CINCO DE HINCHAS!!!

The fifth issue of Hinchas de Poesía went live the first week of November, right on the heels of a new harvest moon (In fact, I have recently spoken with Jim Heavily, poetry editor extraordinaire, about how our humble little digital rag follows a schedule dictated exclusively by that rock.) and the spurs of an asteroid poised to play chicken between the Earth and the moon.

According to our counters on the Hinchas site, provided by gostats.com, the third week of Hinchas cinco had seen 57 new visitors and 153 hits, which is not bad but not necessarily great. These metrics are pretty similar to what the core audience of Hinchas might be; although I am extremely grateful for all readers, it has been hard for me to overcome this audience plateau.

The banners and ancillary design elements were inspired by the bookLos Angeles in Maps by Glen Creason, the map librarian for the Los Angeles Public Library. The book is a cartographic history of Los Angeles and seemed perfect for our fifth issue since our base of operations has moved from New York City to Los Angeles. Moreover, through my current job I am traveling through Los Angeles county and meeting people in all of its myriad neighborhoods.

The variety of writers and thus aesthetics is primarily what's on view in Hinchas cinco. Jim Heavily, the poetry editor, selected 14 poets and 2 fiction writers based only on the power of voice inherent in the piece they sent Hinchas. At the same time, the voice of these poems are not only in English, Spanish, and Spanglish but Nahuatl as well.

Melinda Palacio has one poem in cinco called "Sirvenguenza Swagger" that is sexually charged and anthropological at the same time and ends with a benediction for the narrator's father who has seen jail time.

David Spicer's are dope incantations and suave cinematic tableaus. We were lucky enough to get him to let us publish four poems from a series he is currently working on called "Lena and Schopenhauer."

Louis Bourgeois' poem is a motherfucking gem! After reading it, I am left with more questions than answers, and yet the indictment the narrator mounts precludes me from doing so because the voice is so bitchy and bombastic.

In a bit of serendipity, Jeffrey Tucker's poem, "Te Quiero" is the second one that involves feral vermin and their indiscriminate slaughter. Whereas, Louis http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifBourgeois' poem, "The Bermuda Triangle" is purposefully offensive and exciting, Tucker's poem ask its readers to envision themselves as the roadkill that time has bumrushed.

Steve Busonik has written a poem so pure and honest, you know he couldn't be a writer writer; that's because he used to be a professional cellist, and entertains a force of sophisticated observation that is essential and undervalued. Busonik's poem reminded me of Carine Topal's two poems, "Apologia" and "Neon Behavior.

Carine Topal's poems are startling and kind of creep up on you; I'd also say they're wonderfully "Catholic," or imbued with a sentiment of the absurhttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifdly holy. A piece of literature exhibits "Catholic" tendencies when it traffics freely in guilt and the pleasures of confession.

Juan J. Morales is a new contributor, and his poem, "The Cursing Chorus of the Mob" is about a cloister of brujas in Ecuador and the costs of inflicting violence on practitioners of Dark Arts. In many ways the violence is exacted, kind of like the violence in one of Kristine Chalifoux's poems, "Kings’ World: The Tarot Reading." She manages to mix tarot cards, gangster delirium, and the only possible Future into one poem.

Liz Dolan's poem crackles like starchy sheets. July Westhale's poem is about getting cut on public transportation and possibly not passing for a native.

Luivette Resto's got two poems, one has the word Jesus in the title and the other one is written about the 27th letter of the alphabet. Kurt Mueller's fiction piece is sly and tremendous; Frank Izaguirre's piece is a micro fiction piece that cleverly distills the history of the word, guajiro, or cowboy/peasant in Cuban Spanish.

José Hernández Díaz and Claudia D. Hernández both have poems in Hinchas #5; both poets have worked directly with Alarcon's Facebook page protesting Arizona SB 1070 called Poets Responding to SB 1070. Tapenade Chiffon-Baton's figures on multi-colored construction paper. For musical accompaniment, we have Mr. James Booker.

Last but not least, two amazing reviews. Bojan Louis reviews Melinda Palacio's first novel, Ocotillo Dreams, and Jim Heavily reviews Sing: Poetry from the Indigenous Americas.