Fan mail? For Poet in Mexico? Well, kind of. Recently, after the last few Poet in Mexico posts, I received two separate emails on the same subject with very different responses. Both spoke on the lack of political commentary in the posts, the absence of my usual observations on Mexico/US relations, politics, my calls for resistance, and so on. One of the writers wondered what had happened, had I given up? Was I no longer interested in the good fight? They spoke of the upcoming midterm US elections, of the ongoing fiascos in the Middle East, of immigration, the border and ICE, and the US with its ongoing threats to Mexican sovereignty. They threw in some concerns about climate. And asked if I was in retreat? Was it all going to be about long walks and the Mundial? The faded Mets? Was it all going to be about life and tranquility? Sports and poetry?

The other email noted the same characteristics of the posts. Rather than being concerned about my giving up, the writer expressed a kind of relief. The politics of this world can be so crazy-making. Posts that remind us to take some time to enjoy life, this writer suggested, are kind of nice too. They liked the country walk photos, the poems, and music. They suggested that future posts go in that direction. Not necessarily all the time. But.

To be honest, I hadn’t given much thought to the direction of the recent posts. There’s been a lot going on in my life, a lot of it terrific, some of it somewhat difficult. I’ve always meant the posts to reflect on what’s in my life at the moment. Am I following the news of the day, local, international? Of course! How not to? Am I following the rhythms of my own day to day to day? Yes and again.

I guess this all reflects on what I’m trying to balance, trying to make sense of. Sometimes the political does come front and center because it is that way. Sometimes it recedes, because, well, there’s other stuff to focus on. I have been following the US political party primaries with some interest—Maine (my sister-in-law was a delegate to the convention), Michigan, Wyoming were all on my radar. So is Alaska (Alaska? Alaska). Florida, of course I’ve given upon And then there’s Texas—always the question: is this the year? Can we all become Talafreakos? 😁

Something in the news that caught my eye from the US was the moron in the White House’s executive order on childhood vaccines and how completely and fabulously stupid this president and his lemmings are about medical care and science. It reminds me of how grateful I am to live in a country where childhood vaccines are considered essential (as are all vaccines—Covid, flu, tetanus, etc) and are free and readily available.

A pop up vaccine point in Conzatti Park in Oaxaca centro. During the Christmas season, I ran into one in a shopping mall, where I got my Covid booster and my flu shot. I received my three part ten year tetanus vaccinations in a similar way.

Of course, the stark differences between healthcare in Mexico and the US has become even clearer as the US federal government does everything it can to undermine the ACA/Obamacare and give more and more handouts to big Pharma. Meanwhile, here, under the administration of Presidenta Claudia Sheinbaum, Mexico has begun the slow rollout of universal, free healthcare for all citizens, as well as permanent and temporary residents. Folks have been registering in stages since April (I registered in June). The program officially begins in January 2027 with partial coverage for major health problems (cancer, cardiac, infant care, for example), though complete coverage won’t go into effect until the middle of 2028. However once enrolled, beginning immediately, everyone is covered for basic clinic treatment. This includes ophthalmology and hearing care. It includes medications. The idea is, as we hear so often from folks like Bernie Sanders, healthcare is a human right.

On the Día de los Taxistas, getting a cab can be kind of hard. At least in the first part of the day As for later? Depends on how much celebrating they’ve been doing, I guess.

So, yes, I have been paying attention. Maybe it’s the summer though. Maybe it’s that summer has always been a time in my life for focusing on life’s pleasures. In Oaxaca, we’re just off the month-long Guelaguetza in July. There are more fiestas. In fact, there will be throughout the city and state until Three Kings Day in January. There will be big ones, with Christmas and Día de Muertos, among the more obvious ones. September is Mes de la Patria, meaning lots of patriotic celebrations for Mexican independence. There will be smaller ones—like last week’s Día de los Taxistas (Day of the Taxis Drivers). Every holiday comes with calendas (parades) with marching bands and giant papier mache figures (monos and monas de calenda) that move throughout the city, as well as in towns. There are quinceañeras (celebrations for 15 year old girls) and weddings, with their own parades and parties with all passersby invited to join.

So while politics isn’t taking a backseat, the usual merry-making that summer brings and continues for months is definitely in full swing. Happily.

