The Envoy 091 - The newsletter of the CCLA - Canada Cuba Literary Alliance

THE ENVOY The official newsletter of the

Canada Cuba Literary Alliance I.S.S.N. – 1911‐0693

September, 2019 Issue 091 www.CanadaCubaLiteraryAlliance.org

“The mandate of the Canada Cuba Literary Alliance is to advance cultural solidarity between Canada and Cuba through the creative expression of poetry, prose, art and photography.”

CCLA President, Richard M. Grove

SEPTEMBER 2019 ISSUE 091 – EDITOR- Jorge Alberto Pérez Hernández – joyphccla@gmail.com

Biography -Short

Lisa Makarchuk

lisamakarchuk@sympatico.ca

Love of poetry, doggerel and rant began for Makarchuk in a rural school she attended in northern Saskatchewan where her family lived in a community of Doukhobours. She co-coordinated the First International Festival of Poetry of Resistance and coordinated the third one. She has written news articles, worked in radio, translated works and published a chapter in a collection of essays in Cuba Solidarity in Canada, edited by Nino Pagliccia. Her issue-oriented poetry is found in anthologies such as Things That Matter, in e-zines and the Envoy. Her poem on the rape of Nanking was featured in Buried Horror. She was one of four poets, two Canadian and two Cuban, in one of the books in the CCLA’s Bridges Series.

Musical Riffs music growls and it rocks evokes and thunders lilts, lifts and rekindles and then it wanders clutching at hearts in melodic reminders rousing, summoning sometimes provoking symphonious flowing suspended in clasps of cacophonous rasps of dirges expelled into harmonious sowing of sprinklings of strains blazed through with shards of memories stilled, vanishing yet enchanting us to the edge of the blues to commute over a rainbow of sound immersed in waves of chant with riffs of lyrical chords all mellowing, lulling pacifying, mollifying in dulcet seduction to excite, animate enflame, exhilarate provoking a whine from stroking strings meant to simulate fears, joys and angst with forces that bind.

SEPTEMBER 2019 ISSUE 091 – EDITOR- Jorge Alberto Pérez Hernández – joyphccla@gmail.com

Septembers By: Miguel Angel Olivé Iglesias To Amanda and Ahitana On Septembers 11th, 10th and 7th Septembers speak a triple language, a threefold generational line through me, my child, my step-grandchild.

That is how I conquer Eternity, the joyous offer to life making death an abstract concept ― and distant when I run to my daughter‟s teenage hug warm, cyber-newsful: her most recent downloads of events, movie stars favorite singers her endless talk and questions about English, or when I hear my step-grandchild‟s six-toothed laughter each morning and walk her down the toy-packed living-room her funny, wobbling, penguin-like gait her hand squeezing mine at first bravely letting it go the next minute.

Septembers fill me three times: for me for Amanda for Ahitana.

Pic taken by Miguel Angel Olivé Iglesias

Pic taken by Miguel Angel Olivé Iglesias

Pic taken by Jorge Alberto Pérez Hernández

SEPTEMBER 2019 ISSUE 091 – EDITOR- Jorge Alberto Pérez Hernández – joyphccla@gmail.com

Bio Anna Yin Anna Yin was Mississauga‟s Inaugural Poet Laureate and has authored four collections of poetry, the latest entitled “Seven Nights with the Chinese Zodiac” (Black Moss Press 2015). Her poems have appeared at ARC Poetry, The New York Times, China Daily, CBC Radio, World Journal etc. Anna won the 2005 Ted Plantos Memorial Award, two MARTYs, two scholarships from The West Chester University Poetry Conference, three grants from OAC and The 2013 Professional Achievement Award from CPAC. She performed her poetry on Parliament Hill and has been featured at 2015 Austin International Poetry Festival and The 2017 National Poetry Month Project, etc. Her website: annapoetry.com

Honeysuckles and Ladders Last winter, helplessly I longed for snow angels we made many years ago.

