La Tolteca - Fall 2017

Promoting the advancement of a world without borders and censorship

La Tolteca Fall 2017 Año Seis Número Uno

On Writing, Water, and Sovereignty interview with Linda Hogan

On 1984 and America, 2017 Winston Bojangles

Essays ֍ Memoir ֍ New Poems ֍ Photography Art ֍ Poesía Boricua ֍ Favorite Picks for 2017

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La Tolteca Promoting the advancement of a world without borders and censorship

Publisher & Editor-in-Chief Ana Castillo

La Tolteca Staff Patricia Perea Octavio Quintanilla Annette Rodriguez Front Cover photo La Tolteca Zine (Photo Credit: La Tolteca Zine)

All Ana Castillo Workshopistas are invited to submit original, unpublished in any genre or media for consideration: tolteca@anacastillo.com Our theme for Spring 2018 is Open Letter to 2017 Submission deadline is January 15, 2018 2

Editor’s note Poetry En Tierra Sagrada

By Angelo Sandoval Sonnet Holding a Knife

By Octavio Quintanilla Written after study of “The New Bathroom Policy at English High School” The New Uniform Policy at St. Joseph’s College New Mexico True: The City Different

By Steve Olson Untitled 1 Untitled 2

By Amanda Salinas Ama Upallaychu Yachachik Tukurin Maestra No Te Calles

By Sisa Pacari Bacacela Gualán New Year Agenda

By Indran Amirthanayagem

Interview On Writing, Water , and Sovereignty with Linda Hogan

Essay On 1984 and America, 2017

By Winston Bojangles

Memoir Ursa Minor On My Back

By Daniela Kuzmanova And the World Tasted of Dust

By Michelle Otero My Father the War

By Annette Rodriguez 3

Photo Credit: Annette M. Rodriguez

Gallery Aerosol Postcards from Chicago,

By Marcelo Castillo La Llorona Leila Murrieta, photos Patricia Perea, notes Paintings by Oscar Romero & notes by Octavio Quintanilla

Poesia Boricua Mamí Never Spoke Spanish

By María Aponte Point of Departure Que Vida/What a Life

By Bobby González As Time Goes By A visit to my parents

By Nemir Matos Cintrón La Poética de la Alcapurria

By Carlos Manuel Rivera She Was So Naked Un Enigma Esas Muñecas

By Lourdes Vázquez ectomorph (n.)

Elegy for Hector Lavoe

By Rich Villar

2017 Favorite Picks

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At long last, we are happy to deliver at long last a new issue of La Tolteca Zine.

If at first glance it appears somewhat out of synch with current events, it was originally scheduled for publication last March. A lot of shit, as it were, has gone down since then.

With its inception in 2011, the purpose of La Tolteca Zine has been to promote my workshop participants and students, established writers and artists, and all manner of glorious visuals, especially photography, with the underlying premise of emphasizing the well-being of humanity and the planet. Please go to issuu.com to view our past issues, all a labor of love. La Tolteca Zine is an independent effort managed by volunteers.

In great part, the unfortunate delay was due to the sudden, quickly mounting, and disconcerting actions of the new administration in the U.S. and their immediate sickening effects and long-term potential harm to humanity and the planet. In addition, there were catastrophic results of so-called natural disasters in the United States, Caribbean, Mexico and elsewhere. Violence and death, which attend any society militarizing its population locally, nationally and globally is also now an in-your-face fact for the citizens of this nation. Regrettably, the examples along these lines that cite the cause for great concern regarding the current administration’s disregard for the safety and well-being of the planet’s population are too many to list here.

Out of gratitude to those who contributed in one way or another to the current issue, we are moving forward with the La Tolteca Zine project. We have kept the issue as it was originally intended.

With upcoming elections and the hope that some degree of democracy is practiced in the United States, we may keep the faith that this time too, shall pass.

Ana Castillo Editor-in-Chief and Publisher October 6, 2017 New York Photo Credit: La Tolteca Zine

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Photo Credit: La Tolteca Zine

En Tierra Sagrada Angelo Sandoval El Santuario de Chimayó, Hogar de mi Señor de Esquipula.

Tierra sagrada de mis antepasados, tierra sagrada.

El Pocito lleno de tierra que es medicina santa y bendita.

La Fe de los peregrinos que llegan A este lugar de tierra sagrada y saludable.

Lugar santo y bandito donde mi Señor de Esquipulas escogió pa' que un santuario fuera levantado en su honor.

El Hermano Bernardo, escogido por la mano de Dios, halló al Cristo Negro de Esquipulas.

En este dia moderno, este lugar santo y bendito está en peligo de perder su santidad con un Centro, un lugar de recreo.

La tristeza que esta tierra sagrada, Bendita Saludable Esta en peligro de perder su santidadcon este oficio de recreo.

Oh, Santuario benditio Santuario humilde, Santuario sagrado y santo Santuario de Nuestro Señor de Esquipulas.

Que Nuestro Señor De Esquipulas, El Cristo negro este siempre cuidando que este lugar santo mantenga la santidad y la humildad De nuestros antepasados.

Angelo Sandoval is a poet from northern New Mexico. He attended the Spiritual Activism Workshop with Ana Castillo in Chimayó, 2014.

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Photo Credit: La Tolteca Zine

Photo Credit: Marcelo Castillo

Aerosol Postcards from Chicago Marcelo Castillo

What makes a graffiti legend?

Many practitioners would say that it is someone who has painted their name on anything and everything in a way to make other writers and people take notice.

Depending on which side of town you are from, and which era you identify with, your answers may differ. What may be agreed upon,

perhaps, is the fact that if you have lived the life of a graffiti artist and are still painting, you may become be a living legend.

To be a legend in the graffiti world is to create a unique name for yourself, to have people wonder how you do the work that you do and how you keep doing it.

From what I have gathered is that quality and consistency are the principle points of the graffiti game. Many would frown upon an artist actually calling themselves a legend, even if they had in fact, created a myth around themselves, but it is safe to say that the Rogers Park neighborhood is home to quite a few impressive murals painted by some of the best graffiti artists that Chicago has to offer. I’ve personally met many of the graffiti artists turned muralists

that have graced the walls under some of Chicago’s viaducts in Rogers Park. Thanks to an inclusive-minded alderman and the fantastic public response more murals may come in the future.

Through graffiti I have met many graffiti artists who have turned their passion into artistic careers. Their illegal and legal art inspires and enlivens the community and would be a great service to any 9 neighborhood.

Photo Credit: Marcelo Castillo

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Photo Credit: Marcelo Castillo

Photo Credit: Marcelo Castillo

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Photo Credit: Marcelo Castillo

Marcelo Castillo (Workshop, Los Angeles, 2014) who calls himself as "a badazz Xicano from Xicago," is a regular contributor to La Tolteca Zine.

From Chi town with love!

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My Father the War I am warming up tortillas, and he continues a story, yelling into the kitchen from the living room couch. “What I want is a piece of car. Get me a piece of metal! Naw, man, something heavier…”

I’ve warmed up plenty of tortillas. Too many. But I delay bringing them out while spooning the beans onto plates and getting ice cubes in glasses. I fiddle around, hoping he’ll notice. I wait. “ ‘Cause he was green and what he didn’t know was that with bouncing babies, if he could just stay still, we could slide something heavy under his boot to keep it from blowing.

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Photo Credit: La Tolteca Zine

A good soldier can stand there on one leg for three days. Still. If there’s a piece of car nearby he has a chance.

he draws a line on the living room’s picture window, “and on the map, it’s a finger and a half from the DMZ.” They don’t know where the demilitarized zone is, I think, but I go That bronze star won’t be heavy along as he continues. Location isn’t enough, tin scrap wasn’t heavy the point. “I want to cry when I think enough. A bag full of clips isn’t of it, I really do. At Hamburger Hill, heavy enough…my flak jacket wasn’t the blood was coming down ankle heavy enough. When soldiers pair deep. I mean, it was bad. Bobby cried up, they won’t separate you; they let when he found out… he lost all those you go medivac together. I took my guys… then they gave back the hill flak, wrapped his brain in it, carried three days later.” him like that against me, his brain, my jacket, the pressure against my Of the eight men in my family that chest. I wake up some nights, my were in the Vietnam War, Uncle legs cramp from holding them still. Bobby is the only one my dad And I wake up wanting a car hood, respects as a fellow soldier. On the a car door, wanting something one hand, my dad teases Uncle Jesse heavier, man.” and calls him the “Mailman” because he spent his time in Okinawa It is all in my living room, the fire delivering mail between carrier ships. going; he is just getting started.

My Uncle Jesse never saw combat.

Someone asks where’s Hamburger Uncle Bobby, on the other hand, was Hill? in the worst of it, through Chu Lai and Hamburger Hill. A grunt like my “Where your uncle Bobby was? dad, he lost most of his company I Uh, okay, picture it, here’s Saigon, know all about those guys. I know and then go twenty kliks south,” about locations and rank; I know looking up at our faces he tries for names like Bobby and Chief, Cook, clarity, “Okay, so here’s the DMZ,” and Porter.

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“Porter was a white kid down the block,” my dad continues. “We weren’t friends because his family didn’t like Mexicans. But anyway, when he got drafted he came over to our house to ask my dad for advice. I don’t know what they talked about, what my dad told him… When I went in a year later, I was in the same company as Porter.

He died a month or two before I got there. I was asking about him and they said it wasn’t a bad wound.

