The Envoy #118 – The official 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

January 2022 Issue 118 www.CanadaCubaLiteraryAlliance.org

Photo by Richard M. Grove (Tai)

January 2022 THE ENVOY 118

EDITOR- Jorge Alberto Pérez Hernández –joyphccla@gmail.com

What Wakes the Burning Dreamer

By John B. Lee … it only takes one bully to ruin a village and one bullet to panic a crowd …

JBL the cardinal cock comes dashing at the glass enraged by his own red reflection he arrives as a streaking light as though materializing out of blue air his wings a flash fire a burning branch The Envoy 118 Página 2

January 2022 THE ENVOY 118

EDITOR- Jorge Alberto Pérez Hernández –joyphccla@gmail.com

in which the voice of God sizzles concealed in cinders of wisdom and foolishness exchanging a tiny conflagration the incendiary angel of his masculine mind rivals the luminous twin beak-striking the beautiful roué Casanova Cardinal seed breaker his quick beak sharp as the magnified futility of an explosion in a crimson dream the reflection refuses the source for what wakes the burning dreamer also steals the brilliant dark

Writing with Water

By John B. Lee I’ve been writing with water trailing my damp finger on dry wood to see in the brevity that darkens the grain how there in evaporate air it might vanish in daylight− come clear in a clarifying absence made blue I’m a sentient whisper caught like a web in the breath of a breeze and this is one life from a moment’s conceiving to the darkness that falls on a name like rain on the blaze in a stone

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January 2022 THE ENVOY 118

EDITOR- Jorge Alberto Pérez Hernández –joyphccla@gmail.com

imagine the dreaming we’ll do or the words we might utter in sleep the ones that we borrow from loving and the ones we’re lent out of hate the latter that sour the mind of the night like wet smoke from the veil of a demon come dragging its wings where it walks like a bent and feckless arm trailing the tip of a sword it feathers the dust that we’re made from it writes on our bones like the hands of a watch without hands

Photo by Lisa Makarchuk The Envoy 118 Página 4

January 2022 THE ENVOY 118

EDITOR- Jorge Alberto Pérez Hernández –joyphccla@gmail.com

Squeezing Air

By Richard M. Grove

From a back-seat visit with my grandson, on a dreary-grey-drizzling afternoon, he wanted a hello and a goodbye hug.

How can you break the heart of a six-year-old and tell him no it is not safe in these covid-fear-filled times, of an invisible threat, of a hovering mind manifestation, of mass hysteria, that I cannot hug him.

So I showed him a six-foot-distant hug where I squeezed the air with my grandpa arms and sent a smile that reached his heart. With a smile back he squeezed the air, tighter and tighter, face flushed, arms quaking.

His mother, my darling daughter, laughed and said, don’t hurt Grandpa Tai. Don’t squeeze too hard.

With spilling sorrow, he loosened his bear-hug air grip and hugged with the most gentle caress as one might hug a kitten.

Sorry Grandpa Tai. I love you.

Walking away from the car he turned towards me and sent a quick gentle air hug and a gentle smile that almost broke my heart.

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January 2022 THE ENVOY 118

EDITOR- Jorge Alberto Pérez Hernández –joyphccla@gmail.com

Photos by José Alberto Pérez

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January 2022 THE ENVOY 118

EDITOR- Jorge Alberto Pérez Hernández –joyphccla@gmail.com

Los juerguistas: Hay lugares de ensueño poblados de alta hierba florecida, amplias avenidas adoquinadas como arcanas frentes pensativas por donde vagar y reposar la hartura de la víspera. Hay bellas naciones distantes, verticales, por donde el pensamiento divaga, situadas en otro tiempo, en un lugar futuro de la memoria.

Y aun así, superados los días festivos nos aprestamos a las armas otra vez. Los novios de Sefarad se abrazan tras quince siglos de sobrevida peninsular, y se dicen adiós con movimiento pendular de ave migratoria.

