#YoSoy132: The Youth of Mexico Rise

And then everything changed. In less than a month, the largest student movement since 1968 has swept Mexico, changing the course of a presidential election and sparking the first popular opposition to the country’s television duopoly. To say that political events in Mexico are moving quickly would be an understatement. In the final days leading up to the July 1st presidential election and the aftermath that continues to unfold, the story develops at Twitter-speed.

The movement known as #YoSoy132 (“I am 132”) was born as a hashtag on the social media site in the days following May 11th, a day that will surely be remembered as a key moment in the 2012 Mexican presidential election. That day, the candidate Enrique Peña Nieto visited Ibero-American University in Mexico City, a campaign stop that turned out to be unlike any other in his march towards Los Pinos, the Mexican equivalent of the White House.

Peña Nieto was the candidate hand-picked by the old guard behind the Institutional Revolutionary Party (commonly called the PRI, an acronym of the party’s name in Spanish), who ruled Mexico for 70 years, until 2000. The PRI’s rule was characterized by wide-spread corruption, intimidation and physical violence, especially in the rural areas of the country. As a young and charismatic former governor of the state of Mexico, Peña Nieto was obviously thought to be the perfect face of the “new PRI” as the party planned to retake power.

However, to place Peña Nieto at the center of this story would be to repeat the same error made by the mainstream media. It is not the candidate who deserves attention for his ineptitude in dealing with unscripted campaign stops, such as that of May 11th, but rather the students’ lightning-quick response to how the event was played in the media. The major media outlets––all of whom seem to favor the PRI––and some political commentators dismissed the protests at the Ibero-American by characterizing them as being initiated by 131 students who were trained and paid by a rival political party. In response, 131 students of the university posted images of their ID cards to the internet, asserting their identity as enrolled, politically-aware students and denying any outside direction. The tweet “I am the 132nd” instantly became a cry of solidarity among young people against Mexico’s media monopolies and the political class behind them.

But beyond the obvious, #YoSoy132 provides a nearly perfect case-in-point of how social media continues to change the relationship between media and democracies around the globe. Idea-sharing was coupled with old-school people power techniques with a quickness that would have been unthinkable even ten years ago: within a month of the beginning of #YoSoy132, multiple marches of an estimated 100,000 people each took to the streets in Mexico City and were echoed across the country.

But again, to talk about the movement exclusively in terms of numbers, technology and speed is also to miss the mark about why this is an important moment in Mexican––and hemispheric––history. It’s the feeling in the streets: empowerment, jubilation, awakening. It’s the poetry in the manifestos, that declare: We are sons and daughters of a new Mexico who are yelling––enough! Never again! … This movement is nourished … from the roots of respect between human beings. The movement has grown, and will continue to grow.

It would be easy to dismiss all of this as a brief flash, destined to suffer the same fate as the movements of 2006, which were poised to topple the current power structures and yet seemed to fizzle out in the end. That year, after the last presidential election, thousands occupied one of Mexico City’s largest streets for weeks in response to perceived electoral fraud. At the same time, the state capital of Oaxaca was taken over by citizens demanding the ouster of the corrupt state governor, and Mexico's political class was shocked by then-president Vicente Fox's use of violence against protesters in the city of Atenco––an incident in which Peña Nieto collaborated.

But just because these popular movements were successfully repressed by the ruling elite doesn’t mean that the rancor that spawned them was ever addressed or remediated. On the contrary, by relying on the timeless dirty political techniques of murder, disappearance, rape, torture, and biased reporting in the media, the ruling class in Mexico has only stoked the flames of popular indignation. Like a forest fire that continues to burn in the soil and later spontaneously jumps into the treetops, the push for a more democratic and egalitarian Mexico continues. And in an ever more connected world, direct political oppression becomes an increasingly risky game.

#YoSoy132 moves at a pace of hundreds or even thousands of individual messages per hour, pushed by a generation that is able to couple the hyper-literacy of the digital age with a political consciousness drawing on generations of struggle. They have organized their own marches, presidential debates, and have brought to the fore the anti-democratic tendencies of their country’s television duopoly.

But what will be the movement’s role post-election? Is this the “Mexican Spring,” following the example of the movements that swept the Arab world in 2011? Will this be the fire that burns the establishment to ashes, fertilizing the soil for the growth of a more democratic Mexico?

Stay tuned––preferably not to television, but rather to Twitter.

Three Circle Poems For Tucson

I.Sunset after the long day

So many things a bullet can do and most of all only one. The weather just turned in Tucson; it hadn’t seemed so cold this morning.

Most of all in this one, this late dawn-drenched pueblo, sun metal-warm, it hadn’t seemed so cold this morning until bullet screamed first.

Gunmetal warm, tear-split pueblo, a bullet interrupts, echoes, lingers until all have screamed without wanting. An exit wound in me, in every chest:

one bullet can find many bodies. The political climate had slowly turned, unforcast violence in every chest; so many things a bullet can do.  

II. For my mother’s favorite politician

Most of all only one: her smile rare for política. Smile, the kind that seems a heart. This morning your breaths are yours again.

A política rare, smiling: contact at palms, one by one. That morning your breaths stolen. Finding them floating, you inhale them back.

Palms in contact, each one with tears beading in palms, find ourselves floating–pull each other back– a smile is a circle we inhale,

deeply, until like you, we smile the kind that seems a heart. A circle breathed for each other but most of all for only one.  

III. After Barack Obama

How well we have loved, each of us, in our time, widening ourselves into circles, holding all inside our ribs.

But each of us in this time– our instincts sharpened for gain– hold all we can inside our stomachs until each, alone, is sick with wanting.

Now, sharpen our instincts for empathy, expand our moral imaginations until solo sick wanting, left alone, evaporates. We make believe

that all is already here, widening the circle of our concern, condensing our belief that now, making each other well, we will love.

