So honored to have my work published in this wonderful literary magazine, The AutoEthnographer. These three poem along with a microessay appeared in the Nov. 10 Issue of Bodily Autonomy. #BodilyAutonomy #RoeVWade #USSupremeCourt
Currently in presales at Finishing Line Press! Will ship on March 31, 2023! Get ready to feel “The Fire!”
From Finishing Line Press:
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The Firetalker’s Daughter honors the power of mother’s love and tender teaching, the value of ancestral gifting and wisdom, the necessity of mourning for movement, and the audacity to hope and act for a more just future. Spun along a motif of fire, these poems carry searing incantations that evoke an awareness of the relevance of the literal, figurative, and spiritual fires that breathe down lines and throughout time.
From NC Poet Laureate Jaki Shelton Green and Award Winning Author Kai Coggin:
Spiritual incantation and unspoken ancestral magic singed and sparked my heart, as I moved through the language and gospel of Regina YC Garcia‘s debut collection The Firetalker’s Daughter. Charting a path through her lineage of healers and those who could “talk the fire” out of burns and wounds, the gift passed over her, she burns her own powerful impressions of Black Light onto the breaking world, like an ancestor alive and witnessing. “I cannot talk the fire / Yet, I am Fire… Truth / My ancient magic renders demons cold.” Garcia takes the reader into the depths of self, motherhood, social justice cries, the erasure of Black history by the fires of an all-consuming whiteness, mourning a lost daughter in Breonna Taylor, and yet, carrying an unwavering hope in “the rise of indomitable spirits from the embers.” The seeds of generations are scattered in these blazing words, torched open. These poems— a phoenix rising from, all around us, a world of ash.
–Kai Coggin, author of Mining for Stardust, Incandescent, and Wingspan
The Firetalker’s Daughter is an offering, incantation, and invocation that taps into the power physically or metaphorically of fire. Through expressions of the inner self, Regina YC Garcia’s poems tap into the questions of reconciling fearsome nature with goodness and peacefulness as seen through this divine elemental creation.
Scorching imagery and passion create wisps of smoke. Smoldering narratives become lightning bolts and poetic kindling igniting substantive undergrowth for a brighter day. The Firetalker’s Daughterinvites the blaze that always illuminates the before time of far tomorrows.
I am holding only a piece that is so much greater than I even know.
As he, she, it, they, I are in constant growth and creation until their time in this realm is spent, I will never know it all (as Breath itself creates anew around itself).
Depending on my state, I find this reality either excruciatingly binding or extraordinarily freeing.
Sometimes there is Peace in this knowledge of not knowing.
Seems to me that to not allow the histories of the people of this diverse country to come forward with the necessary narrative fervor that these histories deserve, “we the people” do ourselves deadly injustice. We deepen the wounds of traumas that yet live, view each other with increasing suspicion, drive apart, marginalize, and subjugate the value of others, and descend into a deep frozen state of animosity, ignorance, and fear.
In essence, we become the antithesis of everything this country has claimed it was trying to be-a “more perfect union”- a progressive concept, at best.
We never really got there, but there were moments; there was hope. Now these pockets of hate and ignorance-racism, sexism, xenophobia are putting down roots in the wet ground of fear, fear that calls evil “Godliness”….gods of small things, threatened by replacement, call on ancient Baals with new faces.
(Just a little light momentary pity fit, you know, “how I be” feeling sometimes, and I write, so…)
From the Middle Torture Chambers…
A middle life Yields a muffled cry That no one desires to attend Few, some, around, at times For a minute, dispassionatly, adverbally An adjectivly weak tailspin For no one yearns To hear the enlightenments Of that flattened center space No one cares for perspectives That the verve of exotic margins erase For a middle life predictably draws power That eats the zeal of the day No middle magic weilds enough interest To hold a captive sway Therefore, moderately blessed In-betweens and means may often find That the glory that they seek Will only torture their minds Angst and agony painfully increase While watching long sought dreams Slowly, completely unwind And peter out with a gasping wind As life beckons the middle Ever closer To the end
Pry yourselves from platitudes of piety Flesh and stone dieties betray you Shallow smiles convey That you regard us less For you applaud those who scale monuments In worship of puppet kings In search of absolutions Within the lies they sing Forbid yourself the words You utter otherwise When you wax deeply of your hurts While you ignore the desperate cries And mock brown broken bodies As light drains from their eyes Disallow trite tales And disingenuous turns of phrase That vain would steal my voice While your desires find a way To manifest for your own might Twisting words, shading light Right is wrong Wrong is right… There is no common ground When the blood of my loves stain This stolen hallowed ground As you run to cover the sound Of the beast that yet lives
The Capitol Building, Washington, DC January 6, 2021 No Copyright Infringement Intended
Epiphany 2021
Hands that Pick
Hands that picked cotton for promise
Picked tense times
Places
Uncommon faces
Found Broken Spaces
To Cast Spells and Votes
That Filled and Manifested Hope
Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock, Georgia Senators Elect Copyright Infringement Not Intended