Some Poetry:

Dennis Maloney

Something else making me happy is sharing in this post the poetry of Dennis Maloney and celebrating Clearing the Stream: New and Selected Poems 1975-1925, just out with Walton Wells Press. I’ve known Dennis for about twenty years. We first met in 2006 at the AWP (Association of Writers and Writing Programs) Conference in Austin, TX. It was my first AWP—I was on a panel for Teachers & Writers Collaborative—and I was quite overwhelmed. I hadn’t known much about AWP but Pablo Medina, with whom I was at that time translating Garcia Lorca’s Poet in New York (Grove Press, 2008), was then the president of AWP. He had suggested I might want to go. T & W graciously offered me a spot on their panel on writing about teaching writing.

The AWP conference in Austin in 2006 was very different from the behemoths the conferences are now. In Austin there were probably around 2000 people, writers, editors, some marvelous small and independent presses at the book fair. Starting around 2012 AWP attendance at conferences really began to increase in size. This past year, the 2026 attendance in Baltimore was between 10 and 11,000 attendees. I admit that I stopped going to AWP in Minneapolis in 2015. What for me in the first years had been a social literary happening, had developed into something too unwieldy and full of itself. I didn’t have a sense anymore that I was getting to meet up with fellow poets. It was a lot of folks who seemed mainly to be looking for jobs and publishers, to be seen. It wasn’t fun anymore.

But those first years? I met up with friends, made friends. Went to readings and parties. That’s how I met Dennis. After getting to know him in Austin, we would regularly meet up at AWP and also at the American Literary Translators Association (ALTA) annual conferences. Dennis is a very good poet and translator, as well as the publisher of the marvelous White Pine Press. His books include The Map Is Not the Territory, Just Enough, Listening to Tao Yuan Ming, The Things I Notice Now, The Faces of Guan Yin and Windows. A bilingual German/English volume, Empty Cup was published in Germany in 2017. His work has been translated into over a dozen languages including full length collections in German, Japanese and Bulgarian. His works of translation include: The Stones of Chile by Pablo Neruda, The Landscape of Castile by Antonio Machado, Between the Floating Mist: Poems of Ryokan, and The Poet and the Sea by Juan Ramon Jimenez.

It’s with a kind of regret that I have to note that in all those years Dennis and I never became as close as I imagine we would have been had we lived in the same city. When I would see him at AWP and ALTA conferences—I kept going to ALTA for several years after the move to Mexico, because I valued the friendships of so many of the folks I met there—our conversations about poetry and translation, about politics, our lives, were always quite satisfying. Dennis has a comfortable way about himself that makes others feel the same. He’s thoughtful and kind, engaging and open. As a publisher, he has done a lot for other poets. As a poet himself? Well, here’s a look. Because it’s with great pleasure I welcome Dennis Maloney to Poet in Mexico.

Border Crossings
 
for Jose Oliver & Tzveta Sofronieva
 
1
 
We gather in the Black Forest to explore
the boundaries, borders of language.
A border that is always
wandering, sometimes east, west. We never
know exactly where, always vanishing, breaking,
maybe inside ourselves.
 
Listening intently, I try to follow the patterns,
cadence of speech alive in the air and strange to the ear.
In conversation and poetry, we struggle to find the right words,
through the jolts and swerves of syntax, complexities of exchange,
the extravagance of lost syllables.
 
Sometime language borders are permeable,
where breath itself is a conscious action
that travels across languages and joins us together.
 
2
 
I have spent my life building
bridges between the shores of language
and culture, always straddling emptiness,
danger, wave by wave, a map of the world.
 
I have crossed the Pont Neuf, the Ponte
Vecchio as poets have between reason and madness.
The Bridge of Sighs, the Charles bridge, the humpback
canal bridges of Amsterdam, a long shaky bridge,
always teetering. In the evening I wander the streets
of the city along these frontiers of our uncertain freedom.
  
3
 
In the capitals and squares of Europe
people gather to support the Falun Gong, refugees
fleeing Syria, and victims of the genocide in Armenia.
Under the Brandenburg gate they celebrate the
World Cup win. I hear the rare chant of hare krishna,
an almost extinct species in America.
 
In the dark shadows the nights of broken glass
reemerge as the persecuted are confused
with the persecutors and marches and rallies
against all that is foreign stream into the night.
 
4
 
A dictionary explodes, sending words
fleeing toward the borders,
chased by those without name
toward a great unknown destination.
 
Words are refugees smuggled in hidden
train compartments, walking obscure paths
through farm fields, forests, washing
up dead on shores, lost at sea, crawling 
under fences and over walls built to keep them out.
 
Words are on a clandestine voyage seeking asylum
in an unknown language, their passports thick from 
collecting centuries of official stamps. One can’t
over-estimate the amount of accumulated baggage.
 
