Poetry Page poems from the L.A. Poetry Festival

Bookstore

Poems from festival organizers Organizer's page

Selected Poems from Participants in the
THE FIN DE MILLENNIUM L.A. POETRY FESTIVAL, Nov. 3-21, 2000
Liz Gonzalez
Dinah Berland
Willie Sims
Tony Hoagland
Ellyn Maybe
Rose Simeroth
Alicia Vogl Sáenz
Eloise Klein Healy
Robert Arroyo
Bruce Williams
Jenoyne Adams
Yusef Komunyakaa
Jack Grapes
Steve Kowit
Richard Garcia

Liz Gonzalez
CONFESSIONS OF A PSEUDO-CHICANA

Forgive me Our Lady Virgen of Guadalupe
for I have offended you.
It has been eight months since I last lit a votive
or ate a bowl of menudo. These are my sins:

I didn't taste chile until I was 18.
Mama raised us on Hamburger Helper and macaroni & cheese.
She never even made a pot of beans.

I learned how to make tortillas from Mrs. MacDougal
in Home Ec.
Mama still has the recipe.

In high school I bonged with Allman Brother look-alikes
and rocked out to Lynyrd Skynard
instead of suavecitoing to Malo & El Chicano.

After dancing at forty-nine weddings
I still don't know what the lyrics to Sabon A Mi mean.
(I can't even speak fluent Spanglish.)

Most of my friends who carry green cards
flew in from the blue-eyed countries.

The closest I got to a protest march
was rushing the gates at the Lilith fair.

My biggest sin -- I buy grapes. But only
organically grown from Wild Oats.

Forgive me Madre Maria.
I was brought up by a mama who thought Chicana
was a dirty word, and a grandma
who claims she's Italian.

Help me from turning into a vendida with blue contacts.

Help me remember that great grandpa's sweat
glistens on the metal of Santa Fe railroad tracks,

that good old boys brand and corral my cousins
like cattle they own and slaughter,

and inside a malquiladona Nina's
stitch arthritis into their fingers,

Tio's skin, eyes, lungs get fumigated with pesticides.
Madre Maria, instead of kindling candles with your image
to look cool,
I'll light the wick in remembrance of them.

Return to top

Dinah Berland
ESPERANZA

As the sky begins to sour,
I pick up my pace to make it home
before the local boys stake out
their corners. I am listening to the blues
on headphones, which turns everything
into a movie -- the establishing shot
filled with people we will never
see again: a woman walking
as fast as she can in spike heels,
her electric-blue dress deeper than the sky.
She pulls a laundry cart with one hand
and with the other, drags a small boy
by the arm, a child who glances up at me
with the dark eyes of my own son
in another life. It's his look of fear I recognize.
The big Korean kid, blind in one eye,
leans scowling at the entrance to his father's
liquor store, while two scrawny teenagers
strike up a smoke. Enter Esperanza,
backlit on the balcony, the incandescent glow
of her open room picking up the clouds'
brassy tune. She leans over the wrought-
iron rail, her ruffled blouse as red
as the faux geraniums below the parapet.
Esperanza does not look down at the pavement,
at the beat-up cars lumbering over potholes,
at the woman still thinking of her son, the one
who has never come home. Instead,
she stares ahead with eager eyes, watching
for Jesús, who has got to be rounding
the corner any minute now -- as the camera
zooms in, and the story we all came here for begins.

Return to top

Willie Sims
DENIZENS OF THE DARK

We come out at night.
We hang glide into Hollywood from Translvania,
chariot race to Burbank from the city of Troy,
jet ski to Santa Monica from lost Atlantis.
We be guerilla underground poets.
We come out at night.

We come in costume,
mad hatted in arrogance,
foot fetished in attitude.
body wrapped in bad press and rejection notices.
We hold readings in cemetaries, laundromats,
porno theatres, moving escalators and fox holes.
We be young rebels with a cause,
and mid-lifers in menopause.
We be guerilla underground poets.
We come out at night.

