Culture of Flow

Culture

of

Flow

of

F l ow

Digging up words, digging for meaning, finding water, flowing. Tim Z. Hernandez is a voice that calls from the wilderness, that calls to civilization, that calls for our attention.

C u l t u re

P o e t r y - $1 5. o o

“Hernandez puts us in the flow of history, the poems read or spill into us like a chant or a drum beat that opens into older ceremonies, cultures and peoples flow into each other, the ancient pulse under the current of the industrial and modern age breathing fire, he brings the global barrios into one setting, the connections of the world are alive within him.�

Victor Hernandez Cruz Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets and author of The Mountain in the Sea ISBN-10 098517055-7 ISBN-13 9780985170554

780985 170554

M o n k e y P u zz l e P r e s s . C o m

H e rnande z

9

51500

t im z .

Tim Z.

H er n a n d e z

More Praise for

C ulture

of

F low

“In Culture of Flow, Tim Z. Hernandez seeks to know/ show what ‘Nature’ really means, and the ‘Proof is in the detritus.’ This book is rich in detritus, rich in variable space, rich in flow, like language, like the globe. Hernandez digs for the ideas, digs up the words, and immediately digs the opposite, and lets them dance. His sound and rhythm (rhythm of sound, rhythm of unsound) surpleases.”

Jack Collom, author of Exchanges of Earth & Sky “Culture of Flow cuts through and exposes centuries of impacts upon the land and its people while chasing the dynamics of water in a wild fluvial process of its own.

With both power and unpredictability, his poetic line is like the San Joaquin River that, in the end, will have the last word.”

John C. Doffelmyer, author of Proclaiming Space

Culture Tim Z.

of

Flow

H ernandez

Monkey Puzzle Press Denver, Colorado

C opyright Š 2012

by

T im Z. H ernandez

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief excerpts. Printed in the United States of America.

Cover Art Silvia Chenault Cover & Book Design Nate Jordon

ISBN-10: 0-9851705-5-7 ISBN-13: 978-0-9851705-5-4

M onkey P uzzle P ress 1548 Krameria St. Denver, Colorado 80220 monkeypuzzlepress.com

For Andre Yang Rey Leon Everardo Pedraza Lee Herrick

flow

Table

of

Contents

Culture of Flow / 1 Field Notes / 41 A Letter to the Gardener / 43

Blue Heron on Belmont Avenue / 49

Autumn / 53 A Wound To Blame / 57 Reincarnation / 59 Adobo / 62 How to Get to the San Joaquin River / 70 Flow Toward Restoration

(A Chant for Dams, and SB1070) / 79

…don’t put your finger out, don’t dare put your finger out, because the pigeons are eating meat now, because the baby calf, fed on milk and kept tender in total darkness, is buying a gun.

Inside books the trees are screaming revenge.

— Victor Martinez, National Geographic

I’m about ready to step over the border of this painting into my other life, the one where I’m keeper of the fish.

— Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, The Bee Keeper Discusses His Charges

C ulture of F low

Culture

1

of

Flow

T im Z. H ernandez

2

C ulture of F low

Propaganda

tsunami the tilted metropolis

(ashe Fukushima—

E V E R Y W H E R E

wind

water torrent 3

T im Z. H ernandez welfare wars of water wind down from Sierra Nevadas or the great Colorado nimbus dream Where Water Flows Food Grows read the billboards of the backroads and the Highways— Dust devils spin words, the illusory image of water glances a blow across the Big Bank Vault water so fluid, becomes politico form the sand dollar drops

4

C ulture of F low in New Orleans, Jersey Haiti

Lost Lake

where Hmong, Mexicanos, Mixtecos & other

immigrantalienwetbackrefugees

remix a song from the pages of Popol Vuh, —limp poles fish for suckers and empty cans bob, hands bend and dig the earth, the betabel, red as graffiti tag sprayed in Yokut grinding hole,

5

T im Z. H ernandez no body of water draws lines so

no bank so rigid to bend the currency or force the point of liquidity) fluid flush

6

C ulture of F low Fish or man?

Them or us?

Big water takes little water. (as in the fable of Narciso who discovered a formlessness that had already been discovered before any thought of discovery had been patented by Cortez —Slayer of Seven Waters.

7

T im Z. H ernandez { EROSION }

At the end of the day— what do I know about flow or flood?

Or how an ammonite effects a mountain peak authored by the cherub plume of the Creator’s handless hand and mindless mind?

What do I really know of the acequia, or the evergreen, 8

C ulture of F low or of Muir’s nagging limp, for that matter, What about switchbacks?

Who really knows the depths of the Brewer Bird’s black?

(True account #1: I once saw sunlight spill from a Walking Weed pressed between pages of John Muir’s journals—

9

T im Z. H ernandez in the stem was the same luminosity that happens each Spring when the sun cuts through the bullshit of all Great Valleys.

10

Acknowledgments These poems were written from Spring 2008 through Winter of 2010, a period in which my day job was located on the floor of the San Joaquin River in Fresno, California—possibly the most depleted river west of the Mississippi, and subject to ongoing debates about water, fish and farming. It is my hope here that these words contribute to the ever-evolving examination of all things “natural.” Thank you to my friends at the San Joaquin River Parkway & Conservation Trust for sharing your guidance, wisdom, and generosity, especially Saundra Plett, for taking a chance

Publication Acknowledgments

A few of these poems have been published (in various forms) in the following: The Devil’s Punchbowl: A Cultural and Geographic Map of California, Red Hen Press; Bombay Gin, Naropa University; and Uncontained: Writers and Photographers in the Garden and the Margins, Baksun Books.

About

the

Author

Tim Z. Hernandez is an award winning writer and performer originally from California. His debut collection of poetry, Skin Tax, received the 2006 American Book Award, and his debut novel, Breathing, In Dust, was featured on NPR’s All Things Considered. It went on to receive the 2010 Premio Aztlán Prize in Fiction, and was a finalist for the California Book Award. In 2011, Hernandez was named one of sixteen New American Poets by the Poetry Society of America. He is a frequent visiting author at Universities and institutions across the U.S. and has performed in venues such as L.A.’s Getty Center, Stanford University, Dixon Experimental Theater in New York City, and Denver Center for the Performing Arts. He holds a B.A. in Writing & Literature from Naropa University, and an M.F.A. from Bennington College in Vermont.

He currently lives in Colorado where he works for the Center for the Book and teaches fiction at Naropa University.

of

Flow

F l ow

the poems read or spill into us like a chant or a drum beat that opens into older ceremonies, cultures and peoples flow into each other, the ancient pulse under the current of the industrial and modern age breathing fire, he brings the global barrios into one setting, the connections of the world are alive within him.�

Culture

of

“Hernandez puts us in the flow of history,

C u l t u re

P o e t r y / $1 5. o o

Victor Hernandez Cruz

Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets and author of The Mountain in the Sea

780985 170554

M o n k e y P u zz l e P r e s s . C o m

H e rnande z

9

51500

t im z .

ISBN-10 098517055-7 ISBN-13 9780985170554

Tim Z.

H er n a n d e z