5
                                    for Fouad El-Auwad
 
The Syrian poet entered Germany at sixteen
and now reads his poems in both
the sonorous Arabic and the harder
German cadence. Both beyond my understanding.
 
After the poems come audience questions,
not about the syntax of the poems
and their wild unpredictable lines
but the fractured country he left decades ago.
A country shattered into shards
like a precious porcelain Chinese vase
that hit the floor, hard. They ask
how the mangled lives and broken
cities can be put back together.
 
What is the poet’s answer? 
A storm is gathering over the world,
that there are no victories,
we must learn not to be afraid,
all of us must learn to speak a new language.
 
6
 
On dark nights when I have no words
of my own, translations calm me, let me 
jump deep in letter by letter,
soaking up the dampness of the words.
 
I hear a whispered sigh like the sea
in the dark, as both poem and self
exist in a constant state of becoming.
 
What draws us as translator to seek
an equivalent music from one
tongue to another? Affinities, a vibrancy,
listening to meanings that reside, flowering,
beyond the thickness of dictionaries.
 
Nibbling at the edges of the poem, we give
contours to shadows. How do we translate
the silence that lives between the lines?
 
I am a nomad searching for a language
in which I am a word unbound,
wandering between the world
we inhabit and the world we create.
 
7
 
On the Charles Street Bridge, artists sketch
people passing and jewelers
sell their wares. A small
band sings the delta blues of
Robert Johnson, meeting the devil
at the crossroads; the melancholy Rilke blues,
and that unending struggle between poetry and life;
the blues of Kafka, and snow falling in winter,
the Vaclav Havel blues that changed everything.
 
Sing of the fragile moments of life,
beauty, and dreams, and all the love
in vain, train done left the station blues.

Good Links: Dennis Maloney and John B. and Joan Sebastian

Clearing the Stream, Dennis Maloney (Walton Well Press, 2026)

Readers of Poet in Mexico know what comes here. While this book is available from online dealers (including the publisher), even greater is to go to your local, independent bookstore and order a copy for yourself and ask them to get a couple of copies for the poetry section. Support independent bookstores! And independent literary presses! https://www.waltonwellpress.com/books/clearing-the-stream

Two Sebastians:

Joan Sebastian, Lobo Domesticado (1997)

I became familiar with the music of Joan Sebastian in the late 1990’s. He’s quite good. He’s received more Grammy Awards (12) than any other Mexican singer/songwriter and, when you listen, you know there’s a good reason why. His early music was more pop. Later, Sebastian, who died in 2015 at the age of 64 after recurring bouts with bone cancer, became better known for his interest in regional Mexican music. Sí sí.

John B. Sebastian, Younger Generation (1969)

I’m not sure why John B. Sebastian has remained so sturdy in my cultural memory. Is it fair that folks younger than me know him because of Welcome Back? His appearance at Woodstock, was unplanned. He was stoned and tripping because he wasn’t supposed to play but the organizers suddenly needed someone to play an acoustic set after the big rain storms and the former Lovin’Spoonful star was right there. The moment for me in this song? He can’t remember the words, asks the audience “Help me,” and they do.

Please comment! Please share! Restack! Respond!

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A mural in our colonia: Even if the land is barren, life always finds the nectar of hope.

These days lately have been different for me, strange, almost dreamlike. Maybe it’s been the unusual for late July and early August humidity. Maybe it’s been my own mood. I’ve been enjoying life, combining for myself the social and the solitary. I’ve gone to poetry readings, had lunches and afternoon coffee/tea with friends. And I’ve gone for walks. Lots of walks. Those of you who know me well know how much I love to walk. In my earlier years I spent a lot of time running trails, later cycling them. Now I like going a little slower. Still for distance, usually seven, eight, nine miles a day. And those of you who really know me, know how much I love to walk with my dogs.

They’re great companions. They bound ahead of me, they lag behind. They listen carefully when I speak and offer great, silent counsel. Sometimes they disappear and come back, sometimes very dusty, sometimes wet and muddy. They give me sly grins at that moment. The younger Xochipilli has a great, hanging puppy tongue.

A few days ago, on our second of the day daily walks. I’m not sure exactly what happened but the dreamy walk seemed to disappear into dreamtime. I don’t know where my head was exactly, my thinking, wondering, but I started taking photos. Do they document the walk? I’m not sure. They seem to document my state of mind.

Off we go, Apollo leading, Xochipilli a little unsure.

Mountains are a major part of walks around here.

