Year of the Goat 4713

--

-

Zhao Mengfu (1254-1322)

Year of the goat 4713

The goat, wary, horns
lowered, it holds unsullied
his ground, stands fast, knows:
a promise easy to make
often is hard in keeping.

       
-------------------------------------------- © Rafael Jesús González 2015

Año de la cabra 4713
 

La cabra cautelosa, cuernos
agachados mantiene limpio
su suelo, para, sabe:
una promesa fácil de hacer
muchas veces es difícil cumplir. 

            -----------------------------------© Rafael Jesús González 2015

Emperor Xuanzong (1399-1435), Ming dynasty

-

A Valentine: my politics

-

---------Preguntan


Se trata de la vida
y de algo muy relacionado

(auque sea que me equivoque)
 
--------— el amor.

(Estima, ternura;
un respeto primordial,
aversión al dolor,
aprecio al placer, a la alegría
---------— la belleza.)

Se trata de la vida
----------------------y del amor.

-----Es esta
-----mi política.





------------------© Rafael Jesús González 2015

-----------You Ask


It is about life
& something very akin to it

(though I may be mistaken)

---------— love.

(Caring, a tenderness;
a primordial respect,
an aversion to pain,
a regard for pleasure, joy
----------— beauty.)

It is about life
------------------& love.

-----These are
-----my politics.






------------© Rafael Jesús González 2015

-

-

-

Friendship

-

Icniuhyotl


Auh tocnihuane,
tla xoconcaquican yn itlatol temictli:
xoxopantla technemitia,
in teocuitlaxilotl, techonitwuitia
tlauhkecholelotl, techoncozctia.
In tikmati ye ontlaneltoca
toyiollo, toknihuan.

------------------------------------Tecayohuatzin, King of Huexotzinco, c. 1490

Amistad

(del náhuatl)


Y ahora amigos, escuchen
el sueño de una palabra:
Son una luz
las puntas rubias y tiernas del maíz;
en la primavera despertamos
a la borla dorada de la mazorca
y las pruebas de constancia
en los corazones de amigos
nos engalanan el cuello
con collares de joyas.



----------© Rafael Jesús González 2015

Friendship

(from the Nahuatl)


And now, friends listen
to the dream of a word:
It is a light,
the corn's pale and tender ends;
in spring we wake
to the golden tassel of the maize,
and the proofs of constancy
in the hearts of friends
about our necks
jeweled collars place.



----------© Rafael Jesús González 2015



-

Full moon: Moon for Yemayá

-

-------Luna para Yemayá

 
Bajo la luna llena
Yemayá en sus enaguas azules
ribeteadas de encajes de espuma
baila al tambor de las olas, 
las trompetas de los tritones
mientras las sirenas le tocan
sus guitarras de coral.
Baila, baila Yemayá. 

--------------------© Rafael Jesús González 2015

                

 

--------Moon for Yemayá


Under the full moon
Yemayá in her blue skirts
edged with laces of foam
dances to the drum of the waves,
the trumpets of the mermen
while the mermaids play her
their coral guitars.
Dance, dance Yemayá.




---------------------© Rafael Jesús González 2015

-

-

Fightn' Words reading Tuesday, Feb. 10

-
GROUND-BREAKING ANTHOLOGY
BLENDS SOCIAL ACTIVISM AND LITERATURE

-

PEN Oakland invites the public to a free reading from their ground-breaking anthology Fightin’ Words: 
25 Years of Provocative Poetry and Prose  
from “The Blue-Collar” PEN

Tuesday, February 10, 2015

6:30 PM – 9:00 PM

 Berkeley City College Auditorium

2050 Center Street

Berkeley, California


Award-winning authors Lucille Lang Day, Jack and Adelle Foley, Rafael Jesús González, Kirk Lumpkin, Mary Mackey, devorah major, Kim McMillon, Claire Ortalda, 
Tony Rodríguez, Floyd Salas, 
& Richard Silberg will read.  
Sharon Coleman will emcee this event. 
This is an opportunity to meet many of the diverse cultural voices that are highlighted in this groundbreaking new work edited by Judith Cody, Kim McMillon & Claire Ortalda.  

 For more information, please call (510) 681-5652.




Advance Praise for Fightin’ Words:

“A tide of swelling voices that dare to speak up against the con-fines of official narratives and connect 
with the growing silenced masses.” 
— Genny Lim, author of Paper Gods and Rebels
 
“Literary artists who otherwise would be below 
the radar of exposure have PEN Oakland 
to thank for relentless cultural activism 
on our behalf.”  
— Eugene B. Redmond, founding editor, Drumvoices Revue
 
“Lyrical insight and the arc of human thought 
for a new and possible world 
create this amazing anthology.”  
— Nina Serrano, host of KPFA’s Open Book: Poet to Poet
 
 

Publication Date:        October 6, 2014
ISBN:                          978-0-615-96797-4 
Paperback:                   6x9, 200 Pages 
Price:                           $18.00 
Distributors:                Ingram and Baker & Taylor or direct from 
Publishers :                