He got shot in the leg and all the guys were just running, and they left him behind…” his voice splinters, he stops himself as his eyes water, then he collects himself; here, he smiles baring his two missing front teeth. He looks as innocent as if in a grade school picture. He smiles and says, “You know how he died?

That kid drowned in a puddle.”

I stare at him reclined, but agitated, on my couch. All that nervous energy. I sit across from him, praying for the phone to ring. I count off the stories like counting rounds. I know that a .45 holds

‘‘

He died a month or two before I got there. I was asking about him and they said it wasn’t a bad wound. He got shot in the leg and all the guys were just running, and they left him behind… thirteen because there’s always one at the top. Should I stay? I want to go, even if for a minute, just into the kitchen to catch my breath.

Behind him, outside the window, I see it’s gone dark. I have tried to evade nights like this, but lately they’re happening more often.

Dinners begin and end with Vietnam.

Nights like this make me dream of bones, the same dream. I am a child and I am digging with my hands. As the hole widens, I see 15

jawbones, bleached and dry, I pull them out and stack them, then the dirt becomes spongy, then warm, then wet. I push through sticky blood as I reach into the hole and pull at the edges of a bone. It resists, then pops, as if out of joint, and I sit in the dirt holding a bone, muscle and flesh hanging.

“You never know, buddy. You learn not to trust. It was my first week in and this kid’s walking toward us, he’s maybe ten. But I could tell there was something not right about him, like he was walking funny. And I walk over, ‘Stop!’ and he keeps coming. Something’s not right, I tell Cook. And I go over to the kid, push him down and the I cannot go. I cannot have the night kid’s got three grenades! That was a or his stories, like fairytales, end. kid.” He takes a long pause. I can see he’s deciding on an ending. “So He is not so old. He still has a I threw him down and told the guys head full of black hair but I am to keep their rifles on him. I went terrified of the silencing of his and got the corporal.” voice. I am terrified of living with the ghost of this voice. I can’t I decide that he’s sparing me, that accept that there will be a time he shot the kid with three grenades when I will remember the war his first week in. Maybe it was his alone. first kill, or his first kid.

I am more afraid, I know, of him dying than he ever was. I am terrified, more terrified than he was in the bush, more terrified than he was under two mattresses the night the rockets started and he had no weapon. I am more scared of him dying than he ever has been.

But, “I threw him down and told the guys to keep their rifles on him” isn’t the way it ended. I know that.

“Sometimes you just wanna’ kill.

And not always the enemy,” he adds. We both laugh. “There was this guy from Tennessee… we were 16

playing high card for paychecks. I got the ace of clubs; nothing beats the ace of clubs, and the guy from Tennessee says—this guy was huge, and old, twenty-four, and he had a handlebar mustache—he says, ‘I ain’t giving that spic my paycheck.’

I was ready to kill him.” He repeats it, ‘I ain’t giving that spic my paycheck,’ spitting ‘spic’ loudly.

“They had to hide him from me that night. They took my .45 and my 79 but I grabbed another guy’s gun and I went looking for him for, like, four hours, but they hid him from me. I kept looking and drinking, drinking and looking.

Then I woke up with a mattress on me.

The word mattress reminds him and he looks at his digital watch.

It’s time to go.

“Ah, buddy, it’s late. Thanks for dinner.” He dusts off his knees. I don’t want him to leave. We hug.

When I wake that night to the dream of bones, I walk to the living room. The fire is out. I stand in the empty room and I yearn for his voice. The stories remind me of what I know, what I knew first, before letters and words. The sound of his voice, the smell of Viet Nam. Annette Rodriguez (Chimayo 2013) teaches Creative Writing at the Institute of American Indian Arts and is a La Tolteca staffer.

That’s the second time I woke up with a mattress on me, because I didn’t have a gun—the other time was the night before I came back to the States. When they check you out, they take your guns. And both times rockets started flying and I kept yelling, ‘I don’t have a weapon!’ so I had to lay there under two mattresses.”

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La Poética de la Alcapurria Carlos Manuel Rivera “Sharping with Guaguancó Sharping with Guaguancó.

With the Salsa I’m coming on.

Transformando el guaguancó Alcapurria como yo”.

I’m not coming on with measures of verses tampoco with structures of rhythms.

My Poetic is a long story as Puerto Rican, Nuyorican, Post-Puerto Rican-American.

Since the Gringos Invasion my Epic was Affirmation Nation Identity.

My journey has been an Accumulation of souls ñame, yuca, plátano y yautía.

Photo Credit: La Tolteca Zine

Moviendo a las masas, avoiding disintegration and recovering La Historia.

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This unknown Historia that you minimize.

It’s easy to say these Spics do not belong here because their English is Broken.

These People have a different Color.

A different Accent.

A different Flavor.

Yes, Flavor with all types all languages all races all abolengos.

One day when the decision to write and to speak out was done, We settled our Angry, Misery Obituary in your Historia.

La Poética Es de la Alcapurria mixed with verduras fritas con manteca.

Sure is not the manteca you are thinking about.

Because you sent to hit us.

Your goal was to kill us.

But let me tell you something We are Community.

We have to express you more than this Historia.

Sí With Alcapurria Pasteles and drinking Coquito.

Sí A Poetic above.

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Do not cross your mark in this Territory constructing complains separating our sorrows pains and ambiguities.

A Poetic of Human Peace.

When all the doors open we stood up and dwelled a place Un Nuyrorican Poet CafĂŠ where we joined with Pedro Mickey Bimbo Tato Miguel.

Where we joined Cantos Beats Rhythm Poetry.

A Poetic of Relation con

El Mundo.

A Poetic which deletes Roots to be with you.

A Poetic of Non-Sense. without Simple Sound as you like Rumba.

As you like to dance Salsa.

A Poetic brings you sentiment for surviving for fun for working for raising a wealthy Family as you have done Your.

A Poetic based in Icons how mi Abuela me contĂł.

Icons

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to rebuild to introduce something to my Children.

To reveal something to my Generation to Generation of my Grandson.

To have a Puerto Rico that I’ve never seen.

Un Puerto Rico de Imaginación.

Un Puerto Rico who believes tomorrow será mejor.

Un Puerto Rico who creates from here Su Libertad.

My Freedom is Your Freedom.

My Fraternity is Your Fraternity My Equality is Your Equality.

A Free Puerto Rico as Washington and Jefferson dreamt for having Your America.

Land of Opportunity but Division Poverty Hunger A Land forever Free Ascended how My Paradise Island is and America Does not Want.

Carlos Manuel Rivera is a performance artist and poet based in NYC where he has widely performed the poem, La Poética de la Alcapurria. The poet is also on the faculty of the Modern Languages Department at CUNY. 22

Point of Departure Bobby Gonzรกlez

They took away our Gods and our voices And we cried in silence before the eyes of our children.

Exiled to land beyond knowing.

Shattering of tribal universe.

The hand of destiny fell hard on the elders.

Wondrous sight.

Unbeaten souls dressed in rags hold hands in a circle around the trunk of a sacred cedar tree.

We join together with faces turned upward to the sky.

Communal remembrance.

Visions from the future.

Starving. Bleeding. Violated.

Yet, unwilling to abdicate our human dignity.

White-haired grandmother is making the transition.

Bury her properly.

Carefully wash the bones...

The liberated soul must not catch fear on its journey.

It is time.

Let us go.

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Photo Credit: La Tolteca Zine

Que Vida/What a Life Problems creep into your life.

Leaving you unnerved.

Having to rearrange the furniture between your ears.

And wondering if Tradition is big and strong enough to accommodate change.

Is it because the dialogue between human beings and Mother Earth has broken down?

Fragmented community.

Storytelling/a privileged ritualistic continuation.

Children cluster around and set to memory tribal poetry recited by elder mother of courage and wisdom.

Epic tale that ends with the final words of Christopher Columbus, Richard Nixon and Al Capone. “I am responsible, but I am not guilty.�

Bobby Gonzalez is a multicultural motivational speaker, storyteller, and poet based in the Bronx, New York. His most recent collection of poetry is titled Taino Zen.

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Photo Credit: Annette M. Rodriguez

La cumbia de mil balas Lourdes Vázquez Es plena luna llena, que es cuando se distinguen los cadáveres en el desierto y a los niños que se esconden de la policía fronteriza. Los cientos y cientos de niños que aparecen a diario cual conejos en el sombrero del mago. El acto da comienzo. El mago con su capa roja, sus sentidos rojos, su sombrero de copa, acompañante de luces y el conejillo que aparece en el sombrero. Los niños saltan por el río gracias a las tortugas del arenal.

Brincan las cercas con ayuda de la paca de coyotes que sirven de protección y cura. Ese lobo estepario de ojos amarillos dueño de su territorio, marcando distancias, entre el éxtasis de los armados y la música que les acompaña. La cumbia de mil balas y muertos encontrados por doquier.

Una noche me escapé por entre el largo cortinaje de hierro y sus torres con cámaras de circuito cerrado, pero la energía de los fósiles es también el lobo de la pradera. Ese día con la luna redonda y dos maletas de libros de poesía crucé la frontera junto a un grupo de prostitutas que servían a los agentes, para luego quedarme dormida por aquellos predios repletos de murciélagos y ecos del lobo de pradera. De miedo. De fascinación la magnitud de estrellas y el armadillo que se cerró como piedra escrita hasta que llegase la nueva rotación del sol. De fascinación las flores de medianoche del saguaro. Entretanto, en esta economía delincuencial se siguen desplomando muchos de esos niños de sed, de hambre, de puro cansancio, de puro miedo. De miedo nos morimos todos con los ojos fijos pegados a la curvatura de las estrellas por estas tierras nocturnas.