Climbing flowers.

This pasteleria, Rebanadas de Sueños, Slices of Dreams, serves the most wonderful cakes, gelatinas, and carlotas.

A buey (ox) family.

Fruit and vegetable store named for the two soon to be three year old Allison, a total cutie pie.

Cactus on the walk.

Walk coming to a close.

Cacti at home.

Letting resting dogs.

Some new Mark Statman poems:

elegies

morning no tears no 
sound no wind the 
clouds above the 
mountains not really 
moving just the sun 
slowly starting to burn 
them away and 
reveal the sky in  
light morning blue 
which revels in light in 
lightened distance
and the lightened 
sudden arrival of birds 
red-winged blackbirds 
yellow-winged finches 
green and blue colibris 
(hummingbirds) I wrote 
no tears I wrote 
no tears some 
saving graces 
over vengeful furies
(the furies by 
ice and night defeated)
how on love’s terms 
there’s nothing 
anymore of me 
that's there for them 


collecting words

there'd be there
is there always
was a game
around the corner
eternal bridesmaid
conversation of birds
of birds
in trees and
limestone parades
mirror aloft eyes
upon eyes upon
flight you remember
that where you were
language equaled
eyeglasses music
abeyance spinning
ceiling fans added 
atmosphere wind
atmosphere darkness
and leaflessness yes
hidden in daylight you
said you were
going to say
twilight artedecer
a campaign
against night roads
filled with busses
and trucks we
collect stones and
magnets collect
stamps twigs
all for that
other museum of
racing hearts one
speed loneliness
one twilight though
this time it’s
from the other
side of the road 
another highway and
world I look for
invented or imagined in-
verted trails
watch violins fall
from the sky
strings vibrating
until that moment
before they hit
earth every
silence collapses a
cradle a chair a
chain there's
usually something
missing in each
translation a predicate
a god last call for
the night the twilight a
swallow of water
a swallow of
birds now tattooed on
our arms like a
field of harvested
corn on fire

ascending light and clouds

love doesn't hurry
anymore and I
don't want to
hurry either there
were so many 
stories taken that
like Odysseus
in the myth of Ur 
everyone settled 
for whatever was left
without complaining
even then there
was a question of
umpires or referees
calling fouls balls
strikes a castigo for
thinking even the
chastest thoughts I
know what calculates
sieve mind and time
body I know when
love walks through
the room even when
not looking my way
some hurt is
more perilous the
easy street of
conjunction meeting
the choir call of
limitation there are
changes and changelings
there are restorations
and evidence I know
I need to remind
you these storm cloud
afternoons these
twists of fate and
cadence that
whatever you'll
have me do I will


in a minute

in the end what-
­ever's worth the
weight brevity
of what's been
rodeo rainbow
reminds us of
wordlessness  or
silence theft
it was my first
time in Mexico 
and suddenly
 
	I
knew where I was
I didn’t mind
a day in the
woods that started
at sunset ended
at dawn it
made sense like
music like being existence
flor and fauna tides
wherewithal confusion
lizards of want or 
fate webbing of
dust that meets 
mist that meets 
fame

	there's really
nothing to
worry about anymore
a band in the
bandshell plays
la llorona we'll 
all weep for someone 
divine highway
your presence
as a blessing any
curse left
behind roadside detritus
that those earthly
heavenly hosts 
carry away

Good Links: Just one this week. Jonathan Richman. Yeah.

I could post video after video of Jonathan Richman and I don’t think anyone could ever get tired of watching or listening. Here’s a song/tone poem that you’ll have to listen to. It fits in with the spirit of dreaming and it’s kind of haunting.

Please comment! Please share! Restack! Respond!

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So much to think about, no?

Here in Mexico, we’re dealing with some crazy US stuff, a lot having to do with our northern neighbor interfering with this country’s sovereignty. Were US forces operating illegally in the country to bring down narcos? The US says no, but it also has been claiming yes. Was the US negotiating with narcos without the Mexican government’s knowledge? Again, nothing is clear And, with the deaths of at least 17 Mexican nationals—14 while in ICE custody and 3 during ICE operations—in addition to requests filed with the US Department of Justice and with a number of state Attorneys General, Presidenta Claudia Sheinbaum has filed an official complaint on behalf of Mexico against the US with the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights. Acknowledging the importance of the United States as a neighbor, trading partner, and friend, Sheinbaum sees the US government, in allowing the killing of Mexican citizens, has gone too far.

