Tracking for Sign

NACLA poetry series from CantoMundo's event "Ferguson/Ayotzinapa: CantoMundo Poets Read and Respond."

December 28, 2014

Rosebud Ben-Oni

On December 15, New York's Loisaida Center hosted a poetry reading in which current and former fellows of the national Latina/o poets workshop CantoMundo read from their work in solidarity with ongoing protests and mobilizations in and around Ferguson, Missouri, and the College of Ayotzinapa in Iguala, Mexico. NACLA is publishing a series from the event.

 

In the bodies of electric fences

                        That still sing

            I am somewhere

                                                Deserts have claimed

Good evening sir I am a sixth

seal

opening

 

in how are you this evening no I live here

 

for years

my brother

 

 a gardener                  a war

 

hurricane                     factory

 

wiped out

 

most of our family      I’m sorry I’m                           not sure

 

what

profile

you say

 

I’m fitting

 

Why                I’m harmless

 

as hello kitty                            nothing

 

to conceal                    I instagram

 

warrior poses   my hoodie

 

is bright pink               I know

 

the silent letters          

           

never join                                the fun

 

and then make it all                 weird                                       say every year

 

is my year                    say                   just today       

 

 I was elected commissioner

 

of a fantasy  football league                           sir I’m sorry

 

That’s an old address

 

I hang at the halls of justice

 

I’m a super friend

in a shared universe

 

Vigilante no

I’m your flex player

 

I’d strip a new skin

before I allow interception

 

 

No I don’t get involved no I’m

 

gainfully employed

 

in the land of a thousand dances

 

 

Yes sir it’s getting late let’s say

 

If there’s a lockout and no more

 

Yellow brick road

 

 

And my word

 

sand and wind                        good evening sir

 

 

Let’s get down to it

 

 

I’ve come for my brother

 

I’ve walked all night for him

 

 

I am the unburied dreams of this desert

 

This desert fed the power lines

 

of so many fallen cities


Born to a Mexican mother and Jewish father, Rosebud Ben-Oni is a CantoMundo Fellow and the author of SOLECISM (Virtual Artists Collective, 2013). Her work has appeared in POETRY, The American Poetry Review, Arts & Letters, Bayou, Puerto del Sol, among other publications, with more work forthcoming. Rosebud is an Editorial Advisor for VIDA: Women in Literary Arts; find out more about her at 7TrainLove.org.

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