Lourdes Vázquez, poet, narrator and Librarian Emerita of Rutgers University. Among her latest works are her novella Not myself without you listed in “2013 Top Ten New Latino Authors to Watch.”

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Mamí Never Spoke Spanish Maria Aponte

Puerto Rican Frank Sinatra bobby sox fan Tough Afro Puerto Rican sister from P.S. 101 El Barrio, New York Grew up finished high school—Central Commercial Never saw her dream come true Dress designer Worked in the garment district in Manhattan Married—had me Fast Forward Summer Programs the War on Poverty Program—save our youth from the ghetto programs P. S. 155 It’s the summer of “Cool Jerk” by the Capitols “Say it loud, I’m black and I’m Proud” by James Brown Camp counselors playing music in the gym loud /gritty We sing along, dancing snapping our fingers All is right with world for the moment on 117th street Running home singing at the top of my lungs, “Say it loud, I’m black and I’m Proud!”

The shift in sofa made the ground move Mamí stopped reading her Redbook Magazine Looked at me over her glasses asks, “What are you singing?”

I smile and repeat Taking a deep breath she asked, “What do you think you are?”

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Confused look after all I’m only 12 years-old I answer “I’m black and I’m proud!”

Mamí put down the Redbook magazine Mamí who never spoke Spanish did that Saturday afternoon In a language that I would learn /understand years later I was told that I was Puerto Rican Our family came from Puerto Rico from towns with names like Coamo and Mayaguez Some family came over by boat to New York in 1920’s I am confused Lost not understanding this outrage Towards the end of this very short family history lesson I am told in Spanish, “Pa Negra soy yo!”

First lesson about our intercultural racism The fear of being something that might shame the family/us Fast forward Social Studies grade school class project pick a country you want to write about.

I pick Puerto Rico I pick Julia de Burgos who looked a bit like Mamí and me With Crayola crayons I drew my first Puerto Rican Flag on construction paper I still hear James Brown in my soul In time I would learn to accept my Afro Puerto Rican Roots.

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A Poem for Rosa She came from Puerto Rico with her sisters Gabriela and Pochola. Three sisters walking the streets of Manhattan talking in Spanish a language so new that native New Yorkers would look and point and ask what language was that? It was the 1920’s. Puerto Ricans a rare sighting. Each sister persevered, but Rosa would outlive them.

Finding her way, she became a life time resident of Spanish Harlem El Barrio. Never speaking English, she would work as a housekeeper in hotels in Manhattan, come back home cook while humming her boleros under her breath. Her specialty was pastelitos. I would watch her make them and, of course, wait for the first one to come out of the frying pan.

She only spoke Spanish. I only spoke English and in our broken languages, we communicated. A lot of hand motions that created paintings in the air, like an artist painting on a blank canvas.

Rosa would take me to La Marqueta on Saturday mornings to shop, our weekly ritual of cafĂŠ negro with lots of sugar and pan de manteca dipped in the coffee.

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Rosa made Maví every summer. I patiently watched the bottles sitting in the sun on the fire escape waiting for the foam to rise, letting us know that the Maví fermented ready to drink!

My Great Grand Aunt Rosa born in 1896, coming to New York and eventually becoming a woman, wife, aunt, caregiver care taker.

Rosa, who would crochet in the dark with a small lamp while watching Bonanza, Gunsmoke, & Bat Masterson and understood what was on TV but refused to speak English. She would flick her wrists with the crochet needle at the TV in anger when the storyline wasn’t to her liking and would say so, but in Spanish.

My Great Aunt Rosa, the last link to my family history that carried all our burdens and secrets and respectfully never told them because after all no matter what, you never talk about family outside of the family.

My Great Aunt Rosas who in her broken English, would teach me that I came from this place, her home Puerto Rico.

Maria Aponte is a poet, performance artist, community arts activist and educator. She is the author of Transitions of a Nuyorican Cinderella and The Gift of Lost, a Puerto Rican Memoir.

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ectomorph (n.)

Rich Villar

ectomorphic (n.) human physical type (somatotype) tending toward linearity, as determined by the physique-classification system developed by the American psychologist W.H. Sheldon.

Although classification by the Sheldon system is not absolute, a person is classed as an ectomorph if ectomorphy predominates over endomorphy and mesomorphy in his body build. The extreme ectomorph has a thin face with high forehead and receding chin; narrow chest and abdomen; a narrow heart; rather long, thin arms and legs; little body fat and little muscle; but a large skin surface and a large nervous system. If well fed, he does not gain weight easily; if he becomes fat, he is still considered an ectomorph. ectomorphic (adj.)

1. of or pertaining to the qualities of the somatotype.

CoĂąo meng, them ectomorphic elbows be digging into my hip.

Eat something.

2. of or pertaining to your ghetto upbringing.

CoĂąo meng, that ectomorphic crackhead is getting ready to steal my car. Oh wait? Is that the kid upstairs? 'Ta to' seco, la pobre de su mama.

3. of or pertaining to the girl you make fun of when you're tired of catching shit for being fat.

She looks like the Cryptkeeper.

4. of or pertaining to the girl you secretly love.

She looks like the Cryptkeeper.

5. Everything you've convinced yourself your mother ever wanted for you.

Listen. I like myself the way I am. You should, too.

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ectomorph (n.)

A linear man, a man tending toward linearity, like straight as an arrow, a man straight and narrow, like normal, like the way you'd prefer to be but can’t. A motherfucker who can't gain weight. The basketball player. The baseball player. The invisible man. The man walks into the pizzeria, and no one stares at him. The man without weight. The man without slumped shoulders. The man without the extra chin in the drawing, the photograph, the painting. A linear man, a man lined up, a life planned and actualized. A man too busy to be fat. Too active to be fat. Too much moving, moving. A man with an active lifestyle.

Look, baby. I cut my belly open for you. Do you love me now? ectomorph (v.-irregular) 1. You were so skinny as a baby. All you ate was a bowl of cereal in the morning and that was it.

2. What happened?

3. Such a tiny baby. Seven pounds, one ounce. I heard that the skinniest babies become the fattest people.

4. Your sister, she just kept feeding you. You'd soil your diaper, she'd feed you. You'd cry, she'd feed you. I think that's how she got you to shut up.

5. No one puts a gun to their own head. Coño, didn't you just eat?

6. There’s this movie you should see. Fatso. Dom Deloise is in it. It's about this guy who can't stop eating. His family worries about him.

Seriously, you should see it. He's all depressed until he finds a girlfriend.

7. Stop hiding that cereal bowl.

8. Did you eat again? You're always in that fucking refrigerator.

9. I'm looking for the husky sizes for boys.

10. Why can't you be

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Elegy For Hector Lavoe Rich Villar

It would only be hyperbole if I was not my father, his Jersey leather against the Manhattan skyline in 1973, two hours after they expected you.

He snapped a picture of you, then another. I have been forcing myself into the frame, ever since. We did not live on Calle Luna, Calle Sol, but I still have the knife he carried, the carved white handle, heavy.

I imagine there are days you possessed him, your tinted glasses a shield against the visions of uncles left behind, left rocking in chairs, on a porch in Caibarien. Or of his father, my grandfather, left behind without the grief of exodus, without the low moon rattle of exile.

Even your voice taking leave of your throat, yes, even that, I archive,

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extend into allegory, the colonies of my feet, reconquistadas, soldier, or runaway slave, praying backwards into uncompromising.

You are not my father, though my father fancies himself El Cantante de los cantantes, poeta de los poetas, and tonight, I choose belief.

Viejo, on this street without cuchillos, in a town you never visited, today I heard gold kiss wind, brush the shoulders of its brick, settle into my bones. You will not die yesterday, today, or tomorrow.

Cemeteries are full of your unsubstantiated rumors. Hector, stand on the roof with me again. Tempt me with my father's kingdoms, my kingdoms, stretched before me like notes only I can sing.

Rich Villar is a poet, essayist, and educator . His first collection of poems Comprehending Forever (Willow Books, 2014), was a finalist for the International Latino Book Award.

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AS TIME GOES BY Nemir Matos-Cintrón Vacant gaze, my father’s eyes; as1942’s Casablanca black and white movie plays, flickering against the blinding summer Sunday afternoon in this Central Florida nursing home: Debary Manor.

On TV, the fateful heroine asks Sam, the negro “boy” to play on the piano the melancholic song “As time goes by” With pleading tone she asks Sing it, Sam- and he unwillingly abides.

–You must remember this, a kiss is just a kiss, a sigh is just a sigh, the fundamental things apply, as time goes byAs time goes by, faded memories linger in the common parlor of drooling centenarians in wheel chairs whose visiting relatives sadly smile as we look in the mirror of our own mortality.

Slough, my father’s skin, punctuated by islands of skin cancer.

Geriatric ward, pervasive bouquet of antiseptic soap. masking the acrid smell of human daily debris.

Mirroring outside, doleful bayou Gator eyes leaping from deceivingly quiet waters.

Stagnant swamp, Amidst the unhinged sounds of Mockingbirds and the rumble of tampered nature.

Ahh! Everglades State, shameful Dixieland of yesteryear, sunset instead of sunshine state, hardly reminiscent of the heroic feats of Spanish explorer Juan Ponce de Leon, the first European to set foot in Florida in feverish pursuit of a mythical Fountain of Youth.

