Two Poems by Cathy Arellano -Fugitive Slave Act and Immigration, a found poem based on “The Long Struggle for America’s Soul” by Andrew Delbanco* and Alfie, What’s It All About?
Art is copyright ©2017 Hedy Treviño. Mixed media, acrylic base, collage on gold foil. All rights reserved.
Fugitive Slave Act and Immigration, a found poem based on “The Long Struggle for America’s Soul” by Andrew Delbanco*
southern border separation
children parents
president’s denigration nonwhite migrants
denying birthright citizenship
pledge federal troops
caravan frantic refugees
not first time
president threatened
return them to horrors fled
African-Americans
not human
property
no different
cattle sheep
South Carolina
“Act to Prevent Runaways” 1683
hundred years later
Georgia
nightly slave patrol
Philadelphia 1787
problem
new nation
slaves running freedom
Article IV, Section 2, Clause 3
Constitution
founding fathers
stop them
“right to recover our slaves”
stating easier than carrying out
just as “Build the Wall!”
easier than building
obliged to return
runaways
obliged to return
stray livestock
stolen cash
but boundary
slavery freedom
porous
slave owners cut off
shoes collected at night
runaways resisting
killed with impunity
only witness
killer himself
most fugitives
never far
tendons cut
faces branded
kept on trying
just as in our time
immigrants keep coming
1840s
fugitive slave problem
gravest of all questions
calls for secession
congress tried to solve
August 1850
Fugitive
Slave
Act
president signed law
law without mercy
denied most basic right
habeas corpus
right to challenge detention
forbade own defense
trial by jury
disallowed exonerating evidence
criminalized sheltering fugitive
required local authorities assist
recovering lost human property
free Black people in North
even never been enslaved
lives infused with terror
of being deported
in South
deepened despair
already desperate
1851
free Black people
organize resistance
Norfolk, Va.
slave catchers seized
young man Shadrach
with his waiter’s apron still on
Black crowd
gathered Court Square
rushed courtroom
hustled
whisked
from Boston
to Cambridge
to Canada
Lancaster County, Pa.
slave owner tried force return
shot killed by Black man
Syracuse
biracial crowd
attacked police station
clubs
axes
battering ram
Canada
Milwaukee
Joshua Glover escaped
held until
twenty men
large timber
bumb bumb bumb
down door
out Glover
1850
more than three million
Black people
legally enslaved
within country’s borders
politicians
racist
chief justice United States
Blacks have no rights
White man bound to respect
Boston
New Bedford
Syracuse
Cincinnati
Rochester
“sanctuary cities”
Black people feared
law enforcement
congress
courts
collapsed
fugitive slaves 19th century
undocumented immigrants today
non-persons
Who is isn’t human?
Declaration of Independence
“all men created equal
“unalienable rights”
“life, liberty, pursuit of happiness”
1854
Abraham Lincoln
readopt the Declaration
postwar
constitutional amendments
guarantee citizenship
right to vote
former slaves
naturalized immigrants
The New Deal tried
The Civil Rights Movement tried
dismantle Jim Crow
age of trump
rights constricted rescinded
self-evident truth
all people
life
liberty
pursuit of happiness
long way from settled
Note: I have adjusted some capitalization, removed most punctuation, changed Delbanco’s “illegal” and replaced with “undocumented” before “immigrant(s)”. Words are in same order as article.
Alfie, What’s It All About?
every Saturday
during our walk up and down
the coolest street in town
we stopped at the American Music Store
(they changed their name to Música Latina
when us Latinos finally reached a critical
and commercial mass)
this was Mom’s spot
she only bought one LP
or a couple 45s each time
but “each time” times “every Saturday”
equals stacks and stacks
of Stax fingers ready to snap
on yellow background
Motown road maps guiding the way
with its red star
and the rest of our housemates
Capitol, Atlantic, RCA, Buddha
Tamla, Scepter, Capitol, Philips
crashing in the Livingroom
behind
to the left of
right of
in front of
her stereo
one Saturday
when we were
6 and 7 years old
Mom made a payment
on our inheritance
her magic
her balm
her joy
You girls, pick a record
my older sister and I knew
this was a moment
like when someone else’s Mom
teaches them to bake cookies
Mom was offering us something precious
it was sweet
not like later when Mom let my sister
smoke in front of her
when she was 15
it wasn’t mine or my sister’s birthday
I hadn’t ever dreamed
this moment would arrive
but I was ready
we both were
My sister turned around
ran to the back of the store
dug in a white bin
flipped through
grabbed her catch
clutched it in her arms
ran back to us at the counter
showed us her treasure
The Three Little Pigs
I couldn’t read very well
but I recognized the pigs and wolf
on the cover
behind the counter
Enrique turned to me
for my order
I didn’t run
just said
Alfie
he looked at Mom
then back at me
by Dionne Warwick?
huh?
