarro@substack.com. The main guidelines are probably already obvious: don’t hurt anyone -- don’t send anything that violates the privacy of someone you love or even someone you hate, don’t send anything divisive, or aimed at disparaging others. Our Zen moments are to help us connect, to bond, to learn, to wonder, to share -- to escape the world for a little bit and return refreshed.
I can’t wait to see what you send!