Sister, how are you?

Is the other world peaceful and pain-free?

This year spring came late.

On the long trail I walk alone, up and down, thinking of those being exiled, their shattered homes and lost families.

The honeysuckles- some yellow and some white- just bloom， entwined and enchanting, fragrance lingering in the air.

Tracing their climbing vines, I see faded fences and worn walls.

I remember the other day reading “Ladders” by Richard García and imagine all ladders collected and connected to create one to reach heaven.

Yet, on the ground, accidently I step on some tiny blue flowers with the name Forget-Me-Not, too painful to call out.

SEPTEMBER 2019 ISSUE 091 – EDITOR- Jorge Alberto Pérez Hernández – joyphccla@gmail.com

All Things We Do For Love

By Jorge Alberto Pérez Hernández

I am passionate, looking for an answer in your eyes open your young eyes, listen upon my words, my words of honour filled with desire.

I long to share them in my sweet dreams.

In my dreams you touch me a thousand times like silk on still water.

Pick your perfect moment to enter my dreams my distant dear to hear my longing only you can satisfy me I´ve got your love on my mind Where it will have to stay.

I feel your love in the mirror of my desire I feel it inside my broken heart of distance.

Pic taken by Jorge Alberto Pérez Hernández

Pic taken by Paul Corman (his garden) Pic taken by Paul Corman

Pic taken by Jorge Alberto Pérez Hernández

There is just a little room on my page left to devote to the special honor and pride I feel to be together with my two Cuban brothers, Manuel de Jesús Velázquez León and Miguel Angel Olivé Iglesias.

SEPTEMBER 2019 ISSUE 091 – EDITOR- Jorge Alberto Pérez Hernández – joyphccla@gmail.com

DESTINY IS A TRAIN

By Miriam Estrella Vera Delgado Our life is like a journey We start when we are born, We go to towns and cities Or want to stay on board.

We‟re riding on a train, The train will always stop; You choose your exit Station, Your choice will win or Drop.

When choosing a destination, If you can do it right; Your life will be all gladness And the future will be bright.

If your choice is a mistake You‟ll suffer and regret, Things will come out all Wrong, That I can dare to bet.

I have myself endured The hardships of a mistake, So when I choose the next Station I‟ll make sure it arrives To the right destination Where Happiness resides

The train above is a painting of Jorge´s father (1963)

This Old Body

By Merle Amodeo This old body no longer turns men‟s heads.

The smile that once brought passion brings frowns to me instead.

The skin as soft as silk, is heavy now with care.

No diamonds sparkle in my eyes or hair.

My voice, unlike the lark‟s, is silent with no song.

My grace vanished, my beauty moved along.

But one touch, my Love, from you, and night turns into day.

My heart springs alive, The years slip away.

SEPTEMBER 2019 ISSUE 091 – EDITOR- Jorge Alberto Pérez Hernández – joyphccla@gmail.com

THE SONG

By Raúl Vera Delgado To my niece Diana Walking at night on the foggy streets, waiting for something to happen, perhaps an angel will sing, a light will come out of a tree and talk to me.

It‟s unlikely, since I have so much to tell, That when I‟ll let it talk, There will hardly be time left.

I would have to say that a rose is not a rose, It‟s a crying woman, That a dog is not a dog, You just have to looks into its eyes To understand that it has the soul of a child inside, That it is begging hopefully for a caress, To sleep cuddled against someone That will give some love.

I walk to my bed Hoping that tomorrow A purple sun will dawn, The trees will be floating in the air With candy canes on their branches, And flocks of love songs will pass by Flying hand in hand, While sadness walks away feeling abandoned searching for a real world to nest in.

