Adrian Arancibia Poet San Diego , CA

Bio

Adrian Arancibia is a San Diego writer. He is a founding member of the Taco Shop Poets and the arts collaborative Voz Alta. A co-editor of the Taco Shop Poets Anthology: Chorizo Tonguefire, he currently writes for the San Diego Union Tribune and for national magazines. Born in Iquique, Chile he is currently working on his Ph.D. in Literature at U.C. San Diego and is a full-time professor at Miramar Community College. His work comments the lives of immigrants on the border.

THE NEW CHICANO MOVMENT

„Creole began to tell us what the blues were all
about. They were not about anything very new. He and
his boys up there were keeping it new, at the risk of
ruin, destruction, madness, and death, in order to
find new ways to make us listen. For, while the tale
of how we suffer, and how we are delighted, and how we
may triumph is never new, it always must be heard.
There isn‚t any other tale to tell, it‚s the only
light we‚ve got in all this darkness.‰

thought this might be an interesting way of thinking
about the 'new chicano movment'... here is a poem i
wrote...

jimmy baldwin wrote about this:

horns blare
a silent sliding note
across porches
where love should have reached
where mornings
have given way
to 'cascaras' to falling
leaves. and nothings changed
no 'fandango' no falling prices
or organizing rituals
reeping hunger to action.
just tired and a bit hung over
the newspapers have bit on this.
the twenty four chant
and scream.
the vetes they remember a time.
and we falling from grace,
forget to say thank you.

no poems soliciting hope-
only empty bullhorns.
faces melding into faces
traveling horse shows
words had changed so little.

the old man told me,
time to put yo hands up
and fight. instead
i trudge out my door
watching the traffic.
the helicopter shadow
ride up the wall and fall
again.

the smell of morning, in coffee
cigarette and mould and rugs
that might have been shaking.
the street lifts the same
song from windows and doors.

i am waiting.
i tell myself the possibilities lie
in the intersections
where the hands intertwined
and came out thirded, not seconded.
where the names of yesterday
met today. and called out tomorrow.
where a melding of voices
bled, the silence dry.

i hear it. n you?
the horns blare.
and the morning slides.

copying down your name
on this slip
on this folded note
i've worn as my sleeve
and the reached out
silence of night
seems to amplify
the longing in my eyes
and you call me
just to say goodbye

breaking time
with the traffic
and the whirring noise
my heart envelopes
i made sure to stand
at the signal
with the blinking
red hand

i am tracing
the tattoos from the face
of a child
so that might better understand
the lines of battered
stomachs hungry
as night lines

and you become
the resonating pulse
of something from a time before
where i noted each
of the pages
and something inside blows