Hay una casa en la mañana, cerca del lago rodeado de cañizares, el tejado rojo a dos aguas, las paredes de cal y ladrillos, un sendero de alabastro por dónde van los niños en apretado contingente con guirnaldas de crisantemos. Se trata de una iglesia, o una mezquita, un hermoso templo musulmán del nuevo mundo. O tal vez la sinagoga donde Schlomo besa el cráneo desprovisto de cabello de su amada.

Marchamos, alegremente bañados por el Sol rubio de la amaurosis humana rumbo a la aniquilación, a la gran tribulación, a cumplir un destino apocalíptico.

Nos espera la cosecha de grandes matanzas fraternales, la bestia risueña del odio adornada con trapos de colores.

El alma generosa de la raza puede ir de la mano de una gran propensión a la barbarie.

Estas pequeñas hazañas desconcertantes nos han hecho ver el mundo como los optimistas, nos han dado un respiro de felicidad en medio del asma y del dolor. Vaya ilusión ¿A quién sirve la verdad?

Painting by Víctor Manuel

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January 2022 THE ENVOY 118

EDITOR- Jorge Alberto Pérez Hernández –joyphccla@gmail.com

THE MERRY MAKERS

By Victor Manuel Velázquez There are dreamlands populated with high grass in bloom, wide cobbled avenues like arcane pensive brows to wander about and rest from the surfeit of the day before. There are far away lovely nations, upright, where thought rambles, located in another time, in a future place inside our memory.

Even so, past beyond the festive days, we resume our fight. The sweethearts of Sepharad lock in an embrace after fifteen centuries of peninsular survival, and bid farewell with the pendulating movements of migratory birds.

In the morning, near the lake, surrounded by reeds, is a dwelling, gabled red rooftop, lime and brick walls, with an alabaster shortcut along which children pass in tight detachments carrying chrysanthemum wreaths. It is a church or a mosque, a beautiful Muslim temple from the New World. Or perhaps the synagogue where Schlomo kisses the hairless crown of his beloved.

We march merrily basking in the Sun gilded by human blindness, heading toward annihilation, to great suffering, to meet an apocalyptic fate. The harvest of large fraternal slaughter awaits us, the smiling beast of hatred decorated with colorful rags.

The generous soul of the race can bind itself with the sheer propensity toward atrocity.

These small startling deeds have made us behold the world as optimists do, have given us a gap of happiness amidst exhaustion and pain. Onward with illusion! Whom does truth serve anyway?

(translation by Miguel Olivé)

La Voz de la Porcelana:

By Víctor Manuel Velázquez

L

as musas eran colores profusamente frutales, gustosos de la tarde, pulsación de jade sobre el rímel de címbalos vocales y femeninos. Luego, en los vinos seculares, el retrogusto: pífano mineral contra la muselina del aire, contra el suelo mozárabe donde no fuimos felices.

En una pagoda, junto a un juego de tazas de jarabe, un Sol de plata rompió mi verde corazón sobre los rubros del té, relente amargo del Yangtsé en las amplias frentes tibetanas.

A la luz de un farol el fondo de las vasijas reveló un busto de niña, ángelus de porcelana y piececitos de loto que bien pudo ser mi amor primero. Ese día aprehendí para siempre el Dragón, la Porcelana, la Promesa; iguales del alma primitiva de los pioneros melenudos camino de las Indias.

Ninfeas, sagitarias, lisimaquias, rododendros, mansas monstruosidades de raíz tal vez griega o eslava donde mi oído delirante se halló en las adolescentes peregrinaciones solares de la casa de los poetas. Querida voz, aún me visitas en la noche de la edad, furtiva de un odre milenario.

