Finding “A House in Taos”
AMONG THE BEST-LOVED POETS OF the 20th century, Langston Hughes stands tall. No shortage of poetry lovers around the globe can recite his “I, Too, Sing America,” but relatively few New Mexicans have…
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Tag: Poetry
Books We Loved in 2023
MILES TO GO: AN AFRICAN FAMILY IN SEARCH OF AMERICA ALONG ROUTE 66 Brennen Matthews (UNM Press) Author Brennen Matthews chronicles an eye-opening road trip with his family from Chicago to California…
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Poetry of Place
THE NEW MEXICO POETRY ANTHOLOGY 2023 is a multiplicity of voices reflecting the complexity and layers of culture, history, spirituality, and poetic expression that is uniquely Nuevo México. Like the voices filling post office lobbies and general stores, and in the resolanas of our childhood homes of Dixon and Deming, the voices gathered here form a community. No one voice is more important than another. You will find published poets alongside your next-door neighbors, census workers, poets laureate, teachers, senators, high school students, professors, healthcare workers, doctors, and spoken-word artists, all revealing something of themselves that can only be felt through poetry. And, oh, how we have needed poetry to bridge the distance and soothe the isolation created by the pandemic. As we transition from screens back to shared space, may we continue drinking from poetry’s abundant well. Poetry calls us in the way that grandparents do. It asks us to sit, to eat, to bring ourselves to a kitchen table covered in oilcloth, spilling over with memories and bathed in morning light. If we’re lucky, there’s coffee, bizcochitos, and a heaping platter of stories to nurture our daily lives. As with this anthology, you can stay for hours. Or you can drop in, drink half a cup, and come back tomorrow and the next day. These voices rise as a canto, singing the joys, sorrows, and praises of individual experiences to form a poetry collective that encompasses the poetic-cultural landscape that is New Mexico. The collection draws on eleven themes that encapsulate the broad expanse and essence of the place we call home—and not merely through speckled windshield observations, but as a witness to people, culture, history, and traditions. The poems are personal interpretations of what it means to be threaded into the cultural fabric of the New Mexican landscape. There are poems that resonate as profound testaments to the sacred ideals of family, community, and identity. Others bestow themselves more to the abstractions and rhythmic cadences of nature and spirituality. They hum along with the water mantra reminding us that in an arid landscape, agua es vida. The collection is an ode and homage to nuestra querencia, our beloved homeland, where we are nurtured, healed, and have a sense of belonging. Here, we honor the generations of stewards, past and present, and we acknowledge that New Mexico exists on the traditional homelands of the 19 pueblos and the Jicarilla and Mescalero Apache peoples, as well as on the Navajo Nation. Ultimately, we hope this collection speaks for the vastitude and complexity of a New Mexico that is both old and new, a space for community and inclusiveness that poetry itself helps to create. Levi Romero is the inaugural New Mexico state poet laureate. Michelle Otero is an emerita Albuquerque poet laureate. SOMEWHERE BETWEEN MILAN AND GALLUP Hakim Bellamy Here, the horizon is open to interpretation. An intergalactic dateline Between New Mexico and anywhere else. Where the sun catwalks the thin line between today and tomorrow. A moment of beauty that is also an S.O.S. A smoke signal. A cry for help. Begging perfection to wait. Damming the inevitable progression of time. Barely held together by a steering wheel enveloped by clenched palms. White knuckled and painfully aware that even miracles have an expiration date. As the moon now illuminates the runway between yesterday and the rest of our lives, she takes her rightful place at the new center of the universe. The us we perpetually aim to find somewhere out there. Here, the horizon is still open to imagination. Hakim Bellamy is the inaugural Albuquerque poet laureate (2012–2014) and a national and regional slam poetry champion. SHIVA Miguel De La Cruz That song from the Temptations Always brings me back To a charcoal smell, enveloping the air Just like when my tío passed away Las risas vienen desde el columpio I could see, sus amigos gathered around his lowrider truck —Mira, we are all together just like in high school —¡cómo estaba loco! His beat-up keychain was resting on the table —I love you guys! —It’s going to be fine —He was such a good wrestler! District finalist! —¿Te acuerdas? A tear hides on the ground —¡Sí! We are getting old —Take care, you guys! —Mija, don’t sell the truck, your daddy really loved his truck —¡Qué bonito te dejaron el pelo! —I really like those shoes! The silver key chain plays with my primo’s hands —Tell me if you guys need something, just call me! —Don’t be terco like your father —También tú eh! —¡Nos vemos! That song “Just My Imagination” Pulls the cables of my heart It reminds me of that city The one with a star tattooed on her breast. Miguel De La Cruz, who calls himself a “border Chicano,” has lived along the U.S.