It isn’t as if ICE cares who it kills. The response is always the same. Deny. Reject. Ignore. In this it echoes the Trump insanity model: Cheat. Lie. Swindle. It would be comic in its absurdity if it weren’t all so true and if so many lives weren’t really at stake. There’s an economy tanking both nationally and internationally under the weight of tariffs, the now forever war in the Middle East, as well as the hideous Humongous Hideous Hijack (you know, Big Beautiful Bill). There’s the First Amendment constantly under attack. Free and fair elections constantly under attack. There’s the attacks on health and healthcare, on science, the environment, on the arts. Civil rights. Human rights. Other than the wealthy elites, is there anyone whose way of living they aren’t bent on destroying? Can it really be the whole citizenry they despise?

Vigil for Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, a Mexican national murdered by ICE in Houston on July 7.

And I was in such a good mood. Really. In fact? Just two day ago on Facebook I posted (and keep in mind how rarely I post on FB):

Well, the Mundial is over and that was fun. I was rooting for Spain in the end—hard to root for Argentina in its politics—and it was a terrific match. England beating France the way it did made me feel even better about Mexico. We looked better than France. I’ve gotten past Trump’s attempt to corrupt things and have lots of good feelings for the US team.

What next? The Mets are so bad, despite 2 of 3 from the Phillies. Our local baseball team, the Guerreros are okay, our local soccer team, the Alebrijes have been worse than the Mets (though that season hasn’t even started yet it already looks to be a long one). I’ll pay attention to the Liga Mexicana, maybe the Premier. American football will start soon enough. Go Big Blue.

Of course I’ll keep my eyes on baseball. Mainly though, it looks like working seriously on the next book of poems. On the Poet in Mexico substack. Long walks with the dogs. Staying sober. A life with meaning. Love, social justice, beauty. No complaints.

Sending waves out to the universe, to all in this spinning world.

And with this photo:

Off with the dogs—that’s Xochipilli behind me, Apollo bringing up the rear-

Because that’s how I really want to feel. I don’t want to think of the catastrophes up north. I don’t want to think of what is happening to the world. At least not in the negative. I want to think in the positive. Which brings me to this week’s featured poetry (and below, as well in Good Links, the featured music video). Because in both the poetry and music, there’s a spirit of collaboration, of folks working together. In the poetry, it’s that of the poet and the translator. In the music, a musician and a filmmaker (also a musician). In both cases, I get the sense of artists who get what it means to collaborate, to cooperate, to put beauty in the world.

This Poet in Mexico’s featured poet is Claudia Luna Fuentes. I can’t say I know Claudia, though in inscribing books to each other we have exchanged notes. She did recently gift me some delicious avocados from her garden in Saltillo. I was aware of her poetry beforehand. Claudia is an important figure here, particularly in the northern Mexico poetry scene. She writes an influential column on the arts and poetry for one of the dailies there. A member of Mexico’s Sistema Nacional de Creadores de Arte, she has published a number of books of poetry, among them Amenazado y brillante, Carne para las flores, Antología personal, Ruido de hormigas and La turba, as well as Donde la piel, from which the poems published here are taken. Her work has been translated into Arabic, English, French, German and Polish.

It’s been through a mutual friend, Jay Miskowiec that I’ve come to know her work better. A good friend of ours down here, the writer/producer/director and activist, Gail Pellett many years ago had suggested Jay and I might like each other and over the past 8 or 9 years we have become close. Jay is a very good fiction writer, a terrific translator, and the director and translation editor of Aliform Publishing, which published my translation of Araceli Mancilla Zayas’ The House of Ciervo earlier this year. Among many things? Jay, who received his MA and PhD in comparative literature from the City University of New York, was the last graduate student of one of my translator heroes, Gregory Rabassa.

The translations here are from the bilingual collection of Donde la Piel/Where the Skin which is just out with Mantis Publishing. I’d read the book, which came out in 2019, in Spanish (a gift from Claudia) before and I was curious to see what Jay would do with the work. I primarily think of him as a translator of prose, particularly fiction, and I’m pretty impressed with what he does with Claudia’s lyrical shifts, the intensity of her images and movement.

It’s with pleasure I welcome Claudia Luna Fuentes and Jay Miskowiec to Poet in Mexico. ¡Que disfruten!

Claudia Luna Fuentes.