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Photo Credit: Annette M. Rodriguez

A visit to my parents Muted ocean of early February, solitary seagull in diagonal flight across the horizon separating the sea from the sky.

I come here to pay a visit to my parents: ashes dispersed into the ever-changing waters of the Atlantic Ocean.

Are you greeting me in the crest of a wave crashing on the sand?

Are you waiting for me at the bottom of the ocean among the coral reefs?

All I know is I need your embrace however tormented was your life together.

I need your embrace, Mother, to smell the sweet aroma of fresh clothes left hung to dry under the sun.

Father, I need your embrace filled with the poignant sounds of your mandolin as you sadly smiled in remembrance of clandestine amorous encounters.

It is clear to me now as I stand here at the shore of the Atlantic Ocean, waves lapping at me feet, longing for your embrace, you were perfect in your imperfection.

Nemir Matos-Cintrón nació el 19 de noviembre de 1949 en Puerto Rico. Ha publicado tres libros de poesía: Las Mujeres no hablan así , A través del Aire y el Fuego, pero no del Cristal (1981) y Aliens in NYC (2011). Ha publicado además en varias antologías tanto en Puerto Rico como en los Estados Unidos.

Radica en los Estados Unidos donde trabaja 35 como diseñadora instruccional.

And the World Tasted of Dust Excerpt, Summer 2001, la Frontera Michelle Otero

My mom and I had just finished loading

the last of my things into my brother’s truck. I drove relieved to have a place to put my hands that was out of her reach.

She liked to be useful, and as long as I could remember, even when her papers were graded, the laundry folded and put away, beans simmering and yellow cheese grated for dinner, she would rearrange the living room furniture or organize the cabinet of old margarine and cottage cheese containers we referred to as Tupperware. Now that the truck was loaded and we were less than an hour from El Paso, she might try to hold my hand and tell me that she hoped this move would be good for me and ask if I was still seeing “that counselor.”

Virginia, the counselor, was a Mexicana who specialized in trauma. A mentor who believed all Chicanos should go to therapy sent me to her. He had called after the accident when I’d left Albuquerque without warning and driven to my parents’ house to stay for a week. “You come from the Aztecs. Your people are warriors,” he said. Then he gave me Virginia’s number.

Thanks to her, I could drive again. She had guided me through the telling and retelling of the accident, each time focusing on a different aspect, each time helping to release a little more of my fear.

I didn’t like being the center of my mom’s attention or the object of her worry. Nothing she said or did could lift me out of the pit in which I had come to find myself, and so I felt like a disappointment. I was trying desperately to be well, hoping against hope that the worst of me had stayed behind with the car accident, a breakup, a giving up, a stranger who grabbed me while I jogged, the diagnosis of disorders by a psychiatrist who mostly wanted to prescribe pills.

Photo Credit: La Tolteca Zine 36

“Are you thirsty?” my mom asked as we pulled into the farm road leading to the old highway, which would lead us back to the interstate.

“Yeah,” I said, glancing at the half-dozen plastic water bottles we’d emptied since leaving Albuquerque almost three hours earlier.

I guided our conversation away from the accident and the ex-boyfriend who I’d thought I loved and assumed would always love me. We’d been together just over a year, the longest I’d been with any man since my first love. The latest exboyfriend was a divorced Chicano attorney with two small boys. At twentyeight I was too young to be dating a forty-year-old with children. (I’d wanted to like his kids but really, I’d wanted them to be more likable.) Their dad and I met salsa dancing, and I remember thinking that night as he led me through a basic salsa step then twirled me under one arm and around his back, over and over no matter the song, always a quarter-beat off the rhythm, that this is what my life might be with him. We broke up because I was moving away. Or maybe I was moving so we could break up.

“Let’s stop,” Mom said, pointing ahead to the general store on the crossroad connecting Highway 185 to the interstate. I pulled into the parking lot, hard-packed gravel under the tires. A white tarp sign promised cold water. My

mom and I got out of the truck. Since the accident, the sun hurt my eyes. I rubbed my fingers together, feeling an almost undetectable grit between them. As I blinked and swallowed, I realized the grit was in my eyes, on my teeth, dusting my face and hair. I thought of the ceremonies that used to welcome our girls into puberty, girls dusted with corn pollen by their elders.

I thought of how the dust still holds those ceremonies, how our people still need them—ways to bring girls into womanhood, to welcome home the warrior, to heal the sick.

“I need to re-arrange a few things,” I said.

“You want a snack or something besides water?” she asked.

“No, just water,” I said, testing the strength of the bungee cord holding my mattress.

I had spent the months since the accident extracting possessions from my Albuquerque apartment and then from my friend’s extra bedroom and moving south in fragments. First there had been a pressboard bookcase with removable shelves and two cardboard boxes filled with old journals. Then the mattress and box spring, raspberry stained from the insides of beetles that swarmed my brother’s truck as he drove my bed South. He told me of gusts that slammed the beetles against 37

the grill and windshield and yanked the mattress from the truck bed, hurling it across Interstate 25. He couldn’t pry it from the mesquites lining the shoulder without ripping holes in the pillow top.

I had stored everything in Tony’s trailer in Leasburg, when I thought I might start over by living with him. But then I dropped off the last load, propped the mattress against the flimsy wall of his spare room. I looked out the window to the half-acre of land that he loved, not because it was beautiful, but because it belonged to him. I think I felt the same way about him, a kind of love born from comfort, familiarity and faith that someone or something would always be there for me.

I pictured the dust storms that would erase the trailer. I imagined cars breaking down on the interstate, and strange men walking to our door for help.

I couldn’t live there. I pictured myself alone in the trailer, behind a front door that was easy to kick in. Isolated, too tired to drive into town. I couldn’t live there. So my mom and I drove to his place to get my things and move them to my brother and sister-in-law’s new house in El Paso.

Although a season had passed, memory of the accident lingered. A black Jetta cut across my lane, sharp left from center. We hit. Broke. I veered toward a corner lamp post. A house behind it. A concrete barricade to stop my car from hitting them both. I must have slammed the brake to the floor. I stopped short of the barricade. I think I hit my head. My chest throbbed where the seatbelt held me. I thought of bruises forming a beauty queen sash.

The psychiatrist I saw in the weeks following the accident was a Jewish woman who wanted to fix me with “something in the Prozac family.” What I needed was a curandera, the Blessed Mother, Jesus, and a priest. I needed someone barefoot to rub an egg over me and crack it into a glass, to blow tobacco smoke into my face, and cleanse me with rosemary and an eagle feather. I was the kind of hurt no one could see, my head wobbly on my shoulders.

My mom brought out two bottles of water. I held one against my forehead, closing my eyes and letting its moisture mix with my sweat, then tossed it into the cab of the truck for later. My mattress had shifted in the truck bed,

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and the red and black bungee cord strained. I pressed my body against the truck for leverage, the top of my head against the propped up mattress, my face directly over the truck bed. I gripped the coils of the bungee cord and unhooked it.

The hook slipped across my palm. It lashed my face. I jerked my head back in pain.

“Your eye! Your eye!” my mom screamed. She was standing in front of me now, pulling my hand from my face.

“You need to let me see if it’s okay.” She looked over her bifocals. I couldn’t see what she saw. My brow throbbed. I blinked to keep blood from dripping into my eye. “It missed your eye,” she said.

“Oh, thank God.” She put her water bottle against my brow and sat me in the truck. “I’ll get you some ice,” she said, squeezing my shoulder. She ran back in the store.

The white label of the water bottle was now the red of watercolors. I pulled down the visor. My brow bled where the coil had opened a gash, not wide enough for stitches, but too big for a bandage.

The hook had stamped a fissure next to my left eye. I thought of the tiniest of streambeds in drought, the water that pooled and dissipated, the moisture stored deep beneath the surface.

There are moments I wish I could freeze, for example, the moment before I unhooked the elastic cord. The exhalation when my car stopped short of the concrete barrier and the empty street held me, before the other driver’s face filled my open window in rage. Before he yelled, “Are you drunk?” so angry and sure of himself, I almost believed I was drunk and that I had somehow caused him to make an illegal turn in front of me.

When I tell this story, I touch my face, lay fingertips on the scar in my brow and the other even I mistake for age. “It just missed my eye,” I say. I give thanks to shock, its mercy, its power to numb me from pain.

Michelle Otero is the author of Malinche’s Daughter. She is a founding member of the TIASO Artist Cooperative and a member of the Macondo Writers Workshop. She participated in the spiritual activism writing workshop with Ana Castillo in Chimayó, NM, 2014.

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On 1984 and America, 2017 Winston Bojangles “The horror, the horror” muttered Kurtz at the end of Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness.

Likewise, Winston Smith, George Orwell's hero in the 1949 classic, 1984, starved, beaten, teeth broken, bolted with electric shocks, comes round to understanding the meaning of Ingsoc (in Oldspeak, English Socialism), the state of perpetual war, and Oceania's absolute power.

He is fed gradually, clothed, allowed to bathe, then released. At the novel's end every day by 3 p.m. Winston Smith takes a table in the corner of the Cactus Cafe with a chess board and a gin, before the poster of Big Brother, and he says I love you Big Brother.

The world of 1984, of doublethink, of antonymous ministries--the Ministry of Truth deals with the propagation of lies, the Ministry of Love, with the delivery of hate-- became a best seller again recently in the United States.

America the Great. America the Powerful.