•

Three Circle Poems For Tucson by dirtyverbs

Colibrí Chilango

Un colibrí llega a mi azotea chilangay de repente todo me parece posible, aunque improbable: flores donde no hay colores sino cemento, metrópolis construida sobre metrópolis, metrópolis suspendida sobre lago, nervios tensos esperando tremores, craneos esperando volcanes, en fin todo, al final, todo finalmente.

Entonces colíbrí, ¿así? ¿Pero cómo? Esta ciudad es cemento oxidado, ciudad suspendida entre viaductos y periféricos, aviones internacionales y humo humano ahorcador, colibrí júrame que vives así.

He oido lo que dicen de ti. Que eres el alma de los guerreros aztecas que fallaron en batalla, que eres el alma de las madres perdidas en el parto, eso dicen, pero nunca les di la razón,

porque de ser así colibrí, esta ciudad estaría llena de ti: viento vibrante, lleno del llanto de tus alas, nubes negrillas resplandecientes con tus plumas, mujeres acaso madres, muertas, chupaflores en cada florero, zumbeando como moscas crecidas. Por cada mexica muerto en el hecho de hacer ciudad, un chupamirto aletea por un lecho de urbanidad: cada mestizo urbano aplastado en el choque de dos mundos, cada borracho azteca aplastado por el metro, colibris viviendo en los tuneles como murciélagos.

Pero hoy te vi, colibrí, llegaste a mi azotea entre el alambre viejo y caca de gato aun más vieja, tú llegaste, y ya no tengo recurso, tengo que creer

que en esta ciudad hay un sinfín de colibrís escondidos, viviendo clandestinos en viveros, vivaces, devorando el mercado de Jamaica por las noches, atracando el azúcar, ratas de dos alas, borrachos perdidos por las aguas frescas, hambrientos, locos de horchata, no me queda de otra tengo que creer

que hay corazones latiendo mil veces por minuto, que hay alas batiendo doscientas veces por segundo, que hay vuelo esperando a las madres muertas, que hay un cielo heredado por aztecas asesinados, así, tengo que creer

que aún hay colibrís en la Cd. de México, DFectuoso ombligo donde todo es posible, pero la vida no es segura, y tengo que creer que un día de estos nuestras alas batirán este humo.

•

Saguaro Rib & Ocotillo Antenna: Images From Sonora’s El Pinacate

This is another article in a series of pieces I am writing for The Noise, an arts and culture monthly newspaper published in Northern Arizona. Send along any comments and critiques.

The ocotillo are antennas. They bloom from volcanic cinders. Near the horizon, a granite mountain range shimmers, submerged in an old lava flow. Ribcages of saguaros stand on black earth. The cholla were dancing. They’re standing still now. There is no sound. There is a feeling of drowning in the depths of sky.

The name of this place haunts the imagination of any desert lover. El Pinacate is a mirage, once discussed but seldom visited. That is changing now. Declared a national park by the Mexican government in 1993 after over a decade of lobbying by scientists and environmentalists, La Reserva de la Biosfera El Pinacate y Gran Desierto de Altar is together with Saguaro National Park and Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument one of the most important protected areas of the expansive Sonoran desert.

El Pinacate is frequently called the heart of the Sonoran desert. The volcanic geology gives it an edge, a rawness that evokes the force of the earth, the push of blood. And as park director Federico Godines Leal points out, seen from a satellite, the area even takes the shape of a heart––not the Valentines’ kind, the muscle kind. “And it looks that way from either the south or the north,” he says, a shine in his eyes. There’s a heaviness about this place that makes a visitor feel like he or she is at the center of something.

One of the first known Europeans to see this place was the Italian Jesuit Father Eusebio Francisco Kino at the end of the 17th century. What he saw from atop the Pinacate peak changed the world: the first proof that Baja California was actually a peninsula, not an island as was widely believed by the Europeans. Maps were never to be the same. Maps are portraits of the men who make them. It is healthy to redraw the maps every few generations.

After years of catering only to scientists and renegades, the park is now changing. Late last year a visitor center was opened. Years in the making, the center is touted as the largest public building in Latin America to be operated off the grid, powered completely by renewable energy. This is even more impressive considering the massive amounts of air conditioning required to make the place survivable in summer temperatures that can reach 125º F.

“The idea is to share,” says Godines Leal. “In a way, even the name ‘biological reserve’ is problematic, as if this place were reserved for only a few lucky guys, us. No, on the contrary, this reserve is open.  [The visitor center] brings El Pinacate closer to the public.”

From the top of the sand dunes of the Great Altar Desert, it’s about 50 miles as the crow flies from the mouth of the Colorado River. Govines Leal makes a point of saying that this is the sand that once filled the Grand Canyon, carried down grain by grain over millions of years. This is the remixed hollow of the canyon.

Graceful cinder cones, sharp craters, broken black volcano bones. These are the beautiful scars torn across the earth by two million years of volcanic activity. Imagine if Sunset Crater were covered with creosote and saguaros.

The moon escapes from the granite horizon and slowly inhales, filling itself, smeared with the blood of sunset. The ocotillo are antennas, listening to something on the wind that we don’t have ears enough to hear.

The creosote bushes slowly gather sand, building their own altars. It is said that creosote bushes are among the oldest individual living organisms on Earth. Some have been found to be over 12,000 years old.

In the wind of the Rocky Point highway, plastic bags migrate. They can’t seem to remember where they came from. They’re caught up on ironwood trees, trying to ask for directions. Caught up on fences, no tongues, just a plasticine rattling, a friction played by rushing cars. That which was made nowhere has nowhere to return to.

Rainwater collects in slick stone basins, lasting most of the year without evaporating. These are called tinajas, each one a life-giving oasis in El Pinacate. Big horn sheep and mountain lions drink this water. Jets occasionally streak their trails across the water’s surface.

