A Poem by William Archila

Latest News

At work, no one has seen him or his taxi.
Newspapers read, "Juan Márquez Missing:
Any sighting, please contact family."

A few months ago, police led a trail
to graves: some broken bones,
the kind you find in times of war.

In Nicaragua, they remember him,
poet so blue and modern like Dario,
almost a song of swans about to break.

Honduras spoke of him naked, hairless,
barefoot, tobacco skin without toenails
or ears, a man of ants and stray dogs.

Two weeks ago, a boy found a body
dark as eggplant. His wife, worn and rumpled,
could not recognize the blown-out face.

My mother thinks he's deep in the ground,
sleeping with torn clothes, thick,
dank roots spreading over his limbs.

The rumor goes at night in smoky bars
he met Jesus of Nazareth, a red lightbulb
flickering on and off in the corner.

Today I heard he's a bus driver
in L.A., circling long avenues,
parks, the same hotel signs, traffic

lights, the rain that falls at night.
Around ten, a rumor goes he gets lost
in a downtown dive, drinks his shot of gin.

Don Chamba, a shoe shiner from Santa Anita,
gave me the final word the other day.
"To me," he says, "those stories don't mean shit.

By now, after all those small deaths,
he has to be a soiled shoe, a worn-out tire,
aflame, smoking by an empty highway."


This poem is published in William Archila's debut collection: The Art of Exile (Bilingual Press, 2009).

William Archila was born in Santa Ana, El Salvador, in 1968. When he was only twelve, he and his family immigrated to the United States to escape the civil war that was tearing his country apart. He eventually becaem an English teacher and earned his MFA in poetry from University of Oregon. His poems have appeared in Agni, Blue Mesa Review, Crab Orchard Revewi, The Georgia Review, and The Los Angeles Review. He lives in Los Angeles with his wife.

The Art of Exile is the recent winner of the Emerging Writer Fellowship Award from the Writer’s Center and the International Latino Book Award. The Art of Exile was also featured in “First Things First: The Fifth Annual Debut Poets Roundup” — the Jan/Feb 2010 issue of Poets & Writers.

For more on this collection and Salvadorean literature check out Adolfo Guzman-Lopez's KPCC article, "Salvadoran American's Poetry Makes Amends for Silence Over Civil War."

Angel Island Poems

In one of my first posts I talked about the journey of Chinese immigrants through Angel Island in the early half of the 20th century, and shared the book ISLAND: Poetry and History of Chinese Immigrants on Angel Island, 1910-1940. I now realize that I didn't share any of the poetry from the book. Here are two poems from the book that were transcribed and translated from immigrant reflections scribed into the wooden walls of the detention center barracks.

34
For what reason must I sit in jail?
It is only because my country is weak and my family poor.
My parents wait at the door but there is no news.
My wife and child wrap themselves in quilt sighing with loneliness.
Even if my petition is approved and I can enter the country,
When can I return to the Mountains of Tang* with a full load?
From ancient times, those who venture out usually become worthless.
How many people ever return from battles?

*A Cantonese colloquial term for China.


2
Because my house had bare walls, I began rushing all about.
The waves are happy, laughing "Ha-ha!"
When I arrived on Island,* I heard I was forbidden to land.
I could do nothing but frown and feel angry at heaven.

*The colloquial name given to Angel Island by the Cantonese immigrants.


A facet of the immigrant journey that always fascinates me is the willingness to be cast out into the unknown, the decision to be neither here nor there. I often wonder how this decision is made knowing that venturing out might make you "worthless"? Knowing that this country will most likely see you as worthless, no matter your background, because you don't speak the language. I think perhaps because I was born in the this country, I might never understand what can be worth becoming worthless for.