America, where two dollars and some change does not get you a latte at the Starbuck's down the road from the Berkeley Public Library. (I am not sure of the distance to the closest Starbuck’s.) Starbuck’s took a stand in favor of immigrants in response to ‘the Ban,’ but its ubiquity speaks to the mass market mind dominion predicted in 1984.

Photo Credit: La Tolteca Zine

I wanted to write about Orwell and I ended up in Starbuck’s. The coffee shop is a benign antidote to the thought control described in Orwell's world. In every Starbuck's one can tune in to free Wi-Fi, snuggle into a leather armchair, or sit astride a high stool for a high stilettoed conversation between the young and cool.

Meanwhile outside, a few days after ‘the Ban’ was suddenly unleashed immigrants hid their faces, and dodged rumors that the police were checking IDs in downtown Los Angeles; they are nervous to fly back to see grandma, given that they might not get back into Dodge. The Sheriff was snarling. The Sheriff was tweeting.

In the first two weeks of this new American order, or rather disorder, protesters were already gathering everywhere; the head of the Armed Forces and potentate of a 40

fading, pink-faced America, decided to go.

The emperor, as it were, was starting to get weary and perhaps wondered why aides were not reminding him to put on some clothes. In 1984 Winston Smith works in the Ministry of Truth (which using doublethink means Lies).

He works on rewriting history, changing the past and the present, airbrushing the recently vaporized from old newspaper articles. And in his spare time, he looks from the corner of his eye to see if he can spot people who think like him, who are opposed to thought control, the ubiquitous two-way television screens, the constant observation.

Winston belongs to the Party, one of its outside members. He is not of the elite Inner Party, but he is far above the vast majority referred to as the proles. Nobody cares about the proles, he observes. But they are also Winston’s hope that they will rise up and overthrow the tyranny of Big Brother.

Winston, the man, is also lonely and he dreams of a vigorous, long-haired girl who comes bounding over hill and dale into his arms. Her name is Julia, and she too, is looking for companionship.

The doomed love affair wrenches the reader’s heart. There is no exit in this novel. Winston and Julia know from the beginning that their love will end in ashes, in each one denying the other. Yet, they search for places to meet away from the eyes of the tele-screens, and the microphones hidden in bushes. And the reader goes along with their tale consoled to know that at least they are stealing a few moments of freedom before they suffer the inevitable fall.

What is dark and damned about the fictional world created by Orwell is that even these stolen moments, we discover later, were allowed to happen by the warlocks of the Inner Party, the administrators of thought

control. No exit. (Now, let us take our latte to the leather arm chair and pull out our smart phone. We read the latest news about the ‘wall,’ and the radical religious fellows from the Levant, and imagine the strategist of economic and political nationalism, as well as the Opponent of the press giving his counsel on war and peace. We shudder at the thought.)

Philip Larkin wrote in his poem Annus Mirabilis: “Sexual intercourse began /In Nineteen Sixty Three/(Which was rather late for me/—Between the end of the Chatterly ban/And the Beatles’ first L.P.” The sardonic reserve of Larkin’s speaker, and the admission of defeat in his declaration could well occur in the pages of 1984. Orwell is, after all, English and he describes the world from the point of view of London right after World War II with the memory of the Blitz, the underground shelters, the privations very present. The future world he describes was drawn directly from lived experience. It must have also come from accounts of the Holocaust.

It is described by a Larkin-like persona, who has lived too much but has never got the sex right, who lunges for a few moments of joy in the company of Julia, who faces an inevitable comeuppance. 1984 is fundamentally about the defeated, us today, human beings, who have allowed ourselves to live in perpetual war—the War on Terror—our private lives, purchases, photos, available to all interested in searching our Facebook accounts, tapping into the client lists of our favorite merchants. Yet, unlike Orwell’s vision, we protest. Our leader, for all the bluster, is made to face legal challenges. He suffers from hubris, executive over reach. Checks and balances. We are living in perilous times, we read, and we feel.

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Yet these are times when holding a placard has become cool and perhaps offers safety in numbers. But what about the other side, those who welcomed the arrival of the white knight into the white establishment? I wish I could use white without a potential racial, political misreading. White: pure, noble, a knight, in charge of royal destiny, willing to cross into Arab lands and fight for Jerusalem. An embassy in Jerusalem.

Similarly, I wish I could find consolation in the few brief, lovemaking encounters between Winston and Julia. Instead, I think of Auden in 1952 sitting at a bar on 3rd Avenue, “I sit in one of the dives/ on Fiftysecond Street/Uncertain and afraid/As the clever hopes expire/ Of a low dishonest decade” But the poem ends: “Defenseless under the night/Our world in stupor lies;/Yet, dotted everywhere,/Ironic points of light/Flash out wherever the Just/Exchange their messages:/May I, composed like them/Of Eros and of dust,/Beleaguered by the same/Negation and despair,/Show an affirming flame.”

I want to show this affirming flame despite the doublespeak, the “un-protections” of federal lands, the call to build pipelines over sacred bones and a wall to block coyotes, men and women. I want to show this affirming flame and declare my love for wife or husband, friend or lover. Go into Starbuck’s and use the Wi-Fi to send signals of light to counter the shadowy brewing from the dark West Wing where the new occupants have yet to learn how to operate the light switches.

This essay is intentionally as chaotic as the current state of the world turned loose by shoddy, exclusive and silly executive orders designed, in classic 1984-Speak, to impede as opposed to foster trade, to shut down

rather than open up to the Pacific, to move the football into foul territory, into No Man’s Land where the player sent to retrieve the ball may step on a mine and detonate a war. I want this essay to release me from bonds of serfdom, to allow me to feel free in America. Yet, I submit these words under a pseudonym.

I am Winston Bojangles today. I play the banjo, an instrument that arrived in America via the Middle Passage.

I want to join protests in the fields where temporary workers, vetted, will bore the pipeline over sacred bones. I want to stand outside the federal government building, where professionals receive instructions by email (in 1984, through memory holes), to hold up a placard that says we are stronger together. I want to sign the next dissent Memo taking issue with the next Executive Order. But I am afraid I will be photographed. I am afraid my name will be listed in black.

I am afraid I will not be able to put my queer or straight shoulder to the page in this America whirring with dark, satanic mills. I am afraid my back will not be covered.

I am afraid my back will not be covered.

In the no-man’s land, at the border, between Georgia and Turkey, a dear friend told me the Soviets removed all the villages except for one. They built guard towers throughout the five miles of now open wilderness. If anybody was spotted running through those fields he was shot.

I do not want my ideas to be shot down, or body imprisoned for registering with 42

Immigration; and I do not want to be forced into retirement or spend my afternoons, a ghost, with a glass of gin, staring at Big Brother on the wall. I have become a pseudonym, and I spread Samizdat literature. But there is historical precedent.

The Wall came down in 1989. It will be chipped away, painted, scaled, exploded, again. There will be collateral damage.

Winstons will be split from their families.

Some will die. A dark vision, fitting for the scare tactics of the haranguing sheriff? Do I fall into his trap? Do I become my opposite?

“Never. Never. Never. Never. Never.” At least, at the end

of Lear, the foolish king realizes his great error. Cordelia is hanged, yes, and Lear dies of grief. But Albany, Edgar and Kent are left standing and will attempt to reconstruct the broken kingdom. The Sun will rise every day even during our current bleak reign. Let us renew ourselves with its light and continue to advocate, write, fight, cajole, block, protest, engage each other, and educate, to not leave—the unemployed, fearful, residents of dying factories, voters in the minority who wanted their knight to ride into government—behind.

Winston Bojangles is a multilingual published poet who holds a government post.

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Sonnet Holding a Knife Octavio Quintanilla

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The blind must imagine where the road is taking them. To cook, they must imagine where the fire and the pot are waiting.

The blind are old and wrinkled, their steps falter in the highlands of Chiapas.

They’re the forgotten ones, the indigenous, the ones who can’t see and who won’t be seen.

A tree branch is the eye that leads them.

Their night is a long scarf with holes.

What is it that glues their eyes shut?

That keeps them from remembering the gleam of shattered glass? A few coins would’ve been enough.

Enough for the fire to flex like a healthy bicep.

The cooking pot, black with giving, and want.

Octavio Quintanilla is the author of the poetry collection If I Go Missing (Slough Press, 2014). He teaches in the MA/MFA program at our Lady of the Lake University in San Antonio, Texas.

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The Weeping Woman of Mexico Myth, Legend, Archetype and Omen Patricia Perea

Photo Credit: Leila Murrieta

La Llorona, the wailing woman, walks near rivers, arroyos, acequias. She is constantly looking for her children; constantly crying for her children. Stories surround her. Some say, she was abandoned by her conquistador husband and killed her children as a means of revenge. Others say, she killed her children out of jealousy. Her husband paid more attention to them than to her.

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Whichever version of the story is told, the end is the same. She drowns her children and when she realizes what she has done, she kills herself. She is then condemned to wander forever searching for her dead children. Her figure is a warning to women and to children.

Photo Credit: Leila Murrieta

Don’t behave badly. La Llorona is a fallen woman and a bad mother. She will take every child who wanders away from the rules of authority and will do to that child what she did to hers. Perhaps there is no scarier figure in mexicano culture – an unbounded woman.

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Yet, there is a story of la Llorona even older than this one. Predictions of the Spanish conquest of the Mexica empire fill Mexica historical records.

