What a crazy last few weeks I’ve had. The way things are going right now, I’ve got half-a-mind to head over to the Oaks Card Club with nothing more than six bits in my pocket and see if I can walk out with a new Prius.
A’ight. Maybe not so much.
Still, there is much to be grateful for in my poetry life lately. Great wife, good friends, contact with mentors, growing community and new writing (poems, short stories, plays). Barb will soon be blogging for the Poetry Foundation. And now add to this bounty the invitation to speak on a panel at AWP. Oh yeah, I’m feeling good and lucky.
This after telling Barb how much I’ve been dying to check out AWP. Not for the nonsense, gossip and geekiness (Oh no, that I’ll save for when I hit Comic Con. Yoo hoo!) but to just be a poet who loves print culture and see what goes down behind the scenes. Of course, this does remind me of that episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer where the Scoobie are acting all dumb and Spike is equal parts horrified and ashamed at the realization of how wack-jobbed the crew that constantly kicks his ass really is. (Oh yes, Comic Con, you are next on my wish list.)
Anyways, I’m still psyched to be at AWP as a panelist participant but also hope to cause a little bit of slam/performance/street/Nuyo/Acentos/spoken word/Latino/Bronx/Oakland poet raucous in the house. If you are also going to AWP and want to say ‘What up!’ I’ll be easy to find, look for the dude with the I ♥ Haters shirt.
Many thanks to publisher Didi Menendez, reviewer Melissa McEwen and everyone at Poets and Artists for the review of Heaven Below. Here’s some of it:
“In Heaven Below, Heaven is a night swim at Orchard Beach. Heaven is the train coming on time. Heaven is playing skelsies. Heaven is what you make it and in his new chapbook, Oscar Bermeo shares with us a slice of paradise he has found right here on earth.” – Poets and Artists, O&S: Volume 2, Issue 5, 2009
The whole review will be available in print very soon via Amazon.com but O&S publisher GOSS183 offers some free web friendly option. Print out the PDF via this link, view on issuu.com here, or browse it in the embedded image below.
In the middle of my National Poetry Month craziness–writing a poem-a-day, putting together Heaven Below, applying for VONA and Macondo, attending lit events and jus’ plain livin’–I was also feelin’ the jones to do more poetry readings. I was tellin’ Barb this and, sure enuf, she forwards me a call for readers to participate in a new reading series going down in a local barbershop. So I had to write to the curators with the quickness and try to be down with this. Here’s a snippet of my e-mail to Barbershop Reading Series curator, Michael McAllister:
I think the idea of a reading series in a barbershop is awesome. Some of the best stories (and sh•t talkin’) I’ve ever heard has come to me while waiting to get a new fade or catching a close hot shave so it feels only natural to bring some literature to a place where so much orature goes down.
Michael let me know the first few readings were booked but would not only look to feature me but also have Barb in the mix. Boo ya!
The first reading at the Barbershop was packed with lit fans, strong writing, engaged reading, great music and a wonderful sense of community. Yesterday’s reading was just as dynamic, full of fun, some good surprise, yummy cupcakes and (hell yeah) good lit.
I mirrored my set-list from the P4P reading but was able to include another piece from Heaven Below and dropped “Make Me a City” a two page poem that comes in at almost five minutes. The good thing is that my reading style has mellowed out from rollin-conversational into a more paced tone that allows me to really honor my word choice, line breaks and stanzas without losing urgency and emotional content. At least, that’s the plan ;-)
SET-LIST
• Heaven Below
• Unsolved Crimes Perpetrated by Invisible Men as Reported by an Unreliable Witness
• How Much for the Building? Tenants Optional.
• What the Landlord said…
• Ash Wednesday
• The Four Corners from By Lingual Wholes by Victor Hernández Cruz
• A Century of Writing
Ok, I didn’t exactly mirror the P4P reading as I left out “Orchard Beach: Section Four” by accident since I got lost in my own chapbook and improved a lil thanks to a bit of stage nerves. All good, as I ended up delivering the *Urban Arson* set of work which is short on laughs but long on dread, uneasiness and really gives you a need to ask for a heaven somewhere.
The next reader gave a solid twelve minutes of fiction where his narrator is engaged in an affair with a Mexican who speaks almost no English. The power in this piece is how politically incorrect the narrator is: he loves Latino men who are Latino, he assumes, he fetishizes and gets in some serious trouble as a result. And who helps save him, the Latino. I think I’d rather see honest writing that names-the-harm and deals with actual consequence then PC writing where all the characters live in a perfect happy post-racial world. But that’s just me.
Terese Taylor’s music rode the line between mellow acoustic and bar rockin. There’s a time and place for both and Taylor knows how to hit-the-gas or tap-the-break with her raucous tones.