We be guerilla underground poets.
We be hunters, sniffing the air for the scent of an open reading.
We be sabre-toothed meat eaters.
Hungry for a haiku quick kill at a poetry slam.

We come out at night.
We be G.Q. performance poets,
cross-dressed in rock star ambition
and comic book stage names.
Ming The Merciless, Mustang Sally,
Tattle Tale, Goody Goody Two Shoes, Toe Jam.
My stage handle is Boom-Shak-A-Lak-A!
I am the Divine Defender of the Fickle & Faithless,
Supreme Seeker of Flickering Fame!

We come out at night.
We be word warriors on a mission
to search out and destroy all the dull, pedantic
cerebral slop that has given poetry a bad name.
We ambush boredom,
lay siege to self-indulgence,
storm the Bastille of political correctness.
Armed with semi-automatic double entendres,
firing armor piercing alliterations at will,
we assassinate pretenders to the throne,
duel to the death with the winners of the Who Cares Prize
awarded by the So What Foundation.
We execute pablum pushing finalists
in the What For Competition funded by the Who Them Society.

We come out at night.
We be ghetto gangsta rappers
raging with rhythm and rhyming about survival.
We be street slang Shakespeares revolutionizing language,
gangbanging all the figures of speech.
We be onamata-peeing all over the King's English!

We come out at night.
And we be everywhere!

Return to top

Tony Hoagland
JET

Sometimes I wish I were still out
on the back porch, drinking jet fuel
with the boys, getting louder and louder
as the empty cans drop out of our paws
like booster rockets falling back to Earth

and we soar up into the summer stars.
Summer. The big sky river rushes overhead,
bearing asteroids and mist, blind fish
and old space suits with skeletons inside.
On Earth, men celebrate their hairiness,

and it is good, a way of letting life
out of the box, uncapping the bottle
to let the effervescence gush
through the narrow, usually constricted neck.

And now the crickets plug in their appliances
in unison, and then the fireflies flash
dots and dashes in the grass, like punctuation
for the labyrinthine, untrue tales of sex
someone is telling in the dark, though

no one really hears. We gaze into the night
as if remembering the bright unbroken planet
we once came from,
to which we will never
be permitted to return.
We are amazed how hurt we are.
We would give anything for what we have.

Return to top

Ellyn Maybe
IT WAS LIKE A DATE

he held doors open for me
he carried my books
he let me order first
I looked into his eyes
my stomach was a butterfly museum
we got to know each other better
I wondered if I'd see him again
a calendar shed history onto the carpet
we talked about music
silence sat atop the napkin dispensers to absorb
the shy ingredients
we sat by a window
we finished each other's exclamations
we walked through centuries to get there
the trees changed seasons
vulnerability - the soup of the minute
we found sunflowers in each other's ears
we crossed the streets our heroes lived on and
sung their eternity
there were angels in the salt and pepper shakers
I felt like upside down dancing
more a Chagall bride than a woman
more a woman than usual
in this I realized
it resembled love.

Return to top

Rose Simeroth
RENEWING THE L.A. RIVER

I know it must look strange,
what we call river
to those who left silver lakes
and coffee-colored mountains
for this strip of water
marking the cement banks
under the First Street Bridge--
the Los Angeles River.

But I know that cement channels
water, that water can be invisible
or a soft leafy spine trailing the sun.
I know the swoops and curves
of graffitti that name this river,
the pulse of colors that mark
this sly water
trying to rise again.

Can the green of the river
come back, you ask,
and the water run clear?
Did it ever? Did it run clear
for the ranchos, for early Hollywood,
for citrus growers, for boys from the east
with dark hearts under darker suits?
I listen to you explain water
in L A: water is money,
blood. Water is the bickering
in back rooms with clipped
cigars, the flash of guns.

River, I can't read all your secrets.
You look like you're working hard,
working with your face down,
the way they want you to,
polishing drowned chrome,
overseeing deals, hiding bottles,
reflecting the moon.
You're a murderer's ditch,
a thieve's stash. Your cement chafes
the backs of soft girls as they try
their moves for the first time.