–Mexico border in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico; El Paso, Texas; and Las Cruces. SONGS OF THE BURIED ONES Andrea Broyles breaking through the ground the undead call me under the strawberry moon or yellow sun over the Sangres or the Jemez the ancient ones, always singing from the past and to the future in front and behind falling on old deaf ears— or ears full of noise silent songs under our feet can we hop on one leg and shake it loose? and who are we? who awakens them from under this spinning earth? Andrea Broyles is a visual artist and writer living in Santa Fe. MOVEMENT Coral Dawn Bernal If you are the bird of day I am the bird’s sleek feathers If you are sunset’s fire I am mesa’s golden edges If you are a well-crafted dreamcatcher I am the silver sinew that binds it If you are water’s ripples I am a stone beneath them If you are brown skin and soul I am pure bone and flesh If you are rainbow waves I am black-printed fish If you are a rising sun I am dawn’s first kiss If you are still, silent air I am a raging wind If you are rushing bodies I am blood of sin If you are a spider’s gray web I am the place where it lives If you are a long-felt itch I am the place where it is If you are shards of pottery I am the painted mica bits If you are stacked bricks of earth I am that structure’s shadow If you are an onyx hole I am a rattle-shaped end If you are electrical wiring I am clouds shooting lightning If you are cups of light I am spoonfuls of velocity If you are the moon signs I am reflective outlines If you are fresh-cut cedar I am the dried-away smoke If you are the sweet oak I am the roots of milk If you are the last sight I am the first kill If you are a poet’s paper I am the black flowing ink. Coral Dawn Bernal (1987–2020), “Red Coral Flower,” was a Taos Pueblo poet, Indigenous activist, and artist. JADE MOTHER Priyanka Kumar In the summer, you eye a river the way you’d tail a breeze. In the winter, you trail the water, the pulse of the ochre desert. You meander with her glaucous body, inhaling her raging-blue music, riveted by the spotted towhees that cleave to her sinuous breasts. Back home your own river is awfully arrow straight— She’s been harnessed so long, she has forgotten to meander. In the Gila, though, the river herself leads you. You’ve forgotten how to meander, but the jade river teaches you. You don’t need to go anywhere— Just watch the birds weave around her bank. Thoreau said the best way to see birds is to sit down someplace and let them come to you. One winter I started with the creek and worked my way up to the river. I hadn’t been to the Gila in some time, and I hiked down to Bear Creek as the sun dipped. A motley flock of birds fled to two junipers— A surprising flash of red, on inspection, was a cardinal, pomegranate with a black facemask; the male’s sharp brown eyes pierced me. A luminous white-crowned sparrow flew to the Pinos Altos Mountains, where the creek begins. Lit up with alpenglow, this pink-and-tan range skirts the rear end of the Gila Wilderness. The mountains’ sedimentary layers are ghosts of deep-sea origins. Now they exhaled soft gilded pinks and grays, so radiant, they seemed to glow from within. Down I went, skirting a honey mesquite as its bold white thorns snagged my jeans. I flushed a handful of white-winged doves, more slender and curvy than the mourning doves in my yard. With flashy blue rings around orange irises, the doves have the vanity of flamenco dancers. Losing my battle with light, I humbly approached Bear Creek. A mere cub, who, twenty miles from where it begins, joins the mother bear that is the Gila River, the creek murmured as the sun slipped beyond the horizon, reflecting ten thousand beams of light. Coral pink rippled into the blue-gray sky. As I lingered . . . a lone ruby-crowned kinglet hopped in a bare tree, solitary but content, like me, to be breathing beauty. Priyanka Kumar is a Santa Fe-based writer and filmmaker. Her most recent book is Conversations with Birds (Milkweed Editions, 2022). ODE TO PBULULU (NATIVE WILDPLUM) Joshua K. Concha Reaching through thorny, brambly branches: well worth every scratch on hand, nicked beyond even elbows, arm skin scraped: gatherin colors from Summer's waning sundowns drenche on your skin too— Pbululu. Our happy reward: tart, sweet slightly bitter, eaten raw right off dusty roads, (and forewarned by Elders to consume) we would endure aching in our abdomens for you— Pbululu. In spring I learned your name, as a pale pink earthy blossom scent, softly spoken contentment for bees from you— Pbululu. Deep winter delivers delight when, in your presence: iridescence, luminous liquid essence, you bring kindness into my bowl, humble bear mush made fragrant, pleasant by you— Pbululu…
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What We're Reading: Susto
AFTER POET TOMMY ARCHULETA’S mother died, he found a heavily marked-up homemade book on curanderismo among her things. That mixture of ancestral and herbal lore informs his sensorily elegiac new…
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Poet Laureate Provides Safe Space for Writers
A DOZEN FACES CROWD THE FIRST ZOOM session of Lauren Camp’s writing workshop, From Wild Mind to Experience: Writing in All Directions. The newly appointed New Mexico poet laureate appears from her La…
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Walk With Poetry on the Haiku Trail
BIRDS SING AND BEES BUZZ in the floral gardens at the Randall Davey Audubon Center & Sanctuary, in Santa Fe. Just off the sunny path near the visitor center of the 135-acre preserve, a flat ceramic…
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Native Speaker
DURING TIMES OF SOCIAL DISRUPTION, POETS THRIVE. Their ethereal language unravels the incomprehensible and weaves it into something more of us can understand. It was during such a time, in 2019, that…
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What We're Reading: Bosque Poems
Above: Bosque Poems focuses on the beauty, bounty, and fragility of the desert landscape. Photograph by Inga Hendrickson. DURING HER 2018–20 TENTURE as Albuquerque poet laureate, Michelle Otero…
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Five Things to Do This Weekend
Ruidoso offers plenty of spots to hike and bike this weekend. Photograph courtesy of Ruidoso. Seize the weather. Blue skies and highs in the 60s call for outdoor adventures. Opportunities abound…
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Five Things to Do This Weekend
Sign up for a bounty of farm fresh veggies and more during national CSA week. Photograph by Unsplash/Shelly Pauls. Eat local. Spring’s coming, we promise. And here’s a sign: It’s national CSA week…
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