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

https://www.facebook.com/profile/1333254124/search/?q=The%20autoethnographer

9/11: 20 years

planes like bombs blasted into buildings 

in the middle of skies 

and crumbled them down

lost lives

lost dreams 

lost securities

i stood in a library lobby 

i watched 

feet frozen to the floor

that sad 9th month

11th day

I cried endlessly 

thinking “all is lost”

planes like bombs  blasted buildings

bombs that broke us 

bombs that bonded us

for a while

for realizations 

of brittle security

eventually break 

common ties

recall empathy

call forth insanity

bring out anger or worse 

apathy

over and over 

throughout history

we are continually

watching boats, planes, storms, floods,diseases, institutions

These curious instruments 

dressed like bombs blasting into

buildings, nations, people, families, hearts

incinerating, crushing, marginalizing, colonizing

enslaving, terrorizing, irreverently ruling

in our lands, in all lands

pulling us in, tearing us apart

leaving memory of tragedy 

in one generation

the trauma of the tragedy 

in the next

collective traumatic memory 

That we carry for generations 

to come

left in people who

create people who do not know

how to choose the bonding

over the brittleness and the bitterness

who don’t know

how to make new love 

out of old loss

how to mitigate

how stop 

the cycles

of people like bombs

blasting into people

i still see this today

feet frozen to the floor 

this 9th month

this 11th day

20 years since planes like bombs

blasted into my head, bonded 

into my head

we pulled together

we pulled apart

cracked clay pots 

in my 54 years of living

my mind still holding so much

collective traumatic memory

waiting and wanting to be acknowledged

to be repurposed

to be reverently built into 

a sky of hope 

into a world of change

https://www.upthestaircase.org/regina-yc-garcia.html

Finding Peace in Pieces

If I do not know it all, I do not know it.

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.

It is not my place to know all.

All would likely end me.

Regina YC García

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.

https://www.businessinsider.com/oklahoma-law-bans-lessons-critical-race-theory-2021-5

https://youtu.be/7R_Qk1AN5S4

(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

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

Where in the world can we go?

Where the sun does not set nor turn her face

So as not to witness the disgrace of her oldest children

The ones told again and again “You can dance now, but you won’t win.”

In this land–small moments of victory, slight stints of happy, fleeting prosperities–

These cannot enrich chronically scantily fed souls…

Oh, where in this world can we go?

Where our honorable ideas ignite, and nimble thoughts take flight, and our sister catches them in the wind, and our brother invites us over to gather us in 

To share and work and make miracles from that which formed us: blessed breath, salted water, live light, and deep dark dirt

Not born from broken survival spirits and oppressive hurts

Nor birthed from the desperation to be heard, loved, valued, seen…

Where in the world can we go?

Surely there is no space for us here 

Inside of this giant’s fears

When wicked shadows cover doors and floors

And vile betrayers 

Peering from the dark

Steal our trust

Call us out 

To break our hearts 

Hand us over as in ancient days gone by

After those times when some could fly

Back then, we did soar

(Back then,higher…more)

Where in the world can we go?

I  believe that I will dive

To the bottom of the enshrining sea

Collect the magic that was meant for my people and for me

Close my eyes

Push my wings through back and bones

Take our potions 

And set us all free

Then we will know 

Spirit will tell us

Your home will reach up to love you

Wherever you roam

By Regina YC Garcia

Nerd Randomness…

Why can’t I use “things?” 🤔

My dertimination to specify in terms more precise oft leads me to deadly verbosity.

It is a boulder of my self-made obligation, urgently suggested by grammarians whose rules I’ve placed in on the confinement shelves of my mind. It joins other devices meant to harness me and keep me from being heard.

That’s why I sometimes freakout, shift vernacular, confuse convention, use freeing word tranformation, employ in-fixes, and coin in wild abandon…oh, and cuss…just a little… (that’s different from curse, of course)