Refugiado / Refugee

Two years ago on World Refugee Day, I published a very personal essay about my status as a refugee child, back then, yet what it is like now for refugees and asylum seekers. Today, I publish my own poem -- in its original Spanish followed by my English interpretation (because translation is never poetry!) -- about the plight of the asylum seeker, so that we know. 

The border fence, with menacing clouds hanging © Ana M. Fores Tamayo

So that we can be witness to our own ungodliness. 

The English version was published in Bad Hombres and Nasty Women, from Raving Book Press: if you would like to buy it, go to this link. There are many other great works in this little treasure! But I wanted to print the Spanish original too, so I am publishing both versions here now, the English below the Spanish. 

Refugiado

Mi alma en pedazos,
Veo el alambre de púa
rasguñando metal contra piel.
Llorando lágrimas de sangre,
Escucho disparos al vacío del silencio
de la Salva Maratrucha.
Lo empujo bajo la cerca
pero llora mi hijo,
aunque no importa;
lo hago porque
lo quiero.

May Day: Helping with the Migration Crisis Across Borders

For May Day, I will take part in one of the many marches against what trump is doing to immigration (I don't capitalize trump's name because he is not worthy). You can too: look at marches going on in A Day Without Immigrants!  More so, however, I will add my two grains of sand by writing about what we can do proactively to help immigrants today. 

I was thinking that, since trump was elected, he at least had to have a majority. Though that was never the case and he won through electoral politics, his popularity has suffered even more so since his election. A case in point: I was food shopping in my very conservative neighboorhood supermarket (I know: what am I still doing here?), when I saw a little note left for me on my car bumper, in response to a sticker I have: "Immigrants & Refugees WELCOME." 

The note said, verbatim: 

"Thank you for your bumper sticker. Immigrants & refugees are our neighbors" 😉

From this, I gather there is hope for everyone here in the United States: we are still a welcoming nation! I think my advice on helping asylum seekers and refugees, then, will come in handy, for those of you who really want ideas on next steps... 

Confronting Fidel Castro's Death through Poetry

As the end of the year approaches, I am finally beginning to confront the death of Fidel Castro, who changed the course of my life forever.

My relationship with him — even as an absence — has always been complex. 

When I was little, I remember seeing his photograph, a big bushy beard overpowering the frame. And while we were eating our supper, I would ask my mom innocently, as children often do, "Mom, doesn't Fidel get his soup noodles stuck all over his beard? And how does he ever get them out after he eats?"

My father in an undated photo toasting
for our future happiness, in Cuba
Fores Family Album

Maybe that's what happened to all those around him...

My father fled Cuba because he lacked political freedoms. He believed we had these liberties here in the United States, however, so my brothers, sisters, and I grew up convinced in this country of democratic justice and fair play. This lawyer — my gentle father — could have been imprisoned for years or died for us in Cuba. He suffered greatly trying to escape, just like my mother: as children, we do not remember much. And my parents never talked about it afterward, only to tell us how lucky we were to be living in this land. When my dad chose to come to the United States to ask for political asylum, he knew he wanted us to be able to live and speak freely, and he never doubted that we might not have that.

IMMIGRANT...

With the presidential race and all it stirs up in our collective pasts as immigrants — because we are all immigrants, even if some of us go as far back as the Mayflower — we will realize that we are all living on borrowed land, and if we learn to live together, we can learn that we are all one, and no borders need divide us. 

Kristian (right) joined a number of other community activists of all ages in Las Vegas 

to street canvass for the Bernie Sanders campaign this past February.

Some of us came later too, not in the early migrations but in more recent relocations, and especially today, we are still arriving, because the forced exodus from other lands — due to politics, warfare, poverty, displacement, or what have you — are all legitimate. 

Poemas del destierro / Poems of Exile

Usually I post things about education or immigration.

Sometimes I post things on poetry.

So I thought, why not? 

This is about my father, and it is about his poetry, his beautiful poetry, which I want to translate completely, one day.  So this is the beginning... 

Today is my papi's birthday. He would have been 94 years young today, & he is still with me everyday, in everything I do. Looking at some old books, then, I decided to translate the prologue he wrote to his small book of poetry, of course, dedicated A MI ESPOSA/TO MY WIFE... 

I think this is the small birthday present I can give you, Papi. Little by little I will try to translate your book, and maybe, I will try to republish it, somehow, someday... Happy happy birthday, where ever you are!

Sonnet LXIX by Pablo Neruda

Today is Pablo Neruda's birthday, and since he is one of my favorite poets, I dedicate this post to him, my translation of Sonnet LXIX  from 100 Love Sonnets: Cien sonetos de amor

Life, love, longevity, forgetting and remembering... these apply to so many things, not just poetry, not just love songs, not just pain. Life is about living, about picking up books and flowers and cobblestones, about the wind in our hair but the sweat in our brow and the tears in our hearts. 

And we go on, whether in the field, or the classroom, or the road. 

Happy birthday, Pablo Neruda: you have enriched my life! 

"Love is so short, forgetting is so long." Pablo Neruda 

Budding Rose: Red or Golden?
© Ana M. Fores Tamayo

Perhaps not being is being without your being,
without your cutting the noon day
like a blue flower, without your walking
later, through the fog and cobblestone,