Four Poems by Claudia Luna Fuentes/Translations Jay Miskowiec

from Donde la Piel/Where the Skin

EL VALLE DE LAS MONJAS
 
Nacarado sobre albo
 
aparece el valle
al fondo el manantial se confunde con otro espejismo
 
lodo y carrizos al llegar
y pantanos donde jinetes se hunden silenciosamente
                    donde monjas han atascado su automóvil
 
estamos aquí
ciénaga al pie de la montaña
tortugas   peces   caracoles
 
los niños reventamos el espejo de agua:
me sumerjo con ojos abiertos
aferrada a una roca en el fondo cristalino
 
entre los dedos un pedazo de pan
recibe a los peces que muerden mis pies
                                                                   mi mano
                                                                   el pan
 
arriba mi madre hace tiempo llama
yo aguanto la respiración
es fresca el agua
fresco este cardumen del valle
sus cuerpos: hojas plateadas de mi alegría
 
aguanto un poco
miro las pequeñas colas en agitación
las bocas redondas que tragan y devuelven las migajas
 
flotan mis cabellos
el manatial pasa un manto cálido por mi nuca
el sol atraviesa el agua
                                           ilumina mis ojos
                                           ilumina los peces
 
estos mis nuevo años
para siempre

VALLEY OF THE NUNS
 
Pearly white
appears the valley
 
at its bottom a spring blends with another mirage
 
we reach the mud and reeds 
and bogs horseback riders silently sink into
               where nuns have run aground their car
 
we’re here 
the marsh at the foot of the mountain
turtles   fish    snails
 
we children shatter the watery mirror 
and I sink with open eyes
clinging to a rock in the crystalline depths
 
from my fingers the fish that bite 
                                                        my feet
                                                        my hand    
                                                        feed upon a piece of bread
 
my mother calls to me now for a while
 
I hold my breath
the water is cool
cool this valley’s school of fish
their leafy bodies silver-plated with my joy
 
I hold my breath a little longer
look at the movement of their tiny tails
their rounded mouths that take in and expel the crumbs
 
my hair floats around me
the spring wraps a warm mantle around my neck
the sun pierces the water
                                              it lights my eyes
                                              it illuminates the fish
 
these moments will always be 
me at nine


NUNCA SOLEDAD
 
Nací acompañada:
la piel de mi madre por fuera
la piel de mi hermana a un lado
 
Así
me ha dicho la vida
que el mundo es para tres al menos
( o para cuatro al menos )
 
Así
hice una familia de tres
que luego borró sus fronteras
y seguí
con las manos agarradas a alguien
a algo
a sabiendas que otros
alguien
algo
me cubren
con sus élitros
con su piel
o su follaje 


NEVER SOLITUDE
 
I was born amidst company:
the skin of my mother outside
the skin of my sister beside me
 
And so
life has told me
the world is for at least three
( or at least four )
 
And so
I made a family of three
its boundaries later erased
and I went on
with my hands tied to someone
to something
knowing that others
someone
something
covers me
with its wings
with its skin
or its leaves


LA MUJER QUE HUYE DE SU NOMBRE
 
Cuando quieras decir mi nombre
di     mujer con la cabeza en llamas
 
cuando digas mi nombre
di      terror sobre una silla de ruedas
di      mujer cojeando hacia un corredor oscuro
 
cuando digas mi nombre
di    niña mexicana en un puerto chino
di    el amor no está repítelo
 
cuando digas mi nombre
di    aviones que parten y se estrellan
 
cuando digas mi nombre
di    ratones ardiendo en un foso
di    no creo repítelo
 
di    un beso    un beso
cuando quieres decir mi nombre
 

THE WOMAN WHO FLEES FROM HER NAME
 
When you want to say my name
say    woman with her hair on fire
 
when you say my name
say    terror in a wheelchair
say    woman limping down a dark corridor
 
when you say my name
say    Mexican girl in a Chinese port
say    love’s not there repeat it
 
when you say my name
say    planes that depart and crash
 
when you say my name
say    rats burning in a pit
say    I don’t believe it repeat it
 
say    a kiss    a kiss
when you want to say my name


APUNTE FINAL
 
Anónima
antes de caminar sobre las flores
( oh sí   caminaremos sobre flores )
dame la dentadura salvaje de los jóvenes
su certeza enloquecida
su fundación del mito
 
sí
dame
con eso tengo suficiente
el resto son
( incrédulo )
únicamente flores
y esculturas de su perfume


FINAL POINT
 
Nameless one
before walking on the flowers
( oh yes     we will walk among the flowers )
give me the savage teeth of youth
their maddened certainty
their mythical founding
 
yes
give me that
and it will be enough
the rest are
( incredulous )
only flowers
and sculptures of their scent
 

Claudia Luna Fuentes and Jay Miskowiec.

