it’s not a decision or an ideology

my friend said, “some of my friends look around and say, ‘now that i’m in my forties, i don’t have a job, i don’t have a house, i don’t have anything.’”

my gaze enters the intersection and makes a left turn.

sunlight pours through my line of sight. my gaze turns to smoke.

i laughed and said, “i wouldn’t have a house if it wasn’t for her.” i leaned against her in shaanxi garden.

i wouldn’t have a house if she wasn’t insisting, and our friends heading to foreclosure asked us to buy their house. it was a wreck, just like their marriage.

they hadn’t made repairs in decades. you could see through the kitchen floor into the basement. the bathroom wall had fallen into the bathtub. the bedroom ceiling had a manhole-sized hole.

our friends left, splitting up, heading separate ways, never to return, dead VW bug in the driveway, emptiness of lives all along the fence line where my daughter left alligator lizards in jars to mummify. we ripped out the interior, rebuilt the walls and windows from the studs out. i worked every day four months straight on it. still, the floors were wet and the place full of paint and varnish fumes when we moved the kids in. i put boards across the floors so we could go room to room.

she wanted a cactus garden in front. i’d never poured concrete in my life. i poured a concrete foundation for cement block walls, measured every angle and surface with plumb line and level as exact as i could. when the mexicano mason came to build the walls, he laughed at it. he fixed it.

i have a house because of our collectivity.

(this is not about ideology, fundamentally.)

i have the 8 hour day because of unions like my union.

i have this job because colleges and universities never offered me a full-time gig in spite of experience, books, publications, awards. they offer kids with no publications tenure track gigs that i applied for (when i used to apply); they offer me part-time or temp gigs, which are basically nothing to them. but i’ve gone on strike with my union and won; we’ve threatened strike over healthcare and raises and won.

i’ve paid $300 a month or more union dues for decades.

for years, i paid party dues and membership fees to organizations that don’t exist. they exist a little farther up the way. 

radio hours blown into the last daylight in the trees.

traffic on the golden state freeway in orange afternoon haze.

people all driving in the same direction. not getting along, going along.

analyses in the press and we might comment.

exchange of commentary like crows.

it’s the collectivity that puts the wind in our mouth, that spins it away.

Tips for Creative Writing Students

1. My basic tip is to get out more. PARTICIPATE.*

*(The consumerist model of waiting to be serviced and then waiting for an invoice or
bill, or paying for service in advance and passively expecting something to happen
does not work in the life of the mind, in literary life, in literature. This activity is not a “transaction.”)

2. PARTICIPATE in, or at least attend, literary activities in your area. Nearby colleges hosted readings by really outstanding writers. These are not merely famous writers; some colleges hosted readings and workshops with some of the best, new, popular writers among the contemporary intelligentsia. How can these newer voices serve you? They can give you perspective on what’s new, on what’s possible, on what’s happening. Maggie Nelson! Cathy Park Hong! Find out who these people are! What are they doing?

3. Discuss what’s new in writing, what’s possible in writing, what’s happening in
‘literature’ with friends (hopefully who write)—make friends with those who do.
The discourse is always happening. Listen for it. Our language exists before we’re
born. It comes to us through birth and bloodshed, through immigration and revolution,
through labor and love, through the generations. It comes to us. Make use of it to
make your mark in the never ending on-going dialogue. Enter the conversation
wherever you want. Start with friends.

4. Read daily. Not merely what is assigned. Read in order to explore your own mind,
through your own special, revelatory, vital interests. Read literary journals and
literary magazines to explore the discourse in your own interests. There’s a million
of them, from the sort of ‘mainstream’ New Yorker, Granta, Boston Review,
McSweeney’s, to local lights, fly-by-nights, hand-made zines, college magazines.
William Faulkner said, “A writer should read everything. Of course, you can’t read
everything.” Subscribe; subscribe to them. Explore your commitments. Commit.

5. Practice reading and writing outside institutions and institutionalization. The world is wider, juicier, richer, more electric. Practice reading and writing beyond the kinds of reading and writing everyone else is doing—which is to say—on a little hand-held screen or on a flat screen.

6. The bottom line is, if you don’t prioritize it, no one else will. If you don’t do your own writing, no one will. That’s not exactly a tautology.

Dream

It was at a party. I was looking for some quiet corner, but the house was full of people. Paul walked through the room ahead of me. He went into another room and shut the door. He was wearing my shirt.