A road grader creeps along the visitor loop road, smoothing the damage done by the recent heavy storms. The average annual rainfall here is four inches. Earlier this year, two inches were recorded in just three days. While causing some inconvenience for park staff and visitors, the rain also means that this year will have one of the best wildflower seasons in recent memory. The river has whet its throat and is pronouncing its name. Río Sonoyta. The ghosts of floods are hanging everywhere.

UFOs glitter like cars that have driven up the sides of cinder cones and out into the sky. They wink in and out, some looking like stationary flares. Some looking like glitter. Some looking like something difficult to name. The coyotes screamlaugh among the black rock, then fall suddenly silent.

The mesquite smear along the edges of the highway like spined ink. Seen from the sand dunes, the Gulf of California makes a bright blur of the horizon. A swiftly moving silence.

“This place incites spirituality,” Godines Leal concludes, smiling. “This landscape imposes itself on you.”

La Reserva de la Biosfera El Pinacate y Gran Desierto de Altar is about 80 miles south of Ajo, AZ just off the highway to Rocky Point, Mexico. The staff is bilingual and very helpful.  February through April is wildflower season and is by far the best time to visit the park. There is camping available, a small usage fee applies to all visits.

Street Art of Bogotá: the Colombian Capital as Painted by DjLu

The following interview and translation is part of a series of pieces I am writing for The Noise, an arts and culture monthly newspaper published in Northern Arizona. Send along any comments and critiques. More on DjLu can be found on his MySpace and Flickr.

Grenades grow on stalks of maíz and explode into flowers. A gas pump holds a gun to its head. An umbrella blocks a rain of rifles. A man is lynched on an oil pump. A soldier mounts a machine gun turret on a mule. The guy from the Men’s Bathroom sign loses a leg to a landmine. He walks using a rifle as a cane. Welcome to Bogotá.

This is the city as painted by one of its best street artists: DjLu. His work was omnipresent in all parts of Bogotá I visited, and after following his stencils through alleys and across boulevards, I was lucky enough to run into the artist in the flesh.

¿To begin, what is there to know about DjLu? Who are you?

DjLu is a visual artist from the National University of Colombia, who discovered in 2004 that gallery art is turned into a static art form by being in a private space, destined to a slow death. Then the decision to adopt the urban context as the right place for expression.

¿What is Bogotá to you?

It’s the city where I was born, the playground where many ideas are born and projects come to life.

To get into some context, ¿could you tell us a bit about the history of street art in Bogotá? I was blown away by the quality and quantity, ¿has there always been so much?

Urban art linked to politics has appeared in Bogotá since the 70’s in the form of [what we call] lyrical or poetic graffiti, and also through conceptual and social art projects like those done by Antonio Caro. Nonetheless it’s not possible to speak of a consistent and diverse urban movement until about 2000. That’s when Bogotá adopted––late but with a passion––an art form that was already in vogue in the great world capitals. Recent years have seen Bogotá flower with an infinite number of approaches to street art, from the tag and throw-up, through wild style, blocks, characters, arriving at [wheat pasted] posters, stencils, stickers and complex murals.

¿So why do you paint? ¿Why stencil?

I paint to transmit a political and social stance that puts a rock in the path of apathy. I paint to give proof, to surprise, and through that to invite better ways of inhabiting and coexisting. I also paint to exorcise my fears, to get to know myself.

The stencil is the medium best suited for my project in the urban environment, since it has been used for political and against-the-grain messages for years. It’s also good for its reproducibility, through which an artistic project can usurp advertising and reach wider reception and better effect.

You have painted all over Colombia and the world. ¿How do you see street art in your country in comparison with countries of the so-called “first world”?

From having had the chance to visit Milan, Paris, Barcelona and Buenos Aires, I can say for sure that today Bogotá has no reason to be jealous. The level of technical and conceptual skill in Bogotá is really pretty high.

¿Is it dangerous to be a graffitero in Bogotá? ¿Does the government support or repress graf? ¿What would happen if they caught you?

The legality of painting in the street isn’t very clear, so it’s up to prudence, the artist’s luck, and the attitude of the police who are on shift to determine guilt and give pardons. I’ve never had big problems, apart from a couple opportune moments where I’ve been taken into the police station, without further consequences except a small loss of time and an explanation. But I’ve known of colleagues who have been detained twenty-four hours for the same thing.

What first caught my eye about your work is the heavy dose of social content. Obviously it’s not just “art for art’s sake.” At the same time, I’m interested to know if you have a specific vision you’re looking to transmit, or if you’re just looking to create images that are as provocative as possible.

I definitely have some specific interests and worries that are born not just of the local political situation but also of the worldwide context and world problems. I’m interested in bringing to light the conflicts that we’re involved in at every level, beyond understanding war as the only type of conflict. I’m worried by war as a business, by social displacement and by the changes in the ways that we use the earth: this earth where we plant mines instead of seeds.

The images become provocative in the sense that the immediate reaction of the viewer is to feel assaulted or deeply effected by them. And that their day-to-day apathy is interrupted by a reflection of our errors.

Your images play a lot with symbols of violence, and Colombia continues to be a very violent country. ¿What is the relation between violent images and true violence?

The work is born of my experiences, of a life immersed in a state of violence at every level: from the government, guerrillas, paramilitaries, not forgetting of course street violence and even inside the family. Although it has advanced a lot, Colombia is still bottled up in a war basically motivated by money and totally off-track from its social ideals. I’m interested in highlighting the relationship between fighting wars and playing games, the manner in which a conflict is absurdly driven by hidden interests––a game in which we all lose.

Nevertheless I don’t believe that my images are violent in the sense that they’re not explicit, they’re symbolic and that takes away the aggressive tone. There aren’t any bloody images or bodies in mass graves. There are silhouettes of pistols, rifles and soldiers which are part of a process of hybridization where two or more images are put together to alter their original meaning. This incites the spectator to come to their own conclusions and in the end to involve themselves in the search for solutions. These symbols appear in the streets to draw attention to situations that we are unconscious of, yet complicit in.