GOOD LINKS: FUENTES/MISKOWIEC AND DE GRIESSEN/CANNONBALL

Claudia Luna Fuentes (Jay Miskowiec, translator), Donde la Piel/Where the Skin (2026)

Donde La Piel/Where the Skin is available at Librería Carlos Fuentes, University of Guadalajara; the Librería Bonilla, Mexico City; and the Librería Carlos Monsiváis, Saltillo. It will also be available at the Feria Internacional del Libro de Los Angeles and the Feria Internacional del Libro de Antropología y Historia en Mexico City. You can also order it directly from the publisher at https://mantiseditores.com/libros/donde-la-piel-where-the-skin/. Those of you who know me know that my suggestion is to go into your local bookstore, order a copy for yourself, and suggest the bookstore order a copy or two for their poetry section. Support independent bookstores! Support independent literary presses!

France de Griessen, High Strung Master (2026)

This film, by Cannonball Statman, of France de Griessen’s High Strung Master comes off the wonderful album Dawn Breakers. France and Cannonball have collaborated with each other for a number of years, touring together throughout Europe, playing on each other’s recent albums. Jesse (Cannonball) is currently working on a full-length film of de Griessen. Here’s a review of the album in Agence France News: https://www.agencefrancenews.fr/france-de-griessen-pretresse-de-la-witch-folk/

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The Tri—the Mexican men’s team, united México in a beautiful way—all over the country, we wore our playeras (jerseys) with pride.

These are the strangest days. A part of me has been trying not to think of the politics of the world. A desire to seek sanity in two of my passions, poetry and sports. So I’ve been writing a lot. And reading a lot. It’s had all the right effects. Mostly a sense that the world can be okay, will be okay. A sense of immanence and transcendence in everything around me.

And sports? Most of you will forgive me for not even really wanting to think about the NY Mets. Yes, they really still are in the major leagues, but barely, my friends, barely. And I see that the crosstown Yankees are in some kind of swoon of their own.

Still, and at last, there were the world champion NY Knickerbockers! I watched all the games here, the same way I watched all the games back in 1970 and 1973. This is an amazing group that made me realize how much a New Yorker I still am, how much I still carry in me the city where I lived more than three-quarters of my life. The playoffs were stunning throughout, and the finals, well? How not to love this team?

The Knicks at City Hall, after receiving the keys to the City—see Mayor Mamdani’s extraordinary speech below.

(Still, politics had to intervene there right? Did I really need to see the hideous presence of the US president in the owners box at the game the Knicks lost at MSG? And beyond hoops, did I really need his corrupt stain on the US Men’s team at the Mundial?).

(And a shout out to both México and the US for their performances, for being inspiring and delightful in their play, in how both rallied my two countries—in my FIFA bracket, silly I know, I had the final as México and the US and, yes, I picked the Tri to win it all. #nothappening, but a fella can dream…).

The world keeps turning. July is the month-long festival of the Guelaguetza, which, along with the Donaji, draws folks to Oaxaca from all over México and all over the world. Part of me is happy to spend most of the days out at the rancho, avoiding the crowds, the spectacle. Another part of me is thrilled to be in town, because of the crowds, the spectacle. So much music and dancing. Food. Excitement.

A lot is going on in the world—you all know it. A lot is going on in my life—some of you know some. Part of it is easy, part hard. I’m spending a lot of time these days reaching out to my various communities: the folks in the colonia, the folks in town, my friends everywhere, in particular in my poetry and recovery worlds. I’m not much on social media. I want (need?) something else, though even there I’m finding some sustenance.

So back to the beginning. Here’s some new poems. That’s the focus for these days. Poetry and engagement with my worlds. It really all comes to that.

Four Poems (Mark Statman)

grand illusion

solution resolution it's
a blade of grass
oak leaf maybe
mud in your eye a
constructed mighty 
fortress that takes 
us flying 
solitude could be
around the corner
solitude saints a voice
in languages I
still don't know
we walk parapets desire 
left with tastes in
our mouths 
mango fresa
ginger clove
I move through that
woods a wild 
animal a
time zone wondering
if there wasn't
anything you
wanted anything I
could do 
gratitude longing
a flute flower petals 
insect rhythm of 
sacred trust 
okay we say 
we add prayers catalogs 
wisteria and venom is
there anything you
haven't thought of?
those voices in any
head spirit of
spirits one towards
the divine the other 
no and no one wants
to talk about the
version where 
everything ends it's 
easier to talk about 
things happening life 
happening our 
absences trail
across the sky 
rubies on fire 
an embraceable vision
of you of love
our days 
out of the
future endlessly
like that fire a
happenstance of
life in its
going roar


