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.