¿Does free speech exist in Colombia? ¿Is graffiti part of that?

From my position as an urban artist I’ll say that there is a large dose of free speech in Colombia. My project is still seen for its artistic character, even as it’s heavily loaded with politics. I should say that I haven’t felt any type of pressure, persecution or discrimination for the work I’ve done, including when I have ended up being very direct in my critiques against the government of the moment.

I believe that street art is one of the least manipulated forms of expression that exist today, though we couldn’t say that it’s completely free speech. Factors such as fashion and advertising negatively influence the freedom that street art promises. But the city-space still maintains, with an ever-increasing force, that tendency of being the voice of the voiceless, the pressure valve of the oppressed, the shithouse of the radicals and the canvass of the artists.

In general I believe that that any artistic practice is a way to stay on the fringes of the lifestyle currently imposed upon us, a chance to be more critical of the archetypes that we’re always told to accept as truth.

¿What is the most important thing that people in the U.S. need to understand about Colombia?

The problem of misunderstanding is bilateral. It’s not just that people in the U.S. have a biased view of us, in general the world is imbued with preconceptions that distort the reality of every country. We should form opinions based on specifics not generalizations. By that I mean that not everybody in Colombia is a drug runner and not everybody in the U.S. is an imperialist gringo. In Colombia we not only have a multicultural country filled with riches and natural beauty, but also––more importantly––a population with an incredibly human quality to it.

Thinking of the theme of this interview, I can tell everybody this: if you like street art, don’t hesitate in coming to see what’s happening in Bogotá.

¿Anything else?

Live happy, ¡juega siempre!

Arrival to Bogotá: impossible to be lost

I was having a conversation on the plane at 4:45am with a civil engineering professor who was coming home to visit Bogotá, which is where we were about to land. He and his girlfriend were asking me my plans for Bogotá. Namely, where I was going to stay. They both seemed mildly shocked when I told them I didn’t know, that I was planning to land first and figure it out later. Then I arrived to Bogotá but my suitcase didn’t. My senses were so dulled from the previous 24 hours of travel that I found myself just standing next to the empty luggage conveyor, blank-faced. The peppy airline employee didn’t seem surprised at my situation, and I guess I shouldn’t be either. There were three flights between two airlines, likely my suitcase just decided to go out for some drinks in Houston and didn’t make it back to the airport in time. Understandable. I recieved a couple sheets of paper, a complimentary bag of girly toiletries and a phone number to call in the next few days to see if the suitcase makes it down.

The first thing I learned about Bogotá: it’s cold in July. Just a fistful of hours ago I was in Tucson with the temperature hovering around 108F (42C), and then it’s dawn and I’m standing in a grey sunrise, 45F (7C). Pull on the jacket, catch a taxi to La Candelaria to look for coffee and a grip on things at 8200’ (2500m) above sea level.

La ciudad amanece gris. Grises las calles, grises los cielos, gris la recorrida en taxi. Y puede ser por eso que me llena de tanta emoción cuando la veo por primera vez: quieta sin viento, una filosa espada de color, violenta y alegre. No la estaba buscando, pero cuando veo la bandera colombiana por primera vez empiezan a valer la pena las 24 horas de viaje me ha costado encontrarla.

The street art here is amazing. Must be the reaction of such a vivid people against their gray capital. That’s what I’m thinking as I wander the half-abandoned streets of La Candelaria, a colonial neighborhood near the centro. I had been sitting on a park bench for a few minutes with my blackbook, watching the shoe shiners set up for the day, and the street people wander through, complaining to anyone who would listen. And now, walking, I realize I had unconsciously been worried about getting lost when another thought occured to me. If I have little idea of where I am and no idea of where I’m going, how could I be lost? Impossible.

My favorite two pieces of street graffiti poetry thus far:

"De$sarrollo es suicidio" (Proge$$ is suicide)

"Somos un . . ." (We are a . . .) Probably the artist was surprised in the act and couldn't finish the phrase, but I'd like to think it was intentional. What are we, anyway? Fill in the blank, if you can. Mad-lib graffiti.

I had contacted a potential host through CouchSurfing, an independent travel website that I’ve been involved with for a few years. Everything ended up working out, and soon I was at her place having a conversation about Hispanic American literature. She’s a professor at the university here, and a very generous person who frequently hosts travelers from all over the world. I sleep for a few hours, eat, wander a bit.

We go out with other Surfers to a show at a infamous local bar, El Quiebra-Canto. Two local bands are playing: La Makina del Caribe and Tumbacatre. The DJ is spinning salsa with some Orishas, Sargento García and Bob Marley thrown in. There is definitely something happening in Bogotá, it feels new but could be very old at the same time. Young underground culture seems to be everywhere. And I’m dancing, dancing, dancing to La Makina del Caribe, who plays chapeta, a very happy music with tropical guitar and a solid rhythm section.

I liked Tubacatre even more (see video below). They hail from Colombia’s Pacific coast and are a true force, mixing Caribbean rhythms with heavy Baltic influence. What could be better? Their name supposedly comes from a cheap aguardiente alcohol, but it literally means something like “bed breaker,” and is used to describe a woman who is energetic in the sack. As in, “Ay, manica, ¿esa es Sara la tumbacatre?” The group’s lead vocalist is an afro-colombian guy with a grin and pipes that could blow down the room. He’s six inches off the mic almost all night.

Around then I have my second revelation of the day. More of a comparison, actually. Out of nowhere I saw myself standing next to the luggage belt at dawn, despondent. And then immediately I saw myself dancing shoulder-to-shoulder with a load of new friends, drunk on the energy of this place as much as anything.

This is going to be good. 39 more days in Colombia.