There are seven signs given to the Mexica that foretell the coming of the Spanish. Among these seven signs, which include shooting stars, and the flooding of lakes, is the story of a crying woman.

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This woman is heard through the streets of Tenochtitlan calling out for her children – not for the children she has killed, but for the children she is trying to save. The Mexíca la Llorona is one of strength and power. She is a fierce protector. She will not be bound and silenced.

Leila Murrieta is a photography student at the University of New Mexico. She is originally from Tucson, Arizona.

Patricia Perea (Chimayo 2013) is a La Tolteca staffer. She teaches in the Department of Chicana and Chicano Studies at the University of New Mexico.

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Ursa Minor On My Back Daniela Kuzmanova

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A few summers ago my husband and I decided to go on a summer vacation at the Black Sea coast. A week before I started the preparations: I bought a new bathing suit, flip-flops, and high protection sunscreen. The first thing I did when I came back home was to go to our bedroom and try on my new turquoise blue bikini, decorated with orange flowers made of organza strings and beads. I looked at myself in the three–way mirror and smiled at my reflection. It looked good. Then I turned my back to the mirror and adjusted it so I could see how I looked from that side.

What I saw was even better than what I expected. I had a slim body, small waist and just a little cellulite and some stretch marks on my thighs. Well, that’s feminine, I decided and began a closer inspection of my naked back in the mirror. I had a lot of freckles. I scrutinized them and found out that they numbered more than the last time I’d looked.

Some were bigger than the others. We have some supernovas here. I have to apply a lot of sunscreen before going to the beach to protect my skin, was my conclusion.

I was ready to go when I noticed that several freckles alongside my spine formed a figure. I looked at it again and I was already sure that this figure reminded me of the Big Bear and Little Bear constellations. I googled the two constellations and compared their Internet pictures to the figure I saw on my back. After this matching game, I was pretty sure that I had a copy of the Ursa Minor (The Little Bear) in the middle of my back. I was so excited by this big discovery that I decided immediately to share it with my husband who was in the living room watching a soccer game on TV.

I opened the door and paraded in my new bikini in front of him as if I were a model on catwalk. It was obvious that I did not choose the right moment as he gave me only a quick look with the periphery of his eyes, gulped from his canned beer and concentrated on the soccer game again. I sat next to him on the sofa and announced: “I’ve bought a new bathing suit today. Do you like it?”

“Sure,” he answered giving me a second look from head to toe. He saw I was disappointed and gave me a quick beer kiss. I sat silently next to him looking absently at the game and waiting for the ad break. I made another try when it came.

I turned my back to my husband and asked; “Do you see how many freckles I have on my back?”

“Oh, yes, there are many pretty ones,” he answered and kissed my right shoulder.

“Do you find anything unusual in them?

“I continued my inquiry.

“No, nothing unusual. They are okay for me. But if you have worries, visit your doctor,” he advised me.

It was not the answer I expected. “Maybe if you look at them again you will see they form a figure.”

“Later, honey, I promise to inspect them thoroughly in bed,” he smiled mischievously and continued watching the soccer game that had returned.

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“Men,” I sighed, and disappointed headed to the bedroom to change. I did not raise the question again that night and he forgot to inspect my freckles thoroughly as he promised.

It seemed that I was quite obsessed with the idea of having a copy of Ursa Minor on my back, and I continued the research the next day. I printed the picture of Ursa Minor that I found on internet; then I took a transparent nylon bag and attached it with a scotch tape to my naked back. With the help of the tree-way mirror and a marker I dotted the several freckles alongside my spine. Then I put the nylon bag over a sheet of paper and, using pen, I mapped all the freckles’ positions on it. I connected with a pen the dots on the paper and the figure they formed was quite similar to that of Ursa Minor.

I continued my investigation by measuring the distances between the Ursa Minor stars considering the scale of the picture and distances between my freckles on the figure on my back. Then, I made fractions taking the Ursa Minor distance between two neighboring stars as a top number, and its corresponding distance between two neighboring freckles as a bottom number of the fraction. All these calculations were a piece of cake for me as I graduated from a high school of mathematics. Then I analyzed the results.

One of my freckles that were supposed to be Polaris (The North Star) was a little higher than its position in the real constellation; and the curve of the handle of my Little Dipper was not exactly the

same compared to Polaris, the star. There were some other slight differences in the scaled distances between the stars and the distances between my freckles; I also had an additional eighth freckle while Ursa Minor was made of seven stars only. But these minor differences could not diminish the importance of my discovery.

Before sharing the news with my husband, I decided to talk to my best friend Tony who had taken astrology classes and would likely listen to my news with the necessary respect.

When we met at a nice café, first I told her the entire story and then showed her the two pictures. She compared them for a while and then confirmed, “Yes, there are some similarities between the figures.” She stood silent for a minute or two thinking, and drinking her coffee. Then she added philosophically, “As it never occurred to me to compare my freckles to a constellation, and it occurred to you, I am convinced that you have a real copy of Ursa Minor on your back. I also think that this is a sign that the universe is sending you a message through your freckles.”

“Well, it could be,” I shrugged my shoulders and drank some coffee, too.

“Unfortunately, I do not know what it means.”

“You have to find the code and read your message,” Tony advised me. “I don’t know how long it will take you to find it. I only know that it’s your job to find it.”

“Yes, you are right. This is my message and 52

and I have to figure out the meaning myself. By the way, talking about messages, I want to show you one more thing. Look at that vein. Can you see, it forms a perfect number eight,” I said and raised my right arm to her.

She looked at the vein and I noticed the surprise in her eyes when she discovered my 8-shaped vein on my right forearm, “Actually, eight turned on its side becomes the infinity symbol. Do you know that eight symbolizes our connection to the universe?” she asked me.

“Yes, I’ve read about that,” I said, nodding my head.

“And maybe your 8-shaped vein is a sign that you are connected to the universe, and to infinity in a very unique way. This knowledge can help you find the freckle code.”

“Yes, maybe.” I agreed.

After our meeting I decided to chew on these new ideas first, before perhaps sharing them with my husband or somebody else. However, this was how I started my long journey to self-knowledge.

At that point I only knew I was connected to the universe and received messages from it.

Nevertheless, I am still looking to decipher the code. I am sure one day I will discover it and read the message on my back.

Perhaps, the knowledge will bring me to a new level of my personal evolution.

Daniela Ilieva Kuzmanova is a native of and resides in Sofia, Bulgaria. She is a graduate of the Middlebury College Bread Loaf M.A. program. The two memoir essays here are from Ana Castillo’s course, “Writing the Body.”

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On Writing, Water, and Sovereignty interview with Linda Hogan In the following recent interview, award-winning writer and poet Linda Hogan addressed issues of growing up Chickasaw, the price of clean and contaminated water, and the significance in her writing of Native people’s protection of the environment on sovereign lands.

La Tolteca Zine: In your work, you write in depth of the sacredness and necessity of water for all life forms. What is one of your earliest water memories?

Linda Hogan: This is a difficult question to answer, I think, from a more mature perspective than I did as a child. Now it is not about playing with my cousins at “Little Niagra� or Lake Murray, a lake my father worked on during the Depression in Ardmore, Oklahoma. Nor is it the memory of my Chickasaw family in Oklahoma having no water, the situation of many Chickasaw families in the area at the time. In order to have water, we went to the town community pump by horse and wagon and collected water for cooking, drinking, and bathing in metal milk cans. The pump was still there until a few years ago.

But now, I think of so many people in countries who have no clean water, like those with no money needing to put coins in a pump in Africa to get a small 54

bucket of clean water. Their water is owned by the same German corporations that are polluting their major rivers with chemicals, slaughterhouse waste, and other toxins. Cholera is an epidemic around the world. Then there is Flint, Michigan in the United States with lead still in their water, the Navajo without clean water for drinking or planting because of the mine tailings filling the Animus River last year. This pollution is crossing our continent in numerous ways.

Earlier in my life here in Colorado, we had a period of time when our water had too much uranium in it to use for bathing, washing clothes and, of course, for drinking and cooking. The experience of considering your own water, a commodity, an element that shouldn’t be owned by anyone as a danger to us, is terrible and frightening. I do think of our waters with great concern for the future, especially as the huge network of pipelines now continue to leak in one place or another. Living with the government or with law-keepers who do not care about the health of the water or the health of their own children is living in a constant health hazard. We need ways to change how our corporations and government think about our earth and the sources that allow us to survive.

These are not re-sources since they can’t be replaced.

Clean water is the most important element we have in the world. It is as sacred as we consider it to be, and necessary to the health of all living things. We need to do what we can to keep it clean. This has been important enough for me and others to write about. I have taken time off my other work to do articles on our water more than once, to include it in poems and in essays. Water is a primary necessity for our health and our lives. Destroying water is like taking away the air. We never have enough words to express its significance. At the same time, the Environmental Protection Agency is no longer finding water and air 55

protection as priorities. In many locations this is environmental racism and is bias against the poor, such as in coal country. Writers are becoming more and more political for reasons like these, including the Dakota Access Pipeline.

L/T: You are active in the Dakota Access Pipeline protests. What drew you to this movement?

L.H.: I’m not active enough. I would like to be an attorney working on this, but I trust the ones who are. My cousin is one. One part of what draws me to this pipeline issue is that both the corporation and the federal government are breaking international law by working against land and water that is on Native land. Tribal nations are sovereign. That means that the U. S. government and others are entering and invading another country with bad intention. In addition, as Native peoples, we have our treaties with the natural world. This intrusion is not only an invasion of treaty land but an outside fracturing of our own agreement with the water, animals, plants, and air, life-giving gifts from earth.

