ABEL FOLGAR'S FIRST POSTCARD

I am currently engaged in a Postcard Feat with Abel Folgar. This is Abel's first postcard that I have received. As you can see it was made by a psychotic bouncer librarian; the poem on the backside is titled, Dusty Roads Beg Water. I predict that Abel will take to the roads sooner than later, and the United States will shudder as he traverses its veins. I would have put Abel's poem here as well, but what the hell am I going to sell if I let you read the actual poem. It's like someone's grandmother used to say, if you give away the milk, no one is going to want to buy your cow.

CLANDESTINE DEPTO.

My mother's apartment had not been "marked" by the police for increased surveillance; word had not come down for an unmarked Ford Falcon to circle her block like a bull shark. No order came down for her to be shadowed.

Her address had not been registered at the cuartel, nor had it been the added to the lists the police were constantly smashing together. In a word, she was a nobody, and that suited her fine because of the anonymity being a nobody afforded her.

But, she had gotten to know people in the movement, and she sometimes feigned being a reporter so she could get into lectures for free. She was known to carry a tape recorder as a prop; shortly thereafter, it became her talisman. And once or twice, she even offered up her tiny departamento as a venue for lectures or presentations.

One time she hosted two Cuban compadres from the Administración Postal de Cuba. Because they called my mother, Negra, the two Cubans could pass for her brothers, cousins, or kin. The three of them together raised less eyebrows than my mother alone, somehow.

She had run away from Tucumán to Buenos Aires at 14, home being one of the thickest and at times remote provinces in Argentina's 23-stared province-diadem. On her own, my mother, stood out like a sore thumb; also, she had a mythological pair of gams she liked to flaunt in mini-skirts and boots.

PLANETESIMAL*

why do crazy people always have luggage?
where are they going with so much nothing?
why can't i find that place, and where is my luggage?

how do mountains wear appalling little so unabashed?
where are they going with so much nothing?
why make my delirium look terrestrial when Jove’s pissed?

why parse yellow yarn for cage-free, locally-grown guerillaknitters?
where are they going with so much nothing?
how to stretch jejunely over trees like turtlenecks and tunics?

what engine belch to piston ratio blathering, Exude Acceleration!?
where are they going with so much nothing?
where millions of civilians say, Back Door!, without seeming Borg?

where wattage of queries somewhat supersedes your paygrade?
where are they going with so much nothing?
how interlocutoring towards “sticking” barks Brownian?

how your amperes functioned through the Great Bombardment of Acumen?
where are they going with so much nothing?
were I not an atrocious apology from an excited orbit of self-gravity?

where are they going with so much nothing?
how protoplanets wake rage at dangerous decibels of the Mach gauge?
where are they going with so much nothing?

*Portions of this poem were inspired by the Wikipedia article on "Planetesimals". Click here to access the article and support Wikipedia.

FANATICAL, FANATICODE, FANATIQUILL

The young lady said, your hair,
may I touch it? And I obliged, sort
of swan in an injured, curtsied bow.

She pawed and graded my exquisite locks
and confessed the purse my hair
could fetch in the black markets of the world.

I had been summoned to slay mawfuckers
with my pizazzy Powerpoint for Playas’
and now, like a genie, I could not be rebottled.

The thought of follicle bazaars in Tangiers
or the Sarajaven mob trafficking my now
very valuable head ricocheted in my synapses tanks.

I had been thinking of nothing lucrative at all, nothing
like pure poetry strawberries as large as the heads of Shih Tzus
or contraband submarines forged in the jungles of Colombia.

I had been thinking that I don’t listen to Otis Redding enough
that I take too many scalding showers and don’t leave my hair
the chance to fume the bouquet of my wholly singular odor.

And now I am finally thinking of the young lady, her fingers
comb the epicenter of my vanity, they graze my thick head
my dull, oaken dome from which spectacular beauty glows.

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.