Tumbacatre:

Another Colombian group, Bomba Estéreo:

Names for This

You Lightning-Flasher, Shirt-Raiser,lack-of-control Power Blinker, toss the trees around like wet cotton candy, they’re drunk marionettes, Power Cutter, Bed Rumbler. The night is a black-eye disco, and you’re a violent drunk, Night Storm. Drenching dreams, nowhere to go but right on top of us, roof Slam-Dancer, Sky-Splitter Night Light, Gutter-Defier, Waterfall-Caller tumbling down window panes, Door-Groper, a puddle on the tile. The nosleepers are listening to you, Tomorrow-Maker, Midnight Rumbler. Sharp clouds and nosleep, yer no quitter, Kid, Mountain Bowler, cement puddles, and a mud romance.

The clock blinking 12:00 in fear of You.

•

Nombres para esto

Tú Destellarayos, Levantacamisas, Parpadeador neumático sincontrol, zarandea los árboles como algodón de azúcar húmedo, son títeres borrachos, Cortador de Poder, Retumbacamas. La noche es un disco ojinegro, Y tú eres un borracho violento, Tormenta Nocturna. Sueños empapantes, ningún lugar a dónde ir salvo encima de nosotros, Slambailador de techo, Luz Nocturna Cortacielos, Desafíalcantarilla, Llamacascadas Tumbando paneles de ventanas, Tientapuertas, un charco en la losa. Los nodurmientes te están escuchando, Hacedor de Mañanas, Retumbador de Mediasnoches. Nubes afiladas y nodormir, Tú nunca renuncias, chico, Lanzamontañas, Charcos de cemento, y un amorío de lodo.

El reloj parpadea las 12:00 temiéndote.

Trad. de Alfredo Villegas Montejo

Nicaragua Night Hotel

The man who guards the front door sings to himself as he guards the front door. There’s one huge roof over the squat hotel, hovering over the rooms on columns. The rooms are a set of cement walls and a few flimsy doors. There’s a patio in the middle.. Most of the guests try to bathe before trying to sleep through the slow tropic heat, and the showers have elaborate tiles which are old enough to be covered in something that looks like rust. Only near the door are the tiles smooth and bright, worn by feet into a thin trail. There are cement washtubs built into the corner of both small shower rooms. The guests never used to bathe with running water. Above, a single fluorescent tube is screwed into one of the vigas, the spiderwebs around it have become so clogged with dust that they have become the ceiling.

At night there are only the sounds. Men murmur to their lovers, water falls from a plastic pipe in the shower, the singing man guards the front door from a rocking chair. He will stand naked in the shower at dawn.

Then it starts to rain like teenagers throwing fistfuls of water against the fired-earth tiles of the roof. The drips start through the spiderwebs. Empty rocking chairs nod with the wind coming off the lake, which is running down the empty streets, looking for open doorways. If the guests were to take showers now, they’d run across the patio, trying to avoid the rain. They run their fans all night long, for the mosquitoes. For the sound.

A dog is echoing somewhere outside. Most of the guests are old. They’re asleep now, or laying awake waiting for drips, listening to the fans.

The man in the rocking chair also whistles. His tongue is a cello bow drawn across a bending handsaw. The flimsy doors are closed. Snoring harmonizes with the rain that harmonizes with the fans. The dog must be stuck on a roof somewhere.

The curtains are thin. The sheets are thinner. And the man who whistles a handsaw is the thinnest of all.

•

Taxco, Something in the Sky

Early in the morning,
the sun still young,
the woman blows up balloons
on the steps of the church,

blowing three big breaths
then twisting them,
twisting them, twisting
them tight so that
their silver cellophane
bodies come taut,

and she ties them
on sticks, sticks them
with the rest and
does this again,

three breaths, three times
in, three times out,
building a blossoming
cheap tree of balloons
pulled together, all
tight, all taut
together on the stick
like cellophane silver fruit,
born of mechanical blooms
and breath in a bundle,
a bundle she'll carry, all the

balloons stuck, waiting
for a child to see them,
a child to want one,
and a parent to want
to see their child happy.

She'll walk, all day, through
tight plazas and steep streets, waiting,
longing to sell her lungfuls, waiting
for a child to buy her breath wrapped
in a silver balloon, the wrapped
gift of her lungs, the push
of her diaphragm, the flexing
of her fingers cherished

until a child lets go and her
breath blows away, stray
balloon blows higher—pops,
breath escapes into the white sky,
where it hangs like a lost prayer.

Her breath, loose,
looks down and watches her.
Her breaths are the tiny souls of her moments.
Her chest rising, her fingers aching,
still waiting.

•

Arizona Freeway Sunrise

The grasses are always dancing in the median,headbangers, seed sowers, dry spines twisting. Freeway flowers face early decapitation— guillotine tirewind, lit by skyfire:

here the sun is literally a star, made of beaten copper, sharp, imperfect. As the star pulls itself up again, the sky goes streaked, the improbable pattern of yellow-red, vivid.

The radio stations are just murmurs in the Spanglish static. The cities hide behind the horizons. The tires break grass necks. The flowers throw themselves like colorful, suicidal philanthropists into the eastbound, into the westbound.

Saguaro shadows are twirling sundials on the clock face of burning sand, they tick, they spin, they speak until they’re spoken to, torn down, paved over, left in piles, sold.

The rush, the hush, the hiss of wind and the immutable silence of light. The piston explosions, the cellphone syllables.

Two realities in the same moment. Two landscapes that never touch.

Arizona freeway sunrise. A breeze blowing through barbwire.

•

Amanecer en carretera de Arizona

Los pastos siempre bailan en el camellón, de atrás para adelante, esparcen la semilla, sus secas espigas se tuercen. Las flores de carretera enfrentan temprana decapitación; viento-guillotina de llantas, iluminadas por el fuego del cielo:

aquí el sol es literalmente una estrella hecha de cobre forjado, puntiaguda, imperfecta. Mientras la estrella se levanta de nuevo, bandas cruzan el cielo, el improbable patrón de amarillo-rojo, intenso.