‌ as Native peoples, we have our treaties with the natural world.

The corporate and U.S. government aggression toward the people and lands has been unreasonable, shocking, and a revelation of racial hatred. Not only as a writer, but as a human being, I know we have to use all our abilities to fight this and to protect our land, water, and people. The pipelines crossing our country are breaking and leaking 56

even as we continue to add more. This one, the DAPL, is particularly bad because of its eventual effect on the waters of major rivers, streams, and tributaries. It endangers lives all the way to the Gulf.

Recently, having read about the enormous amount of toxins spread over the land has grieved me and others. It won’t affect only one or two species, but entire ecosystems in many regions. Nothing exists in just one place in a world of motion, movement and migration, and nothing affects only one life form. The toxin was first discovered because of dead eagles. But it is visible on the land and will enter the watershed, rivers, and all life forms.

For a long time, the water protectors have been sprayed, sometimes from low-flying crop dusters at three in the morning. I recall that it was first said to be vegetable oil. No intelligent person could believe this. To spray plants with vegetable oil in the heat of summer would not have been a logical move.

What is happening to our national compassion and respect for one another? That is our central question because this is taking place internationally on indigenous land, with the shooting deaths or disappearance of tribal leaders who opposed or organized against oil, mining, or the building of mega-dams in their countries. To answer your question, however, it is why there has been an amazing show of support for North Dakota from other countries. This has been both touching and important in every way to others, that we stand together, that we take a stand, and also what we stand for. Through the Indigenous Environmental Network, we have been kept aware of what is happening elsewhere in the world and we have given our support to other tribal people. The return of that support is heartening.

For those of us who can speak out, write, or show up, we are doing it.

We hope we are on the cusp of change, even with the current backlash 57

against the environment. We communicate with one another and offer help when it is needed. Hopefully this will move us to alternative solutions.

All four of my novels, from Pulitzer finalist Mean Spirit through the last novel, People of the Whale have all focused on events that have/or are taking place with indigenous people and the environment, from oil in the 1920’s in Oklahoma to illegal whaling. The others have addressed the Ecological Society of America and the endangered Florida panther, and the issues of adoption, and the dam at the St. Lawrence River for the Hydro Quebec Electric Project have also had a part in the stories of the characters I also loved as people. They were like family members and I have missed them, but do feel that the book I am working with is a new family of wonderful, funny, and deeply human characters.

L/T: You began publishing in the 1970s. How would you say your work has changed over the years?

L.H.: When I first began writing, I wrote, as most young writers do, about my own background, history, and identity. The personal is still important, but I have had to reach far beyond that since then. Writers are always growing. Sometimes we enter the spiritual and political, sometimes the world of relationships, but best for us is when we work across all humanity. My work has never stayed in a formula, but one 58

thing that has been stable is that I’ve always focused on the environment. It is because of how I have lived and my own interests and concerns. Because of that, the work received the PEN Thoreau Prize last year. I believe that was partly because of the most popular book, Dwellings: A Spiritual History of the Natural World and also the large new collection of my poetry: Dark. Sweet. That [winning the Thoreau Prize] was exciting for me, of all awards, because it was also received by EO Wilson, one of my special people.

L/T: What prompted you to write your memoir: The Woman Who Watches Over the World? Why is memoir an important genre for Native writers?

L.H.: I can’t say what began this group of essays, but it was important for me to write about all the generations and what happened to us in our lives. I wanted to tell about the lives of our family and our people. I hadn’t seen books like this and to be able to speak it seemed very important.

Of course, now so much time has passed that I could write another memoir. And since that time, it has become an important genre, the most recent one I read being The Tao of Raven by Ernestine Hayes. And also the significant new book, Bad Indians by Deborah Miranda, a first and very good book on California history and indigenous peoples.

As for choosing to write a book, I have to say that the books always choose me. I can’t really question that. It is the question and the answer, even if it is a difficult project as some are.

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L/T You cross geo-political borders in your latest work Indios (2012). You write about two important figures in Mexican indigenous cultural history: la Malinche and la Llorona. What drew you to these women?

L.H.: I was aware of these two women, but they were not on my mind as a part of Indios. Indios is a poem and a play, and it is based on Medea. But perhaps these stories are all the same stories. Or it is geopolitical in other ways. The first time I read Medea, I thought of her as an indigenous woman. Her father was what I would call a medicine man and she was learning from him. They lived on an island. She fell in love with a white man who had to rid himself of her to have leadership.

In the story of Medea, the Corinthians were the killers of the children.

I believe that is in the introduction. The children were murdered so that they could not come to power at that time and place in history.

Because of color, race, and culture. Those were their concerns in the political decisions to ban Indios and kill her children. I would love to see this play produced. I have seen, in my imagination, the plain small stage set, and the way a one-woman poem/play could be powerful with these words.

L/T: What are you currently working on now? Would you mind sharing a discussion of these future projects with us?

L.H. I am finishing a novel called The Mercy Liars, with three funny and powerfully serious generations of women. I’ve loved the book for many years now.

I am also working on a book of essays called The Radiant Life of Animals which is in part about the difference in how tribal people understand the natural world compared to the new Americans. It is also about the wildlife corridor where I live in a very small cabin in the 60

Photo Credit: Annette M. Rodriguez

last region for wildlife and diversity of animals and plants in this region. Many of the essays are based here, for instance when a wolf pack came through after the Yellowstone fire.

I am always writing poems. I need to put the poetry together, but have been spending all my time on the novel while still writing poetry, probably two new books by now.

I am never without plans for the future, so other books are waiting. I can’t keep up with my own work! But I do love it and love what I do.

Being a writer definitely keeps you humble, as one of my dear friends says, but I don’t mind the humility as long as books are there to be done.

Thank you for the interview.

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Photo Credit: Annette M. Rodriguez

Stevie Olson

The New Uniform Policy at St. Joseph’s College The man saunters tired across campus while the students watch from their dorms The only sight they recognize is his weathered brown skin and this terrifies them So the College decides to implement uniforms for all the maintenance staff Now they can study

Written after study of “The New Bathroom Policy at English High School”

by Martin Espada in the collection Albanza , pg. 69.

New Mexico True: The City Different Text found in Bienvenidos: The Santa Fe New Mexican’s 2016 Summer Guide for Santa Fe and Northern New Mexico I. inside a room of El Santuario threatened by Indian raid where the cross reappeared, a legend persists that holy dirt with reputed healing powers in the small hole, el posito, refills itself II. Santa Fe a small town with old-fashioned values boasts charming streets, amazing art and long scenic walks this is a community not bound by religious affiliation or domination, but by land, by a common understanding that it is a special, if not sacred a great American story living on its own terms since the ranch tradition introduced on this continent by Spanish settlers when idealism triggered a larger world breaking through boundaries, no political objective, no materialistic agenda Raise a glass to northern New Mexico’s back roads hedged with cottonwoods that open onto expansive desert ranges

III. Adobe walls cracked large enough for the pigeons to fly through El Santuario the flooding Santa Cruz threatens foundations in danger of collapse Josephine performs penance and begins selling the chapel’s furnishings and santos (carved and painted wood images of saints) she recalls faith could move mountains IV. Santa Fe remains the consignment warehouse gift shop run by John (also spelled Juan) beyond rock-strewn, bone-jarring miles of dust-enveloped prairies, cool northern breezes land of little water largely decorative and object-oriented where resorts define the destination for tourist pilgrimage invited to follow their own path for the spoils of tantalizing, high-end collectible Real INDIANS and Home of the $99.00 COWBOY BOOTS, adornment for the 21st century totally authentic Here there’s a property for everyone to build high barriers around their homes creating a sanctuary space for the pampered maiden 125 Overlook Road gorgeous 3BR hacienda in Classic Pueblo Style thick adobe walls inside and out

VI. Santa Fe underlies nonlinear, hand-fabricated stories the 400-year-old Plaza a tough row to hoe inhabitants tirelessly sustaining operation preserving bygone world tending the margarita trail putting the Wild in Wild West four hour tours at a cost of self reliant home and community “You can’t come any closer to being sure you’re getting the real thing,” registered-trademark with must-have certificate of tribal affiliation matriarch says unfolding textile traditions outside in relentless sun or winter cold elbow to elbow on the Portal of the Palace of the Governors where violating synthetic rule brings expulsion to marginalized community where 75% of the village depends on art to put food on the table, damn authentic timeless beauty Myth suggests white goes with everything white is your best accessory, call Dr. Richard Dentistry.

So, Josephine and the matriarch called, “On the mother road spirits and saints displayed like jewelry come to life at night, leave baby shoes or walking moccasins they will wear out by morning moving across the countryside helping those in need.”

Raise a glass to northern New Mexico’s back roads hedged with cottonwoods that open onto expansive desert ranges wonderful light beautiful viga ceilings, 5 fireplaces, fabulous living areas luxurious master and a fantastic kitchen, home decor as unique as you are $1,125,000 Raise a glass to northern New Mexico’s back roads hedged with cottonwoods that open onto expansive desert ranges V. Josephine, entrusted with El Santuario key, recalls I used to think, well, how come my daddy and I went in the wagon to get soil?

He would shovel it in through the back little window, but I would never say anything because they believed that the hole would fill itself.

_______________________________________________________ Stevie Olson is a M.A. graduate of Middlebury College summer Bread Loaf program and was a memoir writing student with Ana Castillo.