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January 2022 THE ENVOY 118

EDITOR- Jorge Alberto Pérez Hernández –joyphccla@gmail.com

THE VOICE OF PORCELAIN

By Victor Manuel Velázquez The muses were deeply fruited colors, amenable to the afternoon, a jade pulsation over the din of vocal and feminine chime. Then, with secular wines, comes the aftertaste: a metallic fife against airy muslin, against the Mozarabic soil where we were not happy.

Inside a pagoda, next to a set of syrup cups, a silver Sun broke my green heart over the redness of the tea, a bitter dew from the Yangtze on the broad Tibetan foreheads.

Under the light of a lantern, the bottom of the vessels reflected a child´s bust, porcelain angelus and little lotus feet, which might as well have been my first love. That day I understood forever the Dragon, the Porcelain, the Promise; like a long-haired pioneers´ primitive soul, on its way to the Indies.

Nymphs, Sagittarians, malignancies, rhododendrons, gentle monstrosities of perhaps Greek or Slavic root, where my frenzied ear found itself prone to the ancestral pilgrimages to poets´ homes. Dear intonation, you still visit me in the night of the age, furtively from a thousandyear-old wineskin. (translation by Miguel Olivé)

Painting by Victor Manuel The Envoy 118 Página 9

January 2022 THE ENVOY 118

EDITOR- Jorge Alberto Pérez Hernández –joyphccla@gmail.com

Photos by Héctor Silva

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January 2022 THE ENVOY 118

EDITOR- Jorge Alberto Pérez Hernández –joyphccla@gmail.com

(continued from My Twenty Favorite John B. Lee Poems by Miguel Ángel Olivé Iglesias, CCLA President in Cuba, author, editor, reviewer) 4

IMPLICATED IN THE ACT OF CREATING POETRYand extolling it, the poet never forgets the woman his books are consistently dedicated to, Cathy, his wife. Lee conceives this piece in the after-waking moment, a soft, dream-like atmosphere nudging his hand to pen. Bare sensuality, the woman’s as well, throbs in the lines. The phrase “… your shape procures a note so faintly played upon the felts it leaves no mark…” suggests not that her shape is unsubstantial. It rather highlights in stunning poetic dissertation its delicacy, how it gently sits on the textile, kindling in the poet’s eye a proud notion that her shape is worthy of posing for an artist.

This is what the poet explained to me: “I remember this poem very well from the same collection. I always liked the line ‘mummed like a secret-keeper's mouth’ as an image of the feminine vulva. The idea of description of the feminine ... and the line which echoes Cohen (now that I notice it) "it leaves no mark" very similar to Cohen's "as the mist leaves no scar". This poem is a celebration of Erotica with its breath of life and the natural beauty of physical love.

Surmising she is asleep while he watches her, I could not refrain myself from recalling Margaret Atwood’s “Variation on the Word Sleep” (talking about echoes from great poets), a poem I commented on in my first review book (In a Fragile Moment: A Landscape of Canadian Poetry. Hidden Brook Press, 2020). I said then that poets – artists and singers as well – “find a source of inspiration in watching their beloved ones sleep. Atwood has created a lyrically sweet poem, a peaceful contemplation of her lover.”

So has Lee, singing to his wife, finding beauty in her, giving “the natural beauty of physical love” a touching position of privilege. We tremble in the physicality of Lee’s poem, how it fuses with “… the interior journey, the progress of the soul…”that Roger Bell refers to in his Foreword to John B. Lee’s book This is How We See the World. (Hidden Brook Press, 2017). The poet reaches a crest where an illumination of spirituality communes with the physical element. One complements the other, eroticism handled with artistry. If I were to choose my number one Lee poem, this is it: I Wake to Breathe Your Beauty In I wake to breathe your beauty in your soft pink sex mummed like a secret-keeper’s mouth the stone imprisoned by its fall could no more hang upon the wind that I hold back this love your shape procures a note so faintly played upon the felts it leaves no mark

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January 2022 THE ENVOY 118

EDITOR- Jorge Alberto Pérez Hernández –joyphccla@gmail.com

like a dustless butler’s glove and I with sad melodies unsung with wordless names and voiceless calling dream the mild narcotic of your gently moving breast.