Las estaciones de radio sólo son murmullos en la estática. Las ciudades se esconden detrás de los horizontes. Las llantas rompen cuellos del césped. Las flores se arrojan como coloridos y suicidas filántropos hacia el este, hacia el oeste.

Las sombras de los saguaros son manecillas que giran sobre el cuadrante de la arena hirviente, hacen tictac, giran, hablan hasta que se les habla, derribados, asfaltados, apilados, vendidos.

La prisa, la calma, el silbar del viento y el silencio inalterable de la luz. Las explosiones de pistones, las sílabas de celulares.

Dos realidades en un mismo instante. Dos paisajes que jamas se tocan.

Amanecer en carretera de Arizona Una brisa silbando entre alambre de púas.

•

Trad. de J. Emilio Rodríguez

Bienvenue au Café Cheri(e): An American Poet Performing in Paris

A packed house at Café Cheri(e) on this lucid and hot Paris summer night. All up and down Boulevard du Belleville most is quiet: cargo trucks covered in graffiti, the Vietnamese, the Thai district. It’s a Tuesday, and like everywhere, slam makes for a packed house even on a weeknight. The place is bathed in a sweaty red light coming from a chandelier of red bulbs hanging over the heads of the crowd. Spring and I have to squeeze our way in. Smoking is still legal here, and it’s in full effect, the red light falling through it. 9:30pm and the sun hasn’t begun to set outside. Though we arrive after the thing has started, anyone who has been to a few hundred slams over the years (or even a few, I guess) would know exactly what was happening without speaking a word of French.

The infamous Pilote le Hot is a the helm, he’s screaming for scores from the three judges. Maybe 60 people inside, another 30 sitting at tables outside. Pilote and K’trin-D remember me after I introduce myself. We competed against each other in the same bout in Albuquerque at the National Poetry Slam last August. Pilote is in a state I recognize right away: Host Mode. The scattered brain, the running, the yelling, the grinning, all conclusive symptoms. In the midst of it though, he asks me if I would like to read a sacrifice poem before the second round, no matter the language.

“Do you think it would go over well?” I ask, unsure. So far, the widely-held belief that the French are assholes has proved false, but I can imagine that a gringo shouting at them in English from a stage could possibly push them to blows.

“Oh yes, man,” Pilote says in his trademark accent and crooked grin. “Do it.”

It doesn’t take much convincing. After being in a country whose language I don’t speak, where most things seem strange to me, being at a slam is somehow calming, a spot of familiar in a sea of crazy Europe. I drink a beer, talk to a few of the poets around, most of whom speak a little English. “All us poets speak the same language,” one of them tells me.

My heart is beating like it hasn’t before a performance in a long time. The poets have assured me that the crowd will be into it—or at least they probably won’t boo me off the stage, even if they understand very little. I think of the first time I saw Pilote perform, back at the 2003 National Poetry Slam in Chicago. Obviously a lot less people spoke French in that room that speak some English here.

Pilote is back on stage. By way of my introduction, he says “it’s not his fault that he is American,” both in English and French so that we’re all on the same page. The crowd is welcoming and claps even louder as I get on stage, rather than starting to die off, which seems to be the American way of doing things.

“Bonsoir, ça va?” I say into the cordless mic, “Bueno, hablo mucho español and I speak English but je ne parle pas français, but I’m going to learn. Thank you for having me.” I do “The Boy’s Pockets,” maybe over exaggerating the movements a little, as Pilote has told me to perform my ass off, or something like that. I forget the poem about halfway through, as I sometimes do when I’m unpracticed. I freestyle it, weaving back into the poem.

The crowd is generous. Several people approach me later to ask questions about me—and even better—about the poem. The meaning of the word matches for instance: “Lashes?”

“No, matches. To light your cigarette.” A free beer for le artiste, good cheer. They started with around eighteen poets at the beginning of the night, and the cuts are fierce in the second and third rounds. Ángel Pastor is in the house and performing tonight, which is a definite treat. The Spanish-born poet also journeyed to Albuquerque last summer and Danny Solis reportedly called him “a national treasure” after Solis featured here in Paris. And at around 80 years old, Pastor definitely is a treasure.

Standing no more than 5’5”, with long white hair and a long white beard, the man rarely uses a microphone, as he sings cante jondo at the top of his lungs. Old, revolutionary songs modified from time to time to fit modern day. The crowd always loves him and has a chant that they sing every time he comes off stage. After eleven years, the original Paris Poetry Slam (now one of many) is as developed as any slam I’ve seen. While K’trin-D is onstage, some of the other poets are mouthing her poem along with her.

France has had its own National Poetry Slam for the last four years, the 2006 event hosted sixteen adult teams from all over the country and ten adolescent teams. And unlike their American counterparts, these poets are all paid by the state to compete. Everything from rail tickets to lodging and food are covered, which is why the tournament most grow slowly—it requires a massive amount of financial support.

The French National team will be competing at the United States National Poetry Slam for the second time this August in Austin, Texas. Lead by K’trin-D and Pilote, the team will perform in French while their poems are projected in English behind them. If you’re in Austin, they’re worth checking out.

Learn more: La Fédération Française de Slam Poésie: http://www.ffdsp.com The United States National Poetry slam: http://www.nps2006.com Slam Productions (France): http://www.slameur.com

Rechazasoles

En los largos años de Francolos girasoles rechazaron el sol, andolo sus verdes espaldas en lugar de su resplandor amarilloso.

A veces no florecer es protestar.

•

The old man rides an old bicycle

The old man rides an old bicycle in slow rhythm along the bay, on his way home to his wife after watching the technicolor sunset on the old dock. "¿De qué año es su bicicleta?" I ask him as he peddles by me. "Tiene 50 años," he says, smiling as he stops the bike next to me.

"¿Es un tipo Schwinn?" I ask, being into this type of thing.