He is an elementary school teacher in Albuquerque, NM.

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I come from El Pentitente an alabado singing, bible thumping hallelujia with calloused hands and tired lungs.

My Grandfathers voice still etched in my mind

Amanda Salinas Untitled #1 My abuelo’s voice etched in my mind, “Never question The Bible mija It’s Gods’ Word and that's all you need to know.”

Bible stories about beasts and antichrists haunted me in childhood, afraid to be a sinner.

Forgive me Lord for being human I won't convert to an institution of prayer conformity.

Pagan / Bruja who gathers herbs, sending smoking prayers through wind.

Confessing my sins to acequia waters, knowing they float away without opinions.

Protestant /Catholic confusion, I think religion is just an illusion.

Photo Credit: Annette M. Rodriguez

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Is it God you seek or just a tradition?

I come from God’s gift of free will Open minds and forgiving hearts Sunday school church songs and scary bedtime prayers asking God to take my 5-year-old soul Do I go to Heaven, Purgatory, or straight to Hell?

For loving all life, believing the Lord never intended for His word to be used as a tool for hatred and judgment.

My abuelo’s voice, “Never question the Bible, mija.

It’s God’s Word and that's all you need to know.”

Photo Credit: Annette M. Rodriguez

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Untitled #2 Caffeine highs Tobacco smoke rising through sweet morning air as little girls play to the sounds of mitote and muffled obituaries on my abuelita’s old radio.

My summer days were lost long ago somewhere between my grandpito Dulce singing alabados to the sun while tending to his garden and where my father’s laughter faded into a hot July night.

Flipping through photo albums is all that's left of stories Wishful thoughts of going back to “the good ol days” when sana sana had the power to dry tears, slay nightmares and mend broken hearts.

Somehow playing cops and robbers on pink bikes and wearing ponytails died away into the ground like my Grandpito Dulce’s corn field, but the memory still remains like scars etched into hearts.

And sometimes we can't remember how or where we got them.

Tiny voices and curious minds ask questions and imagine a different life without them and for a second I sit daydreaming.

For a second the memories are mine as I hold on to them with tight fists Afraid to let go...

Photo Credit: Annette M. Rodriguez

Amanda Salinas (Chimayó workshop, 2014). Amanda writes of herself, “Shy to a fault, words and writing have always been my escape from awkwardness. Writing opens worlds of expression into my world of humorous anecdotes and social anxiety."

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Sisa Pacari Bacacela GualĂĄn

AMA UPALLAYCHU YACHACHIK Yachachik ama upallaychu Kikin rimayka antami kan wakcha yuyaykunapi yaykun mana ankayllu chushakpi kaparichu kan.

Achik wachi hillayanku kallarinancha Ăąitishkata pakin ukuyachiwan yachaykunata mishki rimaywan hamutayta yachachin kapu imaykunata llukchinata yachachin shamuk kawsakkunaman kawsayta sakinkapak

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Photo Credit: La Tolteca Zine

Yachachik haykapish ñan shina kushikaymanta sinchikaymanta unanchapish Kanata ama sakichu.

Llakichinkami kumuchinkami Shinapish kikin muskuykunata jaykapish mana jillunkakunachu.

Shuk puncha chariyuk ushayka Tukuy tukurishka iñikpi kikin rimayka Jatarinkami Mushuk kari warmikunapi aychayarishka jarkakuy mana ushankachu mana kichuna ushankachu.

Chaypi kanka, kikin pawayta pawashpa Kikin muskuyta muskushpa shuk mushuk saylluyta kawsashpa llumpaq, pakta , chikanchak, kishpichiy.

Kan makanakuy, kan yawar Hunukunapi alli pukushka, muskukkunapa yuyay Makaywan ushashka, makaywan paktashka Shuk allikay mamallaktata.

Chayrayku kantami mañani Yachachik ama jaykapish upallaychu. kayna kunan kan makanakuyka Kishpirimanta Pachakutiymantami kan, Chayrayku kantami nini ¡Ama upallaychu!

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TUKURIN Jakanpi amsa llaki musgopi walin nishpa shuk nunata rikuni ¿Maymanshi rin?

Rumipi kimirishpa maypitak pacha tukurin, paypak sarushka tatkita rikun maypitak kausaykuna uyarin.

Amsa ñutu allpapish allpa muyuriy maypitak chukrikuna paskarin, Kunan tukuy chukchun.

Kay llaki amsa pacha punkuta yallishpa ñuka rimaymi kampak illayta apanka, ¿Mashnatak unayanka kampak yuyayka? ¿Ima kunkayman rin? ¡Ñuka nuna pushankapak mana tikramuna ushankachu! ¿Ima amsa mana tiyak yuyaypi kunkurinki? ¿Maypitak kausanki? ¡Kampak uyata mana rikuna ushani Kampak chikan kaypi kakta mana rikuni! ñuka rimaymi kampak illayta apanka, ¿Mashnatak unayanka kampak yuyayka? ¿Ima kunkayman rin? ¡Ñuka nuna pushankapak mana tikramuna ushankachu! ¿Ima amsa mana tiyak yuyaypi kunkurinki? ¿Maypitak kausanki? ¡Kampak uyata mana rikuna ushani Kampak chikan kaypi kakta mana rikuni!

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MAESTRA NO TE CALLES Maestr@ no te calles, tu voz es acero penetrante en la conciencia de los pobres, no es eco que retumba en el vacío.

Es luz y dardo que rompe cadenas de esclavitud y dominio es dulzura que comprender enseña con profundidad las ciencias a obtener los productos materiales enseña para garantizar la vida de futuras generaciones.

Maestr@ jamás dejes de ser el ejemplo y símbolo de la dignidad y resistencia.

Te humillarán y te oprimirán pero jamás robarán tus ideales y un día cuando el poder capitalista crea todo consumado se levantarán tus palabras hecho carne en hombres y mujeres nuevas y no podrán detenerlos no podrán arrebatarlos.

Estarán ahí, volando tu vuelo soñando tu sueño viviendo una nueva realidad digna, justa y libre.

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Tu lucha, tu sangre estarán ahí fructificada en millones de mentes soñadores que conquistan una patria de bien estar.

Por eso te exclamo maestr@, no te calles jamás.

Tu lucha de ayer y hoy persigue liberación y transformación social, por eso te pido ¡No te calles!

Sisa Pacari Bacacela Gualán, activista y maestra, es una mujer indígena de Saraguro-Loja Ecuador.

Su poema, Tukurin, en kichua, fue ganador de primer premio con UNESCO en Quito, 2014. La poeta participó en una sesión literaria con Ana Castillo en Cuenca, Ecuador en diciembre, 2016.

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The Power of Vision Oscar Romero and His Art Octavio Quintanilla Hailing from a family of artists, Oscar Romero was born in Mexico City in 1954. In 1986 he moved to the United States and now maintains studios in Chicago, Los Angeles, Akumal, Qr. Mex. and Mexico City. Romero attended various schools in Mexico where he honed his skills in wood carving, painting, and high etching.

Consequently, he has worked in drawing, engraving, fresco and sculpture for 40 years. As we discussed aspects of his work over the phone, Romero pointed out that, currently, he has become highly interested in political art. A successful artist, Romero has exhibited his work nationally and internationally, in group exhibitions and in one-person exhibitions.

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Historian Alex Orozco writes that [Romero] “illustrates through pictorial structures, forms, and iconic symbols, a unique knowledge and understanding of the fusion of North American history, native culture and modern urbanism that many cannot see in daily life, creating a strong sense of connection with the past, present, and future all at once.” Indeed, Romero’s artistic output is rooted in fusion and the final result is admirable; it is honest work that deserves more attention.

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FAVORITE PICKS FOR 2017 Maria’s Purgatorio by Patrick Fontes.

Floricanto Press, 2016. Paperback, $23.95.

Dystopian landscape. Sex. Drugs.

Violence. Set in the sweltering summer months in Fresno, California, MarĂ­a seeks purpose, identity and some semblance of family among the gritty underground niches of society. Follow Maria on her journey to find peace.

The Gift of Loss by Maria Aponte.

Create Space Independent Publishing, 2016. Paperback, $15.00 The Gift of Loss is the memoir of a Puerto Rican woman coming to terms with the loss of her parents while still in her teens. The challenges she confronts and overcomes as a young adult and only child bring about a healing.

Her inner harmony is restored by the power of the written and spoken word and a profound spiritual faith.

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Agenda for the New Year Indran Amirthanayagam Let us make peace this New Year in our homes, our streets,

to the streets and into media streams to speak freely and

in our letters, our tweets, our support for refugees, and

protect the back of our democracy.

Let us get our queer and straight

administration of just laws, and rewriting of unjust decrees and rules in our fifty states and our one globe. Let freedom

take up the reins everywhere and let us not build weapons of our own destruction. Let us bury hatchets and disputes, be kind to our neighbors! Let us not build any more walls.

Let us use wind, water and sun to energize us. Let us go

hearts to pump and pump, our black and white minds to strip off the fungus of difference from our daily bread

and let us eat together and crush grapes together and work everywhere to remind the houses of power that people give and people take away, and we the people are writing this poem.

Indran Amirthanayagam latest books are Ventana Azul (El Tapiz del Unicornio, Mexico, 2016) and Aller-Retour Au Bord de La Mer (Legs Editions, Haiti, 2014).

Photo Credit: Annette M. Rodriguez 85