Barb closed out with a Jaime Jacinto cover poem (dedicated to Manong Al Robles, which is almost like a double cover poem), excerpts from Poeta en San Francisco and Diwata. Let me tell you, these poems never lack in surprise. I’ve heard some of them dozens of time and I can still myself lost in new facets of the work. The internal music, the emotional resonance, the historical undertones; something new always hits me when I listen to a set of Barb’s work. A highlight was “how i no longer believe in pious women,” a poem with so much internal interrogation and melancholy, unrolling like a long trumpet strain and ending with a kÅan like feel. (Barb’s thoughts on the reading are here.)
Props, shoulder-daps and big-ups all around to everyone at Joe’s Barbershop for so much hospitality and good vibes. Michael Mullen for the sound, Helane for the cupcakes, the folks workin the merch table, Joe Ghallager for the use of the spot and Michael McAllister for bringing lit out of libraries and into new spaces. The next Barbershop Reading is Sept 5th, come out and support a fine space for words.
YouTube videos from the Barbershop Reading Series are here.
Flickr photos from the Barbershop Reading Series are here.
Feels like it’s been a while since I’ve mentioned THE SANDMAN. Blame it on trying to get my hands on so much new poetry and even some novels but it doesn’t matter how far I stray, Gaiman’s masterpiece is never far from my head.
Take for example, “Cerements” the pen-ultimate story in the Inn at World’s End series. This one story is actually six stories all put into one and is probably the textbook definition of compartmentalizing stories. And the part where the young apprentice recalls the five ways to properly dispose of a body has never left me from the moment I read it.
This poem is a companion piece to the short story I recently wrote where a young Bronx boy is wondering why there is so much construction on his block. Both the poem and the fiction share the same title and they both come out of a phone call from my father a few weeks back, “Ok, here’s what you’re going to do. You’re going to write a poem about how the streets are paved, dug up and repaved. Ok? Get to it.”
Excavation
“If you read the newspapers the right way, you’ll find people invent new ways to die every day.
The most common one isn’t in the papers: neglect. Most people don’t ever get to see their names in print.
I’m telling you this because you are still young which means you don’t think it will happen to you but I can bring you to a cemetery full of people who never thought it would happen to them.
I’m telling you this because we can’t choose our death any more than we can choose our lives.
All we can really do is work hard enough towards a proper burial.
§
1. Interment Variants are boxed, wrapped or naked; embalmed or otherwise; lying, seated or standing; grave, sepulcher, vault or cairn.
“Before you drink up, always spill a little on the sidewalk first. You never know where someone died.
All concrete is one headstone for the City.
§
2. Disposal through fire Variants: Clothed, boxed, pyre, vessel or ship. Different procedures adopted to dispose of the ashes.
“My sister, your aunt, they say she died in her sleep. I know she died in flames. They say she went quiet and in dreams. I know she went out cursing the heat.
They say she never felt a thing. I know her skin charred in the blue light.
They say she went straight to heaven. I know she had to swim through hell first.
§
3. Mummification Variants: Salting, mineral baths, dehydration, pitch and bitumen.
“El Gordo Pepe ate himself to death. A steady diet of lazy cash and late bills mixed with bad women he called wife too often and good women he never called at all.
§
4. Disposal through water Variants include feeding to water-animals or fish; disposal in sacred river or sea; boxing, bagging with rocks.
“I can never fix that damn leak. The rust by the drain reminds me of your aunt.
§
5. Air burial Variants include dismemberment and otherwise; ingestion by raptors or scavengers; complete or partial disposal.
“Pigeons don’t leave their young unguarded. They feed their chicks in secret until they grow to adult size. I wish I could protect you in the same way.
§
“The streets are constantly torn up. From one day to the next, you never know what condition you’ll find the neighborhood in.
Why does the City do that? Why the need to tear away all the layers of pavement?
You should write a poem about that.
* Descriptions of bodily disposal and their variants come from The Sandman #55 “Cerements†by Neil Gaiman
Just submitted some new poems to my creative writing teacher as part of my final manuscript for the summer.
This poem was the first one I wrote for class and was originally going to follow the same pattern as the parent poem “hymn to vatos who will never be in a poem†but it’s time to meld attribution with some more distinct flavah and see what we can get out of it.
Sonnet for my B-Boys After Luis Alberto Urrea’s “hymn to vatos who will never be in a poemâ€
For my b-boys Lil O, Ray, Jon Boy For my b-boys walk the straight line by day For my b-boys know all the street vendors For my b-boys crushed ice with sweet syrup For my b-boys fueled by sugar and sweat For my b-boys swear to always be boys For my b-boys Ozzy, Ray-Jay, Tiger For my b-boys up way past their bedtime For my b-boys stand guard in the hallways For my b-boys down by law soldiers For my b-boys keep it copasetic For my b-boys in coded speak like break beat For my b-boys Ozwaldo, Raymond, Jon For my b-boys peace out till the next time