"No, se llama Super Rex," he tells me, and pulls out of the breast pocket of his half-open cotton shirt the ancient registration card, which is paperclipped to his carné de identidad. "El gobierno me dio este papel pero como no saben escribir bien pusieron 'suder res.'" We laugh.

He asks me where I'm from. "Oh!," his eyes flush with emotion as he folds up his thick glasses. "I lived for five years there! In New York! Nineteen Fifty Five until Nineteen Sixty. But I think, not because I'm Cuban, that here, Cienfuegos, has the most beautiful sunsets in the world."

"Looked pretty good to me," I tell him.

"How do you like Cuba?"

"Me facina," I say, smiling.

"The same for me in New York," he smiles too. "I love my country," he says the words slowly, as if describing an ache, "but this situation here... it's not good. I stay against my will because I love my country. But this system doesn't work."

"I agree with you," I tell him. I realize he only has the courage to say these things because we are speaking in broken English. By this time we've stopped walking and we're leaning close to each other. He starts laughing.

"I must go," he says, "my wife is waiting for me. It was a pleasure to talk to you and practice my broken English."

"For me too. Tell your wife I say hello and take care."

"Ok, goodbye."

•

The Cuban Writers' Union

I.Some writers working for the state have clandestine dreams of smuggling out a manuscript to the presses of the capitalist world.

Others just rearrange the same adjectives around the words revolución and Fidel because Customs has long forbidden the importation of new words into Cuba,

so the remaining writers are like everyone else in this country, making do, shuffling the same broken puzzle pieces, searching for new endings.

The writers here are just like the men who sit on the sidewalks behind dirty wooden stands, injecting new aerosol breath into old disposable lighters and the womens’ fine hands in the relojería, fixing old watches with skill, then searching for the hour to set the watches by, the hour that this country lost long ago.

II. On the edges of this living city there are piles upon piles of all the abandoned thoughts, dirty and wet, buzzing with flies, putrid in the tropical sun.

And there are coasts where the government allows no one to swim because there too they have dumped all the aborted ideas of the island, coasts where the waves mumble unintelligible promise and people stop on the seawalk to gaze at the hollow horizon. Sometimes the weight of their unintended sighs is enough to push the cool breeze back out to sea.

Here for every kilo of true creativity the streets are polluted with a hundred liters of tears. Maybe it’s no wonder that the bookshops read like the dictator’s personal library and all the true writers sit in buildings about to collapse, trying to inject new breath onto thin sheets of cheap paper, while others have stopped writing altogether, and spend their days folding their quota of paper into airplanes which they bring down to the shore and toss into the sea, hoping they’ll catch the warm propulsion of an entire nation sighing.

The world has gotten so small that now there’s no more room in the oceans for so many bottles containing the words of so many trapped peoples. The few boats that do manage to leave set sail to the deafening sound of shattering glass and sinking letters. No more messages, no bottles. Here in Cuba all the writers know better than to trust the sea, they study the sky, trying to guess the hour and the best flight plans for paper airplanes.

•

Gadsden in Sestina

During full moons on the border, the helicoptersare violent in the midnight air, fighting to fly and spy the footsteps that are called illegal in moonlight. My house seems to shudder and move and I'm expected not to notice,

no one is ever expected to notice. The border is a breath caged in steel, created with the movement of a pen, drunk, violent across parchment, never mind that it was almost illegal, this line drawn across footprints.

They say the American, Gadsden, his footsteps crooked, didn't notice how much tequila he drank while debating the particulars. He signed the 1853 treaty for half of what he had been told to: the border was to be pushed halfway to Mexico City without a violent shot fired, but Gadsden, a woman on each knee, was moved to compromise.

If he had been too drunk to move that pen at all, I would have taken my first baby steps in Mexico instead of the U.S. The subtle violence of coincidence almost doesn't exist until you notice it, like the border almost didn't exist until a law was passed to raise a twelve-foot steel wall,

a law was passed to begin patrols with helicopters, to regulate the air moving between two countries, to electrify the border fence, to put landmines under footsteps, to take down bilingual notices, to institutionalize the violence

instead of find the cause of the violence. It shouldn't be legal, this game of noticing effects instead of causes. An American moves into a gated community, a Mexican puts one foot in front of the other, both thinking of the border.

Gadsden, father of border helicopters and my baby steps, father of illegal violence that no one cares to notice: we're all waiting to see how your wild night will end.

•

La Venta de la Mesilla

En la frontera, durante las lunas llenas, los helicópteros son violentos en el aire de medianoche, luchando para volar y espiar las pisadas llamadas ilegales debajo de la luna. Mi casa parece estremecerse y moverse, y esperan que yo no lo note, esperan que nadie lo note. La frontera es un respiro enjaulado en acero, creado con el movimiento de una pluma borracha, violenta tras el tratado, no importa que fuera casi ilegal esta línea dibujada sobre las huellas de las pisadas. Dicen que el gringo Gadsden torció sus pisadas, no midió cuanto tequila tomó mientras debatía los pormenores. Firmó el tratado de 1853 por la mitad de lo que a él le ordenaron: la frontera se extendería casi hasta la ciudad de México, sin un sólo tiro disparado, pero Gadsden, con una fichera en cada rodilla, fue motivado a cambiar de idea.

Si hubiera estado demasiado borracho para mover aquella pluma, yo hubiera dado mis primeros pasos en México en vez de los Estados Unidos. La sutil coincidencia de la violencia casi no existe hasta que la ves, como la frontera que casi no existió hasta que una ley levantó una muralla acerada de cuatro metros,

una ley que aprobó el patrullaje con helicópteros, reguló el movimiento del aire entre dos países, electrificó el alambrado, colocó minas anti-personales bajo las pisadas, quitó letreros bilingües, institucionalizó la violencia en vez de hallar la causa de la violencia.