A Poem on Borders by Sholeh Wolpe

My Brother at the Canadian Border

by Sholeh Wolpé

For Omid

On their way to Canada in a red Mazda, my brother and his friend, PhDs and little sense, stopped at the border and the guard leaned forward, asked: Where you boys heading? My brother, Welcome to Canada poster in his eyes replied: Mexico. The guard blinked, stepped back then forward, said: Sir, this is the Canadian border. My brother turned to his friend, grabbed the map from his hands, slammed it on his shaved head. You stupid idiot, he yelled, you’ve been holding the map upside down.

In the interrogation room full of metal desks and chairs with wheels that squeaked and florescent light humming, bombarded with questions, and finally: Race?

Stymied, my brother confessed: I really don’t know, my parents never said, and the woman behind the desk widened her blue eyes to take in my brother’s olive skin, hazel eyes, the blonde fur that covered his arms and legs. Disappearing behind a plastic partition, she returned with a dusty book, thick as War and Peace, said: This will tell us your race. Where was your father born? She asked, putting on her horn-rimmed glasses. Persia, he said. Do you mean I-ran?

I ran, you ran, we all ran, he smiled. Where’s your mother from? Voice cold as a gun. Russia, he replied. She put one finger on a word above a chart in the book, the other on a word at the bottom of the page, rought them together looking like a mad mathematician bent on solving the crimes of zero times zero divided by one. Her fingers stopped on a word. Declared: You are white.

My brother stumbled back, a hand on his chest, eyes wide, mouth in an O as in O my God! All these years and I did not know. Then to the room, to the woman and the guards: I am white I can go anywhere Do anything I can go to Canada and pretend it’s Mexico At last, I am white and you have no reason to keep me here.


I saw Sholeh read this poem at my reading series Hitched at Beyond Baroque Literary/Arts Center in March, and I fell in love with it. Before reading it, she shared that this happened to her brother and that it was a true story.

This poem is from The Scar Saloon (Red Hen Press, 2004)

You can hear Sholeh read this poem here or visit her website at www.sholehwolpe.com.

Hitched is an inter-generational reading series that couples established poets and writers with their emerging cousins. April 17, 2011 at 4pm we will feature Jenny Factor with Lisa Cheby and Mariano Zaro with Barbara Blatt. I hope you can make it!

Sholeh Wolpé is the author of Sin—Selected Poems of Forugh Farrokhzad (University of Arkansas Press, Oct. 2007), The Scar Saloon (Red Hen Press), Rooftops of Tehran (Red Hen Press, Jan. 2008) and a Poetry CD (Refuge Studios). She is the coeditor of upcoming anthologies, Iconoclasts and Visionaries, and With Love, From Iran – Poems of Love and Seduction.

Harlem and The DREAMers

April is National Poetry Month, and as celebration I will post poems through out the month of April that are somehow related to immigration.

Here's a particular favorite of mine by Langston Hughes. "Harlem" ponders the question, what happens to a dream deferred? Hughes was speaking about the marginalized and abused African Americans of Harlem and across the country in the 1930s, but I think his words hold relevance to the immigrant issues of today. The DREAMers are young men and women brought here illegally by their parents, who didn't have a say in the matter, who know no other home but the U.S., and who are now threatened as adults with detention and deportation every day. They are not allowed to dream or flourish, go to school or hold jobs, and are like prisoners in their own home. I wonder, what will happen to them if they are given no options?

HARLEM by Langston Hughes

What happens to a dream deferred?

Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore--
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over--
like a syrupy sweet?

Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.

Or does it explode?



To learn more about the Dream Act, or find a way to help go here.

Luis J. Rodriguez Speaks Up for the Youth

Author of Always Running: La Vida Loca: Gang Days in L.A. and founder of community cultural center and independent press, Tia Chuchas, Luis J. Rodriguez, wrote an opinion piece, Opinion: Arizona Teacher's Letter is Sleepy Lagoon All Over Again, comparing Arizona and the latest political focus on the gang and immigration "problem" to Sleepy Lagoon and the Zoot Suit Riots of 1943. What touched me most was Rodriguez's reminder that those the politicians target are those we should protect: our youth.