PEN Oakland Publications & Heyday Books 

-

riverbabble 26, Winter 2015

-

riverbabble 26 --------s Winter 2015

Artichoke by Christopher Novak

---

riverbabble 26

---

Poetry
Liz Dolan:
         Trapped
         When a Lovely Flame Dies   

William Doreski:
         Fire Fox
         Moonlight, Fox Skull, and Mountains

Richard Fein:
          Neither Whiff of Cat nor Sight of Wicked Witch
          The Ethics of Fallen Apples

Rafael Jesús González:
           Advertencia al Hombre / Warning to Man
           Luna plena en verano de sequía / Full Moon in a Dry Summer

Tobey Kaplan:
          At Feather River
          Hotel Calcutta

Janell Moon:
          Water Meant for the Body's Care When the Drowned Days Weigh Her Down
          Red Girl

Christopher Mulrooney:
          provincials
          look at the money

Sheryl L. Nelms:
          Chicken Canning Time in West Texas
          Coyote Hunting in Kansas

Robert Pesich:
          Chinese lanterns in a shadowbox
          Picking fruit along the road

dn simmers:
          When They Ceased
          Almost

Virginia Barrett:   Falcon

Amy Neill Bebergal:   The Battle of Balls Bluff

Gary Beck:    I.D. Tags

Pamela Brenman:    The Stone Speaks

Suzanne Bruce:    January Pruning

jd daniels:   No Longer Endangered?

Stuart Dodds:   To the Almighty

KJ Hannah Greenberg:   First Showing

Kirk Lumpkin:    Recycling Center in El Cerrito

Justice Morríghan:   Sleeping With the New Resistance

JB Mulligan:   ballade

Anita S. Pulier:   One Poet Too Many

Armando Rendón:   Ode to Billie

Amy Ballard Rich:   Broken Ice

Tom Sheehan:   Evening of the Falcon

B.L.P. Simmons:   Falcon

John Swain:   Spearfish Canyon

David Welper:   Poem

Anne Whitehouse:   Bookends

Fiction

Aryan Kaganof:   The Necrologist

Larry Lefkowitz:   Six Gun Dalton

Garrett Murphy:   The Stongstress of Saturday Afternoon at the Movies

Garrett Rowlan:   Hoop Schemes

James Shaffer:   The Silent Sentinel

Tom Sheehan:   The Falcon and a Peach Can

Flash Fiction

Tony Press:
           Beneath a December Moon
           Natural Healing

David Spicer:
           Poetry Wall
           Bonfire

Lester L. Weil:
           Almost Adam and Eve
           "It Don't Matter"   In the vernacular, a dismissive phrase

Sharon Coleman:  Post-War Circus

Robert Masterson:   Cookie in the Picture

Tom Sheehan:   Once Upon a Timely Moment

Alice Whittenburg:   What the Dogs Knew

Photography

Christopher Novak:  Artichoke



Never about the runaway wife coming back, however much devoted to the absentee. The face at the window! Judge of his astonishment when he finally did breast the tape and the awful truth dawned upon him anent his better half, wrecked in his affections. You little expected me but I've come to stay and make a fresh start. There she sits, a grasswidow, at the selfsame fireside. Believes me dead, rocked in the cradle of the deep.

                                                                    JAMES JOYCE, Ulysses, p.510. 16, 428-434.

---

| Submissions | Contact Us | Archives | BLOGS   ~
Pandemonium Press
2nd printing available on Amazon.com

or from
the publisher: pandemoniumpress@gmail.com
_________________________________

Leila Rae, editor
riverbabble
http://iceflow.com/riverbabble/Welcome.html---
--

March for Real Climate Leadership Feb. 7

-

-

------Climate Change, Is it a Poem?


The Arctic ice melts,
the oceans rise,
droughts more intense & prolonged,
hurricanes & floods more terrible
in five-hundred years everywhere
& some blind by misfortune
or through stubbornness will say,
“What changes? There is no change.”
& others say, “We are not responsible.
It is God's fault.”
The leaders bought with the same coin
do little here, less there
& the Earth remains wounded
healing as it can
demolishing perverse humanity.




-------------------------------------© Rafael Jesús González 2015

"March for Real Climate Leadership"

Saturday, February 7

11:30 AM

Frank Ogawa Plaza
14th & Broadway

Oakland, California

-----Cambio climático ¿poema es?


Se derrite el hielo del Ártico,
suben los mares,
sequías más intensas y prologadas,
huracanes e inundaciones más terribles
en quinientos años dondequiera
y algunos ciegos por desgracia
o por terca voluntad dicen —
¿Cuáles cambios? No hay cambio alguno.
Y otros dicen — No somos responsables.
Es cosa de Dios.
Los líderes comprados con la misma moneda
hacen poco aquí, menos allá
y sigue herida la Tierra
sanándose como pueda
arrasando con la perversa humanidad.

--------------------------------------------© Rafael Jesús González 2015

-

-