 

someone else lives there now

in the house where the old lady died

her family moved in (the man with the gray

mustache her son?) a handsome white couple

gray and unhappy, their teenage children unhappy

at our house we could hear their children

scream and curse at them, the father drove by

never looking at us, year after year for a decade or more

in his old car, fast, or in his pickup truck

never looking our way, never saying hello

the son grew burly, thick set, said hello only

if directly spoken to, walking up or down the hill

the son got a car, and left, then it was the daughter

who calmed down as she grew up, and i only saw her

crying in the street (one time sitting in the middle of

our street, refusing to move as i drove up the hill,

weeping) but then she appeared with a boyfriend

appeared happy, with little dog and boyfriend,

then the boyfriend was in the driveway, on his cell

phone, he said hello once or twice, then she was gone,

they were all gone, driveway empty, industrial size

dumpster in the driveway for a mound of debris, first

remodeling the house had seen in decades,

but the family was gone. months later, two boys

who appeared part black, part latino came by

looking for their dog (i had not seen their little dog),

said their family was renting the place, but

they would soon be moving (back to chicago?)—

and i don’t know who lives there now—

i drove by once and the driveway was empty,

the house dark, the front door wide open—

i thought to close it, but had never known those

people, i don’t know who lives there now.

 

photograph by Arturo Romo-Santillano

 

 

that’s me and you, when you were alive, god damn it

that’s me and you walking like crows with heads going back and forth like 2 trains running

that’s me and you with our little red tongues wagging like insects emerging from the desiccated nation of petals

that’s me and you with our cheeks squinty and shiny like a muscular salmon doing a whitewater squirt

that’s me and you when i wasn’t notched as a Roosevelt dime and you weren’t folded like the old war newspaper

that’s me and you riding the internecine moment when the night of the universe curled some gazes inside of boulders

that’s me and you making like stevedores on a 1934 General Strike as the hour itself glazed cool blueish ceramic

that’s me and you when i had a pocket full of keys as if that mattered and coins that could drop a meter in the street

that’s me and you when all our thoughts weren’t bottled in amber glass and tossed by the San Bernardino like a roadkill century

AMARA

transcribed at “Type Writer: An Afternoon of L.A. Stories Typed Before Your Eyes” with Marisela Norte and Lynell George

Amara

 

 

How do we start?

I came to L.A. from Minneapolis

and I’m a shoemaker and I work for myself

I’ve literally only been here for three—no, four hours

A couple months ago I met this awesome dude

he’s with the L.A. Philharmonic

and I just need a reason to move

things were really picking up with this dude

they were. And they kept escalating, but they

came to a full stop, he was supposed to come visit me

and he didn’t. I don’t know what I’m doing

I could stay in Minneapolis… but I don’t know,

I didn’t decide…

 

he’s getting a divorce, he’s not really helpful

he’s emotionally embroiled in something I don’t want

to get involved with

 

I’m leaving on Friday, I’m just here for a week

it would be a big deal, to move all my equipment

but maybe, in Minnesota there’s 3 shoemakers

in L.A. there’s a lot more, but most of them are hobbyists

 

There’s a lot, in L.A. and New York, they charge

about $2,000. In Minneapolis my price point is about a third of that

 

Do you want the real story or the one I tell people?

I’ll tell you both

I was in grad school, in the MFA program at the

Art Institute of Chicago, I was a book maker, a writer, a photographer

I’d always done a lot of writing, editing

I got into a serious car accident,

I couldn’t write anymore

but shoes, I could follow

 

I made my MFA project shoes

they altered the way people had to walk,

you know, I didn’t have to say anything,

I didn’t have to explain, they sort of mimicked the healing process

you know what I mean?

 

I wrote a lot, I had a blog

but I lost it, a friend of mine said he found it

I wrote and wrote and wrote, but I lost it again

I couldn’t read anything for a long time

I wrote but I couldn’t read

I just started reading again

 

Are we taking off?

Are you going to put it in your archive?

No I don’t need it, I’ve lived it.

We’re going now, thanks

Nice to meet you

 

 

with Lynell George and Marisela Norte

Type Writer: An Afternoon of L.A. Stories Typed Before Your Eyes

 

Sunday, April 17 | 2:00–5:00pm | Craft and Folk Art Museum courtyard | Free and open to the public 

5814 Wilshire Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90036 
(323) 937-4230 | www.cafam.org

Bring your favorite Los Angeles stories to share with favorite local writers Lynell George, Sesshu Foster, and Marisela Norte, who will transcribe your words into poetry and prose using one of our typewriting stations. Participants are encouraged to bring their own typewriters to join in this special type-in event. This event is part of the cultural programs in conjunction with this year’s Big Read, honoring the work of Ray Bradbury. The Big Read is a program in partnership with Arts Midwest.

for more information: http://www.cafam.org/programs

 

Lynell George

Marisela Norte

Sesshu Foster

 

 

 