No debería ser legal este juego de notar los efectos en vez de las causas. Un gringo se muda a una comunidad cerrada, un mexicano va paso a paso, ambos van pensando en la frontera.

Gadsden, padre de los helicópteros fronterizos y de mis primeros pasos, padre de la violencia ilegal a la que nadie le presta atención: ahora nosotros estamos esperando para ver como aquella borrachera tuya terminará.

•

Michael’s Fever

20s-era rental built of bent boards,bad carpet and brick. A falling value, south of downtown and neglect by landlords. But at night, through the windows pass drafts and views,

I find him standing when I get up to piss. His shoulders defeated, his open mouth holds a yellow tongue in bubbling bliss, his eyes unkempt. I ask if he's ok.

There’s a sun in the south,

he replies, standing dead asleep. The windchime is the breeze's punching bag, the curtains are canvas sails burning and they leap to catch us, doors slamming, our clothes in red rags.

Forensics will find us tomorrow, but still none can explain the smoldering window sill.

•

I Confuse the Dead Man,

his bony chin playing the washboardof his knuckles as he thinks me over. He sends moths to burn in the lamp, his hollow eyes fixed from the rocking chair, his teeth, bleached monuments.

Dead men don’t have tongues, some god keeps those for himself. Forget the soul, it’s overrated: you should see this god’s long cape of squirming pronunciations.

I ask the dead man if the rain falling outside is my ancestors running into gutters. There are two cracks running like thoughts at the base of his skull. Time moves in sputters and stops. The room fills with the

sounds of his dry creaking joints as he stands, his jaw moves in words he lacks the tongue to pronounce.

•

In Ciudad Juárez, They Say the Night Is a Thief

but it was not the night that stole you,night wrapped warm around forehead and under your arms, it was men whose shadows have climbed into their hearts.

Jalisco verde, a childhood in seabreeze spent naming clouds: libélula, golondrina. Then older, to the north, to work. But it was not the night that stole you.

The face of Mamá argued with itself, tears over smile. Papá, moustache black and words: bye, cuidate mucho, there are men who have swallowed their own shadows.

El Norte means hope and hope is a four-letter word spoken between bleeding fingers, between shifts. Then the night stole the day and you waited

for the bus, thick footsteps in sand behind you. Men whistled and called. Then their fingers tore, their shadows swollen inside you.

It is said the longest night births the most beautiful sun. You, far away in wind. May it never be said that it was the night that stole you, for it was men who still walk wearing badges but cast no shadow.

•

En Cuidad Juárez, culpan a la noche

pero no fue la noche la que te llevó,
la noche envuelta tibiamente en la frente y bajo tus brazos,
fueron hombres cuyas sombras se han infiltrado a sus corazones.

Jalisco verde, una niñez en la brisa marina
que transcurrió llamando a las nubes: libélula, golondrina. Luego al crecer,
al norte, a trabajar. Pero no fue la noche la que te llevó.

La cara de Mamá peleaba consigo misma,
lágrimas sobre su sonrisa. Papá, bigote negro y palabras: bye, cuídate mucho,
hay hombres que se han tragado su propia sombra.

El Norte significa esperanza y esperanza es un insulto
proferido entre dedos sangrantes, entre turnos de trabajo. Luego
la noche se llevó al día y tú esperaste

al autobús, graves pisadas en la arena detrás de ti.
Unos hombres silbaron y llamaron. Luego sus dedos te atravesaron,
sus sombras invadieron tu ser.

Se dice que la noche más larga procrea al sol más hermoso.
Tú, alejada en el viento. Que nunca se diga que
fue la noche la que te llevó, pues fueron hombres que aún caminan
con sus brillantes placas pero sin arrojar sombras.

•

versión en español: Raúl Gallo Calvo

Arizonan Ghazels

In October all of the leaves turn to stained glass,they shatter like bombed churches across the sidewalk.

The drugs are in the trunk, stuck between gas cans and diapers. Ahead, the border is the horizon, is a line of shimmering coke.

Sparrows bathe in potholes, sunlight falls in chunks. The storm drain sighs and aeroplanes stiff-fingerpaint the sky.

Her head somewhere between cement and god, she stands and begins to brush off her yellow dress.

There are sleepers in the eyes of the sky and morning breath blowing across the city.

Jagged pieces of Spanish falling from the cop's mouth land like sharp tetanus in brown ears.

In the hiss of the nineteen seventy eight-track, ghosts sing between the notes of a country song.

Two black crows make out, all tongues and no teeth in the middle of the rain-stained street.

A coyote spread across the freeway, a rusted shell of a car on the Rez.

The eyelids shed wishes, two thumbs make preemptive war.

•

Ghazeles de Arizona

En octubre todas las hojas se vuelven vidrio emplomado,
se rompen en mil pedazos como iglesias bombardeadas sobre la banqueta.

Las drogas en la cajuela, atoradas entre tanques de gasolina y pañales.
Adelante, el horizonte es la frontera, es una linea de coca brillosa.

Los gorriones se bañan en los baches, la luz del sol cae en pedazos.
El desagüe suspira y los aviones torpemente pintan el cielo con sus dedos.

Su cabeza en algún lugar entre el cemento y dios,
ella se levanta y empieza a sacudir su vestido amarillo.

Hay legañas en los ojos del cielo y el mal aliento matutino corre a través de la ciudad.
Un español irregular que emana de la boca del policía cae como un tétano agudo en oídos morenos.

En el siseo del cartucho de mil novecientos setenta y ocho
los fantasmas cantan entre las notas de una canción country.

Dos cuervos negros se besuquean,
todo es lengua pues no hay dientes, en el medio de la calle manchada por la lluvia.

Un coyote arrollado en la autopista, una oxidada carrocería en la reserva.
Los párpados derraman deseos, dos pulgares jugando a la guerra preventiva.

•

Versión en español: Raúl Gallo Calvo y Moisés Regla.