Pic taken by Jorge Alberto Pérez Hernández

SEPTEMBER 2019 ISSUE 091 – EDITOR- Jorge Alberto Pérez Hernández – joyphccla@gmail.com

The White Flower

By Bruce Meyer For Gwendolyn MacEwen Leading the life of an island when ships pass by I walked alone tonight in the afterglow and imagined shores without a single footprint, the inner labyrinth of green life a lexicon, and every clear stream a perfect memory.

I called to you in the twilight once – the shadows buzzed with cicadas.

You held a white flower in your fingertips, its petals draping your articulate hand, waiting to be pressed like a poem among pages, set to memory as if a round summer moon.

Season after season I clutch the brittle remains of the old earth‟s crumbling catalogue, tighten my knuckles to white and nothing I can say can restore the light to a withered rose or the moon high in a humid August sky unless someone in the silence of a winter night needs and is needed to announce the first star.

Starlight, star bright, I knew a woman who sang of the plucked moon blooming on an August night.

She gave me the white flower in her hand. „But Georges, there are no people there.‟ „And none in portraiture as well,‟ I said.

Nothing that I ask for can be true – I asked for vision and was given paint, for assurance and received a brush.

Even walking by the sea at dawn I could not fix the exact sensation of sand grains in my shoe.

The beach settled in a canvas of feelings that I could not chain.

I was confronted by what I had not done.

And then there was that skiff with darkened sails and the fiction of its helmsman heading out toward the sea, who through the textures of a foreign mind might, point by exacting point, realize the ice-blue calm of a single man who stood watching from the empty strand as if the loneliest beneath blue sky.

Who‟s there? I said and no one answered; only the constant sound outside.

At four a.m. I started. They said she

had a peaceful death. I don´t know.

I remember something missing.

The engines on the base had stopped.

The star stretched over the prairie.

My clock lay broken on the floor.

Taken by Jorge Alberto Pérez Hernández

SEPTEMBER 2019 ISSUE 091 – EDITOR- Jorge Alberto Pérez Hernández – joyphccla@gmail.com

BIRD OF LOVE

By Miriam Estrella Vera Delgado A Bird of Love came Flying And perched on a birch Tree; I thought Love had Arrived, It had remembered me.

But Love was only Resting, Didn‟t even look at me; Love opened its wide Wings And flew over the sea, It fled over the ocean…

Love didn‟t remember Me. Pic taken by Jorge Alberto Pérez Hernández

THE PET HOSPITAL

By Paul Corman "I'm afraid she might need an operation," the lady in the blue dress sitting beside me says. My Lab pup gets too close to the cat crate under her seat and the orange calico explodes with a hiss that makes the receptionist look up with a start and scan the room, ready to vault onto counter.

I shorten up on my pooch's leash and lean closer listening to the lady talk in a soft European voice. Husband killed in some war 42 years ago this week. Raised the kids alone till they left home one by one. Her house filled with stray cats. Each one named and loved.

"Everyone needs something to love," she tells me. "I guess that's why I have all my cats. I had a dog once," she says looking down at my pooch with pale blue watery eyes. "He got old and died," she says softly turning her head away from me.

I look over at the beagle sniffing the collie on the other side of the room while the lady blows her nose and straightens her hair. She turns back to me with a sad smile. "I guess that's why I keep all the cats," she says. "When one dies, there's always another to fill the grief."

SEPTEMBER 2019 ISSUE 091 – EDITOR- Jorge Alberto Pérez Hernández – joyphccla@gmail.com

A new day sneaks in: we consciously breathe the air and feed our bodies.

E-mails: joyphccla@gmail.com joyph@nauta.cu

CANADA CUBA LITERARY ALLIANCE

FROM THE EDITOR: IN OUR UPCOMING ISSUES, WE WOULD LIKE SUBMISSIONS FROM EVERY CCLA MEMBER SO WE ARE NURTURED BY YOU! IF YOU HAVE BOOKS COMING OUT, A POETRY EVENT, PHOTOGRAPHY OR JUST NEWS ABOUT YOU, LET US KNOW!!!!!