Dark dreamers like us
bring their sunburnt nights

to this river
that reflects a palm's flowering gorge
next to the rise of steel. . .

Renew this river,
this secret water
that holds something
I want to say to you.

Return to top

Alicia Vogl Sáenz,
A DAUGHTER'S CURE FOR LOU GEHRIG'S DISEASE
For my mother 1928-1989

Sew you a dress
woven of rose petals
shimmering, your garden in May rain.

Color your hair --
dye of pomegranates. Wash each strand.
Your muscles return.
I am the opposite of
Delilah.

A chamomile sponge bath,
Talc powder of yellow butterflies
from Macondo. Dust your
skin until Mauricio Babilonia
floats in your eyes.

Wheelchair left behind
you walk, your legs full,
your ankles keep a cumbia beat.
The dress rubs you like a cat.
Hint of rose rises.
A loose thread follows you.

I pull the thread,
wrap it
around my finger
tight.

Return to top

Robert Arroyo
LOVE POEM TO A LESBIAN FRIEND
for Eloise Klein Healy

Only an empty sky
looks on as we huddle
close, our shoulders nearly touching
in your eighth floor office. We're speaking
of lineation while you draw lines
through my lines. From the beginning
I knew I wouldn't know
your body. I would never read the scar
underneath your left breast, or smell
the full blown rose of your sex.
When you said I had promise,
it sounded so much like a promise, I've held you
responsible for every rejection slip
my mailbox has accepted. Still, I've ached
to dampen your hair on some kitchen floor, to hold
your legs apart like a wishbone. Possibly
it's because of the way you say Mmmmm
when I speak of stanza breaks, or how you pull
on your lobe when judging the sonic virtues of fucking,
or how you recite poetry: tenderly cleaving words
until bones are laid
out. And what's better than all these words we share?
Amazing how they move through us, so that when looking
out your office window I notice the sky --
loaded with blue as the alphabet
is with poems.

Return to top

Eloise Klein Healy
CACTUS GIRLS

They spread up hillsides
looking like coral reefs.
Green flat fans taking over
a south-facing slope,
then thick red pipes of fruit
sticky, overflowing, sweet.

I've had long friendships
with those girls but
don't like cactus candy
or love that flows sweet
only through the menace of argument,
thorny and complex.
I like the sweet pink trumpet flowers
that bloom overnight
and then are gone.
I can taste that pink
all the year it takes to bloom again.

One night a star-shaped tube blossomed.
It was a full moon
and the patio was as bright as a room.
The blossom actually grew wide in front of me,
skin-colored and flecked with dots of purple
leading deep into its heart where another star,
a white one, stretched out.

Maybe it was all a dream, but in the morning
the flower hung there like a spent kite,
a sweet and worthwhile death,
but so much like skin
I sometimes want to peel it off the surface
of my memory.

Return to top

Jeynoyne Adams
BLACK SUNSHINE

Daddy
How did you get so beautiful?
planting collard green
and hotwater cornbread love
between my plaits
turning ashtrays into candy bowls
and scraped knees
into orange soda kisses

I see you in the sun rays
feel you when I step my feet
in the ocean

You are the current that brings me home
just to chat and watch history channel for hours

You are my first friend
and best magic

You are the spirit in me
that catches my rainbows

You are my hopscotch
and jump rope memories

You are the hope I will give my children
and who I want to become
Daddy
you are black sunshine

Return to top

Bruce Williams
SPECULATIONS

If I could only write one word
it would be salt. I don't know why:
Not for memory -- for the sea
they tell us we come from.
Not for the way our bodies move
exchanging solutions
we've called love.
Perhaps because salt's almost bitter
yet necessary -- nearly salvation --
the taste of work and pain.
Because put on melons, it makes sweet
more sweet. Because I would bring salt
to Dad and Granddad when they drank beer
but once brought garlic salt instead --
that joke we always laughed about.
Because salt's in the desert
where prophets go and
stays nailed in the earth
when water's gone.
Or, more likely, because salt
is simple, short, the rock
inside us. A place to start.