WE MOVE ON NOW TO ANOTHER EROTIC POEM, carved meticulously by the poet, where biblical allusions overlap with rich imagery. The phrase “and this” is highly suggestive; it leaves in the readers´ minds only the cue, the rest is to be imagined, anticipated by them at the burning threshold of innuendo, sensations and cravings. Lee´s metaphorical sleight-of-hand does not cease to amaze us.

About it, Lee says, “and this is a very recent poem, a kind of visitation to the same impulse that inspired the previous selection. That notion of the what lies beneath the leaf of Eve. Adam and Eve and God walking in the cool of the day in the garden shortly after Eve has tasted the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge and she and Adam become aware of their nakedness. The retracing of that post knowledge moment to the moment before when one did not have the impulse to hide one's nakedness, when nakedness was beautiful and innocent as when we were children.”

The first two lines are genuinely anticipatory of what the poet proposes in the poem. He requests, gently, suggestively, inviting to the tempting images outlined in the text, the end prodded by “and this,” which rather than close the poem adds an afterglow layer to it: … and this. remove the leaf my love where knowledge makes you shy and I will be the shade beneath the restless shadow of a walking eye to call it sin improves on darkness darker still within the moon-fold of a silent kiss the hurry-hearted sigh one silver tear to cry and this …

BY MIGUEL ÁNGEL OLIVÉ IGLESIAS

CALENDAR POEMS … those eternal truths we seek to live by. Don Gutteridge The Envoy 118 Página 12

January 2022 THE ENVOY 118

EDITOR- Jorge Alberto Pérez Hernández –joyphccla@gmail.com

January January comes auspiciously opening doors, offering beginnings, clean like unpolluted rivers and clear skies.

The promise of renewal blooms and settles in our hearts; it is the answer to our prayers that speak of trust and tomorrow.

January sings looking into what will come and heal us all. It shines, lighting the way toward its eleven siblings. It reopens the calendar´s pages that we all read shaking off pain, loss, setbacks. January carries songs of anticipation wings of revitalizing hope.

February February flies joyful and winning in our hearts. Love purifies it, love garlands its days; it is fruit hanging, ripe and sweet, ready to sate, ready to feed body and soul in a cleansing feast of gratefulness.

February holds the flag of hope bequeathed by January, makes it flap up in the wind and paves the road into its sibling March.

March March no longer speaks of war: now it bears flowers for our women as it marches on, a polite soldier in the calendar, igniting a rainbow of colors-to-be.

March gives us preambles of a life where our women make a difference, and we all bow with a smile and the promise it all will be ok after a tired March takes leave to make room for a thriving April.

July July surprises with a sunful blast, powerful like the Caesar, yet it succumbs to its own charms and chants of sands and oceans. You whisper July and a chorus of voices echoes joyfully visualizing crystal beaches rippled swims. July dreams of seagulls, starfish, boats, balls bouncing off the green-blue glass and happy cries of excited crowds.

August August´s grandeur toots its own horn of sheer excitement as it parades, hot and powerful, into the calendar.

An evocation of still another Caesar watching over an empire of scorching sun blue skies and sultry waters fills the foamy air. And people cheer—yet this time not for an emperor but for the welcome dominance of summer, splendid in its summit.

September September strums twice my heart´s strings, so warmly close to me, so personal. Bliss of birthdays, it falls like prayed-for rain: Amanda, born September 10th, my teenage child; in pride and fear I watch her outgrow the chrysalis I secretly hoped she´d never leave, in joy and worry I see her take longer, farther strides from me…

Ahitana, born September 7th, my precocious toddler, owner of the loveliest kiss tiny sunlight of laughter, tireless trot of innocence reflected in those lively eyes of hers…

Two meanings for one month, two inseparable pieces of me, two special beings brightening a scope of 30 days in a celebration that lasts forever.