Yes, that one
Mom told him
we returned the next Saturday
and the next and the next
Mom bought us many more 45s
not as many as she bought herself
but enough to begin our own stacks
my sister started buying classic Oldies
“Angel Baby” and “Sitting in the Park”
I bought Prince’s “I Wanna Be Your Lover”
Sugarhill Gang’s “Rapper’s Delight”
for the until then
unheard of price of $4.99
and later AC/DC’s
“You Shook Me All Night Long”
when she died in 1984
after a month in the hospital
when we were 18 and 19
Mom had amassed so many records
and we had to move so fast
and were so lost in the chaos
we threw them away
I wish I had all her records back
I’d play them
for my partner
our son
no, I’d trade hers,
mine, my sister’s,
all the 45s, LPs, and CDs
in the world
for one more moment
with her
The broken-hearted lesbian love poems in Cathy Arellano’s I LOVE MY WOMEN, SOMETIMES THEY LOVE ME are suitable for anyone who has loved, been loved, or been left. I LOVE MY WOMEN was released in Fall 2017 from Kórima Press. In 2016, Kórima published SALVATION ON MISSION STREET, Arellano’s family memoir in poems and stories set in San Francisco from the 1960s to the 2000s. SALVATION won the 2017 Golden Crown Literary Society’s Debut Author Award.
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The Dark Red Seed – Stands With Death
Label: Prophecy Productions – PRO 214 LP
Format: Vinyl 12" EP
Country: Germany
Released:14 Sep 2017
Style: Neofolk
The Dark Red Seed is the musical outlet of Tosten Larson, guitarist for Seattle dark folk musician King Dude. A self-coined 'metaphor for the heart', The Dark Red Seed represents a direct reference to life – and death – itself. The duo, which also includes King Dude engineer Shawn Flemming, is now about to release its debut EP, "The Dark Red Seed Stands with Death".
Described as 'a study of death', "The Dark Red Seed Stands with Death" is a dark, dusty discourse on the departure and ultimate dissolution of life; a powerful expression of absolute loss shaped through Larson's haunting, Cash-like delivery. Each of the EP's three songs represents various aspects of death (the death of America, death of culture and death of reality through technology and globalization), drawing on deep feelings and unanswered questions to create living, breathing sound.
"I know when death comes for me I will most likely run away with blind fear," Larson says. "I'm sure when death comes, I will almost certainly cling to life until my dying breath and pray to someone else's god for salvation. But in life, I try to approach death as the ultimate acceptance. Whatever death and a possible life thereafter means to each individual, death is the only place where we might find answers. For in life there are only questions. Death is the one thing that awaits us all."
Raised in Kalispell, Montana and currently based in Portland, Oregon, Tosten Larson began his classical instruction as a young boy sitting at his grandmother's piano. Firmly rooted in the traditions of American music, Larson's sound is equally shaped by art rock such as Swans and Six Organs of Admittance, Eastern masters like Kayan Kalhor and Ravi Shankar, and hard rock staples such as Led Zeppelin and Neil Young. Though he wears his influences on his sleeve, his music attempts to defy category and carve its own path.
The Dark Red Seed's first full-length album, "Becomes Awake", is already in the pipeline and tentatively scheduled for a summer 2018 release. The record is described as a detailed concept album that can be thought of as an answer or sequel to "Stands with Death".
Edition:
- Vinyl MLP
Tracklist:
1. The Antagonist
2. The Tragedy of Ålesund
3. The Master and the Slave
Buy: http://gh-records.com/1683-the-dark-red-seed-stands-with-death.html
Payment methods:
PayPal
Pay by bankwire
Pay whith cash on delivery (COD)
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