"In fact, in my work among the most gang-ridden neighborhoods in this country and elsewhere I’ve found that the majority of youth are not in gangs. And those that are usually join them when they are poor in material matters as well as cultural and spiritual ones...I’m convinced we can solve the economic mess we’re in by drawing on our common hopes, common aims, and common energies—and not at the expense of the most vulnerable or easily targeted among us."

This sentiment made me think of the DREAMers and of Father Boyle, author of Tattoos on the Heart: The Power of Boundless Compassion, and his Homeboys. You can now help Father Boyle and his effort to make "jobs not jails" by heading into your local Ralphs to purchase their chips and salsa.

Lawrence K. Ho / Los Angeles Times

We need to continue to find positive alternatives like these to help our community and our children find a safe place in this country because they deserve that much, they deserve our support.

Georgetown University Writes Dangerously in Immigrant America

If I had the money (and the time off from work), I would fly to Washington D.C. next week to attend Geogetown's symposium, Writing Dangerously in Immigrant America. This two day event on April 5th and 6th will will host an all-star list of socially conscience writers including Domincan-American superstar and author of The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, Junot Diaz, Haitian-American author of Breath, Eyes, Memory, Edwidge Danticat, L.A. Times columnist, Hector Tobar, and columnist and author of Murder City: Ciudad Juárez and the Global Economy’s New Killing Fields, Charles Bowden. "The themes across the symposium’s sessions will focus primarily on the vexed relationships between the U.S., its emerging immigrant-diasporic communities, and the specific American regions they mostly represent: the Caribbean, Central America, and the U.S./Mexico borderlands."


If you are in or around D.C. and are able to attend this event, I would love to see your cheat notes, or hear your thoughts.

Banksy in L.A.: The Academy Awards Edition

I'm sitting in my living room at this moment watching, like many others around the country, the Academy Awards. One person in town for the event is world renowned street artist Banksy. How do we know he is in L.A.? Because he left his tracks on the eastside of town.

Photo taken from laestside.com

The blogger, LA Eastside found this Banksy original on the corner of 1st and Soto St, in a part of town known as East L.A. or Boyle Heights. From those not from Los Angeles, this area sits in the shadows east of Downtown L.A. and is home to many Latino immigrants from Mexico, Central and South America, cultural centers like Josefina Lopez's Casa 0101 and Corazon del Pueblo, as well as long lasting Mexican-American families like my own. My grandparents moved into a home only blocks from this corner 50 years ago when they first came to the U.S., and my grandmother continues to live in that same home today. This is what I often call, my L.A. As young and beautiful people from all over the country continue to flock to Los Angeles every year, heads filled with dreams of being high, hip, and on TV, there is another L.A., my L.A. that is rich with culture and a long history.

Banksy is currently in L.A. for an Academy nomination for his documentary, Exit Through the Gift Shop. It's good to know that true artists will always work to bring light to a greater struggle. Banksy may be in Los Angeles to participate in the Hollywood dream, but he is also aware of its reality.

And the reality of street art is nothing lasts, as shown in this post by Melrose & Fairfax blog.

Photo taken from MelroseandFairfax.blogspot.com

One or two days after going up, Banksy's latest stencil was tagged by a graffiti artist before the whole thing was cut out of the wall, probably to be auctioned for hundreds of thousands of dollars. Some seem outraged by the vandalism of Banksy's piece and the cutting of the wall, but I'm sure Banksy is more than happy with this one piece's journey. It is what Exit Through the Gift Shop is about, after all. Banksy isn't working under some naive belief that his artwork will be left alone. But I like to believe that the owners of that building, those who cut the wall, are a hardworking, immigrant family who could use the extra money to send their kids to school. That would make for a nice Hollywood fantasy. Maybe Selena Gomez will play the smart, but sassy daughter who can finally head to Stanford after struggling all through her youth selling oranges on the street in the Movie. Take that Christian Bale.