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EDITOR- Jorge Alberto Pérez Hernández –joyphccla@gmail.com

October April April is nature awakening vegetation beginning to sprout the fickle weather changing and playing hymns of rain in an expectation that will shower the earth.

April rejoices in its display of gardens anticipating for the world the eager flowers of May.

May May walks in like a goddess; its mythology telling of days and nights of glory.

May celebrates motherhood with lines of tribute and deference. It materializes April´s expectation of rain, pours gently its message of a million greens and joyous blossoms waiting, proud and generous, for the summer signs of June.

October pulses with autumn leaves that cover a grateful earth.

After a summertime of heat, October is the threshold into fresher days and nights. It brings rain, an omen of hurricanes and more family birthdays that lighten the shadow of past or to-be storms. October holds the reins of the year´s last quarter swapping its essence of Roman eighth into its new status of Gregorian tenth.

November Another swapper from Roman to Gregorian lineage, November foreruns Winter. After the kiss of summer, it fiddles with the thermometer bargaining for cooler hours. November is high season: waves of tourists start to sway onto our coasts searching for warmer climes for friendlier moments. November fans out its thirty days as a prequel of what its sibling month has in store for us.

December

June

December brings more than a Roman ten, more than winter blowing its new Gregorian value over our heads or the sight of glimmering snow fractals carpeting doorways somewhere else. As it enters our lives, June settles large and bright, like its sister asteroids; a bridge that bonds —like mar- an élan of hope spreads in renovating waves: the spirit of Noel revisits our hearths riage— recolors our lives and refocuses the year´s two halves and lets in our looks towards a brighter horizon. the chariots of welcome summer.

December bids farewell to an aged year You think of June and elation envelops you, heralding a new one yet to arrive it glides stately like a goddess, yet to resend us along life´s path a messenger of wind and waves and warmth in renewed expectations and revived announcing for us all the cheerful coming faith. December murmurs endless tidings of love, ofitshottersiblings. of resolutions and desires to be fulfilled, of remembrance and gratitude for all that was forgiven, given —and shall be— on behalf of a better tomorrow.

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EDITOR- Jorge Alberto Pérez Hernández –joyphccla@gmail.com

Photos by Raydel Castellanos

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EDITOR- Jorge Alberto Pérez Hernández –joyphccla@gmail.com

ALINA GONZÁLEZ SERRANO (translated by Miguel Olivé) Let us welcome theJanuary chariot of hope and bliss.

Let us stand and open our arms to love and friends, to yesand caring.

Life pulses out there: let us be thankful and live like yesterday was a bad dream like today is what we have and must cherish, and tomorrow is the promise we make, for new hope and bliss.

Photos by Richard M. Grove (Tai)

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EDITOR- Jorge Alberto Pérez Hernández –joyphccla@gmail.com

Otro año lejos de casa

Por José Rafael Escalona Aguilera

No es para todos, Pienso que no, No es para todos, Vivir lejos de casa, No es para todos, Debes recoger todo, Debes empacar todo.

Debes tener un corazón grande, Un corazón bien grande, Un corazón grandísimo, Lo suficientemente grande.

Debes guardar lo que dejas, Debes dejar lo que guardas, Dejas y guardas, Alegrías y sinsabores, Dejas y guardas, amigos y amores.

Llegas a una tierra Que no es la tuya, No es tuya, La tierra que tocas.

Todo es raro, Distinto es todo.

Tu cuarto es otro, No es tu cuarto, Pero si lo es.

Duermes en un colchón Que no es el tuyo, Una almohada Que no es la tuya, Incómodos, No son tuyos, Pero ahí estás tú.

Miras el techo Y vuelves a mirar Y te preguntas: ¿Dónde voy? ¿Dónde estoy?

