Flowers of Fire: Poesía de Lucha y Amor

It is poetry from the Bay to Santiago de Chile, from the hilltops of Lincoln Heights to jarocho hollows and D.F. escapes, the flowers of the floricanto and the fires fed by restless revolutionary spirits. Please join us as we hand the symbolic torch to the Boyle Heights bards. I will spend more time with words, with the magazine and the blogs from here henceforth. I welcome Estrella and Leticia especially because they instigated my return to Chilangolandia and the poetry lulls between el rock pesado at el Chopo in the shadows of the Tlatelolco '68 masacre two years ago. I giggle at the sudden flock to Guadalajara by those who have finally equated the 80s Chicano punk explosion with the rockero counterpart and try to verbalize it all in catalogues and academic papers. It's a long way from eating hongos with Maria Sabina and dancing with concheros at Chalma while sleeping in the cemetary and an even longer way from the bomb explosion aftermath that greeted me at Plaza Universidad seven days after Marcos and the Zapatistas made a stand at San Cristobal. Leticia Luna, publisher and editorial director at la Cuadrilla de la Langosta, an imprint more strident and feminist than any I've seen in a long time, has been a midwife to punk poetry and youth culture in la mera capirucha for some twenty years, her yearling and protege Estrella del Valle was just awarded a prize in Colombia for a book called Vuelo México - Los Angeles Puerta 23, a searing indictment of privilege, even Chicano privilege here on the northern side of the border like a wound that cleaves a people apart. Ms. del Valle hails from Veracruz and lets us know that there is a darker side to life there and here, that happy, fandango music is not the only export the jarocho's can share with a vengeance. And what can I say about Leni? Un camarada de letras and a writer's writer, who writes from a place where narrative structure, memory and the genetic imprint of a dictator's torture delivered directly onto the backs of his own kin are salved with sweetness and justice and redemption. We welcome Angelinos, native and non, to the Corazón del Pueblo, home of a homegrown art and community paper, Brooklyn & Boyle (now a year old)... we're bringing it to you here, bringing it home, aún el hecho de estar en casa en ambos países. No es por nada el nombre de este sitio virtual... destino del los chilanguanacoides xicanos. If you fee up for poetry that moves and rattles, words that have been strewn across continents in beautiful volumes and in the pages of periodical perhaps a wee bit more erudite than you are used to, favor de acompañarnos con una buena vibra este martes a las 8 pm!