Return to top

Yusef Komunyakaaa
"You And I Are Disappearing"
Bjorn Hakansson

The cry I bring down from the hills
belongs to a girl still burning
inside my head. At daybreak
she burns like a piece of paper.
She burns like foxfire
in a thigh-shaped valley.
A skirt of flames
dances around her
at dusk.
We stand with our hands
hanging at our sides,
while she burns
like a sack of dry ice.
She burns like oil on water.
She burns like a cattail torch
dipped in gasoline.
She glows like the fat tip
of a banker's cigar,
silent as quicksilver.
A tiger under a rainbow
at nightfall.
She burns like a shot glass of vodka.
She burns like a field of poppies
at the edge of a rain forest.
She rises like dragonsmoke
to my nostrils. She burns like a burning bush
driven by a godawful wind.

Return to top

Jack Grapes
THE CHILDREN LOOK FOR CRABS ON THE BEACH

There's a reason for this: You put on your trunks and go stand by the water, watch
the guts of this planet wash up on the sand.
Two girls dig in the root-bones of a plastic-looking sea plant.
They say they are looking for crabs for their collection
and show you a half-filled paper cup stuck in the wet sand.
I'm not satisfied not knowing anymore
what is wrong with me,
what storm is tearing me apart
plank by plank on the rough sea.
I'm not satisfied anymore going from metaphor to metaphor,
a sinking ship,
a drowning sailor,
a beached hulk of a sea monster blinded on the beach,
being picked apart by children.
I look out to sea and read the poets for comfort,
but if poetry is to save me
it'll have to be my own, full of lies and mischief,
and the one paperweight of truth
that keeps everything from flying off.
I want to toss that paperweight out to sea,
that smug stone so breathless on my desk.
So I go back to my car,
shake the sand out of my shoes,
check the mirror to see if I've gotten any sun.
What do I need sun for anyway?
What do I need anything for anyway?
Why can't I fix the sink?
Why am I not more ambitious?
Why won't I come back to me?
I drive off down the highway
in my car that needs fixing everywhere.
God, I feel like a housewife
in someone else's soap opera.
Christ, I feel like laughing.

Return to top

Steve Kowit
A MANIA

A mania for dancing, for tipping one's hat, a preoccupation
with Jesus, Salvation, delusion
that one is oneself the Messiah, the frenzy
of being possessed by the ministrations of Satan,
a singular interest in rodents, pudenda, frottage,
a fascination for fire & silence, a lust for tattoos, delusion
that ants are crawling over one's body, a passion
for opiates, a need to converse with the dead, impulse
toward self-mutilation, compulsion to pick open wounds,
erotomaniacal urge to make love in a train
hurtling over the countryside in a furious downpour
at night, as you & I once so elaborately planned,
years of obsession, your flesh and the rain
all I could focus on, fathom & worship, was haunted
& plagued by, desperate, exhausted, mumbling
& weeping your name of which nothing could cure me,
nothing diminish chain of unending cars coupling & banging,
screaming into that dark, driving, doomed impossible rain.

Return to top

Richard Garcia
MY LIFE AS A DANCER

I have danced between collapsing skylines
of dirty dishes. I have danced
folded in a fetal position
under a suitcase in an apple orchard.
I have danced for the police,
nimble, keeping my feet between kicks and punches.

I have danced with fragrant evening gowns
while hiding in closets.
Danced with shadows that had no reflection.
Danced through plate glass
with a half-naked woman slung over one shoulder.
Danced in moonlight with a slender-waisted broom.

Every man has his own dance.
The traffic cop does his scarecrow style.
The black man with rags for shoes dances
with arms akimbo while worshiping a power pole.
The window washer forty stories up does his
polishing the sky to a high luster.
The custodian, members of the board,
mail room clerk, form a line that snakes
down the emergency stairwell
into the parking lot of the supermarket.

Mine goes like this - a kind of bouncing,
herky-jerky, bobbing hanged man,
semen-dripping dance.
If you ask me what it's called
I may not answer you. I may say,
Don't bother me, can't you see I'm dancing?

Return to top

lapoetryfestival.org
contact us