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Laura Aguilar

Luis Alfaro

Don Bachardy

Ben Cuevas

D'Lo

Vaginal Davis

Tony De Carlo

Alison De La Cruz

Anthony Friedkin

Olga Garcia-Echeverria

Rudi Gerneich

Ken Gonzales-Day

Susan "Phranc" Gottlieb

Aurora Guerrero

Robert "Cyclona" Legorreta

Catherine Lord

Guglio "Gronk" Nicandro

Roy Rogers Oldenkamp

Monica Palacios

Antonio Rael

Julio Salgado

Terisa Siagatonu

Joey Terrill

Ryan Trecartin

 

 

Olga García-Echeverría

  • Writer Olga García-Echeverría
  • Olga's Work
  • Contributer Stephanie Zendejas

 

 

 

Olga Garcia Echeverria, xica from the barrio of el Este de Los Angeles. Pride in her multi-lingual tongue, she takes me through travels of remembering my memories, reflecting her stories onto me as if they were my own. I find her to be important because the soul is important. Artist can sell art, poets can sell poems, but when it doesn’t touch you, when it makes you feel nothing, what creation are you holding? I find that my connection to her poetry is not my process of appropriating emotions, of realities that do not paint themselves to me. My connection to her poetry becomes that which connects to her. I find Olga’s ability to connect back to the spirit, one of the most important factors of her establishment as a writer. On her book she says that some of her influences were ghost stories and cemeteries, already creating a sense of different realities outside of our own. This introduction might not do her any justice, but when you watch and hear her read, it’s a captivation of the soul.

 

 

Everyday Revolution

Not all warriors come to battle
with steel bullets
and clenched fists

sometimes resistance is a steady drumbeat
a Yaqui deer dance surviving
a word unleashed from a woman’s mouth

Sometimes transformation is only an orgasm away

It is here
on the tips of our multilingual tongues
pulling at the roots
of our hair
seeded in the jungles
between our legs
-gateways-

Maybe every barrio girl and woman
staring out a kitchen
or bus window
is contemplating an evolution
of herself

Maybe revolutions begin in mirrors
in the reflection of flesh
that desires
inside those who dare to envision
that we are all potential guerrilleras
transformers of time and space
cultural alchemists
sexual catalysts

Each of us a cocooned poem
on the verge
of birth

_________________

“Each of us is a cocooned poem.”
With this line she ends one her poems on revolution. This poem interacts in small stances that act as vignettes, creating short films in the imagination of the reader. I also find this poem to ring in frustration, of rooting down, rising up as womyn. It is a poem of power, it calls to me as if it was reaching out to me with palms out stretched, a call to the reader to be brave. I find myself being the womyn looking out the window on the bus, on the train on my way to school. Contemplating my own evolution, planning out the next revolution. This poem touched parts of me that create motions in my brain, feelings in my stomach. With cultures dying, the endurance of it lays in the beat that we can hold to our breath. When not feeling balanced, it only takes a moment of reflection, how long can we hold our eyes in the mirror? How long can we see ourselves and not dream? We are all in the moment of transformation, a foot away from the selves we’re scared of leaving, and a foot closer to the being that we want to become.

 

Vuelo

You of the hot pink

flapping rebozo

suelta tu voz

por dentro suelta

suelta complejos

que caigan

lejos

tan lejos

de aquí

mujer ábrete

como tierra en temblor

temblando

sin temor

abrete

que el fuego por dentro

tan lumbre

tan tú

resalte

explote

mujer sembradora

suelta semilla

lo que llevas sembrado

bajo tu lengua

entre tu pecho

en tu puño

abriéndose como flor

floreciendo

mujer suelta

las flores moradas

mariposas nocturnas

palomas blancas

tan blancas

que llevas

suelta la máscara

échala al río

aviéntala

quiébrala

contra rocas

paredes

y suelos

mujer suelta

cadenas

esposas

suelta cadera

libra muñeca

suelta tus colores

que manchan montañas

horizontes

que manchan

pájaro paraíso

pájaro mujer vuela

vuela papalote suelto

vuela

                        mujer

                                                vuela

_________________

Vuelo is another poem calling to an imaginative womyn, perhaps the womyn is a mirror, to herself, to all of us. Remembering, reflecting the moments that I have felt that I do not have a voice, where I have felt my throat close up, to resisting speaking up. Olga asks us to shake in power, to open up ourselves without fear, lighting up the fire in our belly to drop our seed, to take off our masks and throw it in the river. An elder once said that our ego is the mask we wear, and that we’ve worn it for so long that we no longer remember who we truly are, no longer remember how we really look without the mask that became us. This allows me to reflect on the moments of wakefulness in which we no longer pay attention to our surroundings, we are a walking dead, living but not looking, breathing but not living. I find this poem to ask me to take my chain of pains off, to remove my ego and let myself paint the mountains of my dreams. Fly womyn fly.

 

A Poem in Protest

When President Obama was elected, I heard the words “the less of two evils won.” A promising president, but who funds the war, who allows the continuation of violence. Her poem in protest is against all that this government has openly lied about, has increasingly sold violence for us to buy. Her poem in protest stands along side me as I think of my friends playing war games, romanticizing killing. She speaks of her poem as an old poem for war is old, for problems begun by this country where never ours to carry, where never us to fund, for bullets entering someone were never meant to be shot. Almost in anger each line, one after the other, rings in the truth of what violence does. The anger of a country becoming the blood that runs. She resists the hatred, she embraces the blooming of fists in the air, in which she creates the mirrors of my own resistance.

 

 

 

 

 

 

I was born on the border

between Compton and Watts,

raised in the chunti town of Huntington Park.

Didn't get out

until I went to East L.A.,

spent three years

trying to get my way.

Finally left the

community college system.

Made it into UCLA.

Xicana/o art and literature

is what I study

with another major chord

in the Gender world.

Bringing youth together

is what I want to do.

Sharing self respect and consciousness

would be one of my dreams come true.

After I'm done

I want to take down adventure.

Life giving me permission to travel.

Gain experiences that equal strenghts,

cry with wondrous spirit

and make amends.

Continue on rocking it,

until the ground shakes.

Grad school after a minute would be nice.

So would be the goals into my PhD.

Studying plant medicine with

Native Tribes,

listening to the waves they've created

in song and dance

even after

all this time.