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January 2022 THE ENVOY 118

EDITOR- Jorge Alberto Pérez Hernández –joyphccla@gmail.com

Amigos que no son tuyos, No es tuya la ciudad, Cosas grandes, Cosas nuevas, No es tuya, No es para todos, Un corazón que late más.

Un corazón que a veces teme que otros se hayan olvidado, El presente, Tuyo, Ha tomado tu guía, El presente, Tuyo, Ha tomado tu control.

Un gran corazón, Fuerte, grande, O tal vez No demasiado fuerte...

Es ahí donde entonces Se detiene, Guarda y deja, Se arresta, Se confunde, No sabe quién eres.

Entonces Tu colchón Con la fuerza de tu peso, La almohada, Con tu peso y tu fuerza, Igual, Y te preguntas: ¿Sigo siendo yo, O soy más? ¿A dónde voy, Quién soy más?

Soy yo, Aquí estoy, Solo, solamente Con un año más.

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January 2022 THE ENVOY 118

EDITOR- Jorge Alberto Pérez Hernández –joyphccla@gmail.com

Another year away from home

By José Rafael Escalona Aguilera

It's not for everyone, No, I don´t think so, It's not for everyone, To live away from home, It's not for everyone You must collect everything You must pack everything.

You must have a big heart, A very big heart, A really huge heart, Large enough.

You must store what you leave behind, You must leave behind what you store, Leave behind and store, Joys and troubles, Leave behind and store, friends and loves.

You come to a land That is not yours, It is not yours, The land you touch.

Everything is weird Everything is different.

Your room is another, It is not your room, But yes, it is.

You sleep on a mattress That is not yours, A pillow That is not yours, Uncomfortable, They are not yours, But there you are.

You look at the ceiling And you look again And wonder: Where do I go?

Where am I? Friends who are not yours,

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January 2022 THE ENVOY 118

EDITOR- Jorge Alberto Pérez Hernández –joyphccla@gmail.com

The city is not yours, Big things, New stuff, Not yours, Not for everyone, A heart that beats faster.

A heart that sometimes Fears that others may have forgotten, The present, Yours, It becomes your guide.

The present, Yours It has taken control of you.

A big heart, Strong, big, Or maybe Not so strong...

It is there where then It stops, It stores and leaves behind, It comes to a halt, It gets confused, It doesn't know who you are.

Then Your bedding With the heaviness of your weight, The pillow, With your weight and your strength, Both the same And you ask yourself: Am I still me, Or am I more?

Where do I go?, Who else am I? It's me, Here I am, Only, just With one more year.

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January 2022 THE ENVOY 118

EDITOR- Jorge Alberto Pérez Hernández –joyphccla@gmail.com

Photos by Wency Rosales

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January 2022 THE ENVOY 118

EDITOR- Jorge Alberto Pérez Hernández –joyphccla@gmail.com

Photos by Karen Naranjo

Photo by Giselle Sierra

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January 2022 THE ENVOY 118

EDITOR- Jorge Alberto Pérez Hernández –joyphccla@gmail.com

Photos by José Alberto Pérez (1&2) and Jorge Alberto Pérez (3&4)

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January 2022 THE ENVOY 118

EDITOR- Jorge Alberto Pérez Hernández –joyphccla@gmail.com

– Jorge Alberto Pérez Hernández, CCLA Ambassador as editor – Miguel Ángel Olivé Iglesias, Cuban President as Assistant editor – Adonay Pérez Luengo, Cuban vp as reviewing editor – Lisa Makarchuk, Canadian vp as reviewing editor – Miriam Estrella Vera Delgado, CCLA Cuban poet laureate as reviewing editor _ Wency Rosales, Cuban Photography Curator Editor´s emails: joyph@nauta.cu joyphccla@gmail.com jorgealbertoph@infomed.sld.cu We are inviting all members of the CCLA to send photos and poems of family, work family, school family or cycle family for our next issue of The Envoy 119. Please, send everything to the emails above.

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

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