https://www.ncwriters.org/books/the-firetalkers-daughter/

https://chrisricecooper.com/401-backstory-of-the-poem-this-fire-tastes-like-from-the-poetry-collection-the-firetalkers-daughter-by-regina-yc-garcia/

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