Please enjoy the poem, and feel free to leave a comment.

El Barrio

Bring on the clave Tito Puente-style,
bring on two-three ritmo magic,
vaya papi que tu mambo moves me,
vaya mami que tu mirada mirrors my own curiosity,
vaya la clave,
vaya el sacred groove que me tiene floating y flotando,
and planted into the bedrock de esta tierra firme,
of this, our earth.

The winged clave,
uprooted, sold-out,
and chained to the miserable hold of a Portuguese slave ship, forced into migration,
this sacred syncopation
mixed with the strains of Andalusian canto
in the sugarcane fields of El Caribe,
and landed at this spot,
this town,
this Nueva York,
El Barrio,
El Barrio, el fingertip grip onto the American dream,
where half the streets open wide to the horizon,
and the other half are dead ends,
y donde el ritmo no tiene fin,
and the groove is deep.

El Barrio, where milk is not milk—but leche,
where manteca is manteca,
where the plantains are maduros,
ripe, sweet, brown smiles.

El Barrio, where the WhatsApp call,
la llamada a tu pueblo is fricken free,
Grandmother’s voice is honey
and you need it to be.

Listen, Abuela, in Puerto Rico, Cuba, Santo Domingo, Mexico y Honduras,
los muchachos eh—speak English at school,
pero español en la casa,
el lenguaje de nuestra sangre—our blood tongue at home,
and each morning I recite for them your prayer, Abuela;
que Dios te cubre con su santo bendición,
may God surround you with his sanctified blessing,
and then they cross themselves and go outside,
and cross themselves again when they pass the storefront churches
where the Charismatic Pentecostals are raising the roof,
and once again at the corner of 176th and Amsterdam,
where gladiolas, lilies, and everlasting silk rose blossoms
mark the spot where Papo was shot,
his lifespan “June 14th, 2000 – June 2nd, 2018, R.I.P.”
spray-painted onto the tenement bricks,
and scrawled beneath the sad youthful eyes of Jesus on a plastic gold crucifix are the words
“Why do the good die young?”

I’m gonna move to Puerto Rico when I retire,
I’ll get a house near the beach
and eat mangoes all day,
but, hey, then my kid’ll probably go to college (que Dios le bendiga) in Ohio,
marry a sweet, smart girl from there,
y entonces los nietos…the grandkids will need me
and I’ll need them to know where they come from,
who we are,
and how we live,
so I’ll stay here in El Barrio,
life is that way,
life is that way,
moving and changing like the crackle and burst of Tito’s timbales,
moving and changing
in El Barrio.

The post “El Barrio” by David Gonzalez appeared first on The Poetry Box.

The Poetry Box LIVE – September Edition!

Saturday, Sept 10, 2022 @ 4:00 PM (Pacific) / 7:00 PM (Eastern)

Featured Poets:

• Michael Waterson (California), author of COSMOLOGY OF HEAVEN & HELL
• P.M. Draper (Florida), author of AFTER PYRE
• David Gonzalez (New York), author of SOUNDINGS

Enjoy a Video from the Show:

ABOUT THE POETS 

Michael Waterson tells himself he looks good on paper. Born and raised in Pittsburgh, PA in the sulfurous glow of Blake’s Satanic mills, Waterson got gob-smacked by language at an early age, rapt by the wizardry of Shakespeare, the Celtic spells of Yeats. Growing up Roman Catholic in a place characterized as “hell with the lid off” colored his life in ways he’s still discovering after seven decades. As a young man he headed off to a party in California and never left. Now a retired journalist, his career includes stints as a factory worker, wildland firefighter, San Francisco taxi driver and wine educator.

He earned a BA from San Francisco State University and an MFA from Mills College. His poetry has won awards and appeared in numerous online and print journals. He currently resides in Napa, California where he is Poet Laureate Emeritus. He is a seannachie (storyteller) and singer/songwriter with a local traditional Irish music band, Kith & Kin, and has had several one act plays produced around the country.

You can order Michael’s new book HERE

P.M. Draper is a baby-boomer who retired during the pandemic. Her previous book of verse, The Tao of Hibiscus was published in 2020. She won 2^nd place in the Covid competition for her poem “A Time Like This” which appears here in After Pyre. She’s been a closet-poet for years, coming out in 2018 when she joined a local writers’ group. She lives in Vero Beach, Fl with her husband and Boston Terrier, Oreo.

You can order Patricia’s new book HERE

David Gonzalez is a storyteller, playwright, and performer whose poetry has been featured at Lincoln Center’s Out-of-Doors Festival, Bill Moyers’s documentary Fooling with Words, and NPR’s All Things Considered, and at universities and performing arts centers across the country. Oh Hudson, a long-form piece, was commissioned by the Empire State Plaza Performing Arts Center to commemorate the Quadricentennial of Hudson’s exploration. City of Dreams, a spoken-word/Latin jazz project, commissioned by The University of Maryland and La MaMa, has toured throughout the U.S. David wrote the opera libretto for Rise for Freedom, as well as numerous plays, including The Man of the House (commissioned by the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts); Mariel, an Afro-Cuban musical (commissioned by Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park); The Boy Who Could Sing Pictures, and many more. Mr. Gonzalez has toured widely throughout the U.S. and abroad. He received his doctorate in Music Therapy from New York University and has garnered numerous awards and commissions. He is a Joseph Campbell Foundation Fellow, has extensive experience supporting communities through the arts, and is a proud recipient of the International Performing Arts for Youth “Lifetime Achievement Award for Sustained Excellence.”

You can order David’s new book HERE

The post The Poetry Box LIVE (Sept 10, 2022) appeared first on The Poetry Box.