Hey, Juan Felipe

glad we could talk, my students came and enjoyed it—

later, i read some poems with Kenji Liu and Angela Peñaredondo

at the Kaya Press tent, and afterwards went round and caught

your reading at the poetry stage, where I saw the call

and response of “187 reasons mexicanos can’t cross the border”

caused passersby to stop in their tracks, turned their heads; they

drew forth under the trees to see what you were delivering

from the stage. this was before you closed, zapateando.

i should have joined you when they took you to sign books.

it started sprinkling, as it had been on and off all day

and like i had been, i was thinking about the lean girl,

my student who died two weeks ago, swept out by a wave

at santa monica beach, in sight of the pier and surely crowds

of hundreds of people on an ordinary saturday afternoon,

drowned. now there’s nothing to say about it, nothing to be done,

so i wandered through the tents, looking at the booths

full of books and booksellers, writers and readers, and

when i figured that we maybe still had time to talk,

i went back to “the green room” but i couldn’t locate

you—i did a circuit, walking through the crowd and the tents

in the off and on again drizzle, talked to David Shook

at Phoneme Books, bought his translations from the Zapotec,

i guessed soon you’d have minders escorting you onstage

at the award ceremony, though i could have let loose

the dogs of metaphor or raised a figurative hue and cry

as of metonymy, but let the mist in the air settle as it may.

thanks for the hour or more. let’s talk again! maybe

i’ll see Fresno, capital of poetry. hi to Margie!

for the kid

you were swept out to sea by a wave and drowned

you rode your bike through a puddle electrified by underground wires

crushed by a wheel that came bouncing, bounding over the center divider at 65 MPH

you died of an aneurysm no one ever suspected

it got dark and cold, cold

and i think about you every day, kid

even though we weren’t close

i don’t know what you thought of me, if anything (i figured you didn’t bother to think of me, because you were too busy trying to become the adult you were never given the chance to be)

but i respected you, kid. so hard working, so disciplined

(who even knew you were a kid? your family did. your little sister did.)

you were just a kid, really, after all. whatever i saw in the coffin had nothing to do with you. that wasn’t your destiny. you didn’t deserve what you got. your family didn’t deserve that.

i think about you, your smile, your grin— and what is there to say? now it all seems so pointless.

nothing to say and nothing to do about it now.

no way to go back, no way to fix anything, no way it will ever be different or better.

the steps can’t be retraced. that saturday never returns.

the chain of events, the accident, the circumstances. it’s as if whatever was real about all of it left with you, kid.

(i thought of my 3 year old nephew sucked inside a hole in a sea cave

by water that bubbled up out of a puddle he was sitting in,

and he disappeared in a hole in the side of a giant rock on the beach

i thought him lost underwater inside the black bowels of a cave—

but i ran through the surf to the mouth of the cave and absurdly, he emerged,

sitting up, screaming riding a wave like a surfer down into the crashing waves

and i snatched him up and he was saved, unhurt) but they could not save you and you were not saved.

i could be writing this about my other nephew who did die.

it doesn’t do your family or the rest of us any good, but i think of you daily. you were not in that coffin, kid, but in the unrealized events where i imagine you always will be.

 

 

For Thuy

People bunched outside of the chapel doors, SRO, trying to peer inside. Ribbons fluttered in the breeze, wide long ribbons from wreaths strung with their black phrases in English and Vietnamese. Wreaths and flowers lined the interior to the doors. One from an ER staff—I presumed—someone’s co-workers.

 
Incense at an alter, gilt packets, a large floral centerpiece around her photograph, and at one side, a small Buddha. Behind it, a tapestry of the Buddha. I had no view because of the press of people.

 
Leaves on a green lawn under big trees. Traffic on Main Street kitty corner from Ranch 99 Market. The minister spoke in Vietnamese. Men ducked in and out, whispering. She appeared to me, this girl, bearing up under the significant duress, of her time and ours, with an inward steeliness, an outward coldness.

 
As if begrudging words, sometimes she’d say goodbye. I thought it was mere shyness. She was lithe and strong, a distance runner. Sometimes I heard the goodbye. I looked up as she went to the door—the abrupt profile of her cheek so expressed the fierce determination that I admired and respected.

 
17 years old, swept out by a wave on the beach and drowned last Saturday, as if the world insisted on making the cruelest, most bitter gesture in the most obvious vacant way. Her friends wept as they spoke of their love for her. I waited my turn to speak. “Thank you for the honor of letting us know Thuy Tran,” I said, “thank you for the honor of allowing me to be her teacher.”

 
I clasped the hands of her brother, her sister and her mother, on the way out the side door. I said something to them. Her mother thanked me. Out in the sunshine, my cell phone chirped. Messages ticked into my cell phone, wishing me happy birthday.