Your daily dose of Chicano poetry
"I write poems on walls that crumble and fall
I talk to shadows that sleep and go away crying.”
Luis Omar Salinas (1937–2008)
Leroy Quintana poems
Hopper
Hopper came twice within a step of dying
Once was in Brooklyn while working as a hodcarrier
fifty stories up
The people below small as insects
when the scaffolding teeter-tottered under him suddenly
The second time was in the Nam,
bullets whispering violently by
as he pushed himself as deeply as possible
against the ground
Fifty stories below
the smallest of insects as large as automobiles
darting on a blade of grass
Brownie
Brownie had been a prisoner of war in Korea
So thin he looked almost starved
His dark eyes hard, forgiving, somehow indifferent
Softspoken if he said anything at all
It was said he had been tortured
We students of the Catholic school were forever selling
Christmas seals, magazine subscriptions, statues
The nuns would tell us God had spared Brownie’s life
and that he should be eternally grateful
But he always politely turned us down
Sister Rita talked about him as though he was a heathen,
a Communist. He never bought so much as a raffle ticket.
A Restaurant in Munich
A restaurant in Munich
Something in the summer afternoon
The sadness of a day in fall
The sadness of these men who became men
in a war the year I was born
These the men who bore weapons of steel
blue as their eyes for the father land
Eyes that have stalked men, perhaps my uncles
through the sights of their rifles
They laugh manly laughs, tease the homely waitress,
raise tall glasses of beer golden as their hair
Somewhere in this country there stood a bridge
that long ago was destroyed by dynamite
Grandfather’s nephew broken
as the good bread of this noon
Copyright © Leroy V. Quintana
Leroy Quintana is the winner of two American Book Awards, was born and raised in New Mexico and served in the LRRPs (Long Range Recon Patrol) in the Vietnam War. He is author of La Promesa and Other Stories (Oklahoma) and the poetry collections The Great Whirl of Exile (Curbstone), The History of Home, and My Hair Turning Gray Among Strangers (Bilingual Press). ~Ploughshares
These three poems were made available by the Sixties Project, are generally copyrighted by the Author or by Viet Nam Generation, Inc., all rights reserved. These texts may be used, printed, and archived in accordance with the Fair Use provisions of U.S. Copyright law.
Benjamin Alire Sáenz: War (in the City in Which I Live)
I will tell you a sad story: White people are moving away
From this city that has claimed my heart. They are running away
From my people. They are running away from all that keeps
Us poor. I want them to stay and fight. I want them
To stay and live with my people. We have chased them
Away. I want them to love the people who make the food
They love. We have chased them away—are you happy? Are you
Happy? And there are people waiting in line, spending
Their fortunes just for a chance to enter, waiting, just blocks
Away from where I sit, waiting to come over, waiting in Juárez
Just to cross the river, from China and India and all the nations
Of Africa and Central America and Asia. No poet, no engineer, no
Politician, no philosopher no artist, no novelist has ever
Dreamed a solution. I am tired of living in exile. I am tired
Of chasing others off the land.Let me say this again. Again. Again.
I want, I want this war to end. To end.
—This is an excerpt from Benjamin Alire Sáenz’s poem “War (in the City in Which I Live)” from Dreaming the End of War.
Download Sáenz’s Notes From Another Country HERE, at the bottom of the page. Highly relevant reading. An open letter to anyone who will listen from someone who lives life on the Texas-Mexico border. Powerful.
benjaminsaenz.com
This was the day a new park was born, created out of the dirt of a Highway Patrol station. The people of Barrio Logan on this day seized land that was supposed to hold a CHP station. They made it into a park – Chicano Park – which today stands as an historic center for murals, art, Chicano and Mexican-American culture… Read in full at OB RAG
Jess Santos’ essay “The History of Chicano Park” Found HERE
Alurista en Berkeley
Find Alrista’s poem Address at Unitedstatesean Notes. Alurista is the featured poet at floricanto this Friday at UC Berkeley.
As a community activist in California, Alruista co-founded various student and community organizations such as Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlán at San Diego State University, Concilio por la Justicia, Centro Cultural de la Raza, and the Department of Chicano Studies at San Diego State University.
More on Alurista:
Alurista Papers at Texas Archival Resources Online
Et Tu…Raza? at Bilingual Review Press
3rd Annual Noche de Flor y Canto on FACEBOOK
Xican@ Poetry Daily 