there's quiet enough

some ancestral
happiness from and of 
woods and woodwork
keeps the air warm
the angels impatient the
negation of one
last solar gravitational
pull out of time
it's time to be
tired of all the
fighting fussing over
the length of the
only days we have
the only minutes we
still only need a moment
to remember what it
meant to be in
each other's arms a-
­bove trees
in flight 
the causality of
sex measured into love
and flame I had all
these dream rust 
ivy maybe the
way descending staircases 
as nude and illusion 
would be
all it takes we
have been together so
long and even so
not long enough when 
you put
your hand in
mine I remain in
wonder how do they
happen lives never
imagined lives to
greater purpose all the
heroes in the next
room imagining the
battles they're supposed 
to ready for they
arm themselves to the
teeth and it won't
be enough it takes a
closing of the eyes 
gesture of hand watch
the world disappear 
I don't remember 
what's real except 
those gates that open 
and close they
look familiar who goes
with each who goes
alone the open books
that make the world
lived then enliven


embracing creation

which saint will 
it be your 
shoulder mine 
the dog
days of summer
speak in syllables
whisper holy 
binding that's 
what happens
when hearts
fly out of 
ballparks onto
the fields and into
valleys we 
pray for rain 
passing no passing 
ice and loneliness 
our bodies enter
those winds and
deserts aphorism links  
we know about
history here 
now we know 
mysticism how your
eyes glow your 
glow cascades
always cascades 
mystery love and 
love mystery 
so what else is
left boxes of
shoes windows 
fireflies there's
no next station
at which to 
get off so we 
go beyond go
one more stop 
our directions 
ordinal cardinal
direct us
to bread and fire 
we long for 
those fields grown
with flowers 
today they are
roses roses and 
lilacs lilacs 
and cempasuchil


work of the heart

origami list of
changes those swans 
butterflies prayer into
mist smoke to
rain the flames
that rain one
cloud to the
next one world
to a roiled another 
we'd be
speaking slowly that
quiet night of
moths calligraphic
intersections of
numbers and wings
silences a
cairn in the
woods for location
when is north south 
when west the
masking unmasking point
and port of call
I would say 
follow fading stars
follow wine glasses and
demigods who live
on outskirts of
angelic towns our
colonia hides
only its saints 
tell me again the love 
to end love those wars
of desire tranquility
rocking chairs
rocking horses 
I know its all a universal
someplace carbon
and ash illumination
a trap that takes a
prayer at night
for sleep a prayer
at dawn to wake 
the eternal now will 
contradict itself 
eternity no 
victim of time 
now no victim of 
chance play
dice with gamblers
and lovers their
turmoil removed from
the garden cacti 
in fruit the heavenly
knot tight then
untying tied tighter

Good Links: Mamdani and the Guelaguetza

Mayor Mamdani’s amazing speech—the .04%? Yes.

Last year’s closing dance—the traditional Flor de Piña.

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This past week in our colonia, neighbors setting up for free medical, dental, and ophthalmological checkups; there was also a setup for dogs and cats to receive veterinary care.

Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about community—and of the communities of which I’m a part. In the most immediate sense, there’s the small one of my colonia where our rancho is located in the larger pueblo of San Pedro Ixtlahuaca. I’ve written about the colonia before: we hold our asambleas fairly frequently, and they are where community decisions are made about the short and long term issues facing us. Often these are about water—many of the most pressing concerns in Mexico come back to water, the availability of it, the wasting of it. We’ve been dealing with questions around having a permanent health clinic that could serve not just our colonia but those around us as well. We deal with questions of safety. We talk about funding our small fiestas and how we want to contribute to the larger ones of our area (most notably larger San Pedro Ixtlahuaca itself). One discussion a few years back centered on having a colonia panteón (cemetery) though we realized relatively quickly that the obvious location for it would have placed it just uphill from our water supply. The idea of our water being nourished by the dead convinced us to drop the idea.

Mural under construction in our colonia, May 2026.

There are other immediate communities of which I feel part, to greater or lesser degrees. We have a strong block association on the privada where our house in town, one of eighteen, is located. Though I’m not a very active part of it, there is a small and vibrant English language community in Oaxaca centro. It’s a great resource for folks, especially those who move here from the US, and it is a real lifeline for those who want to stay connected with events in the US, especially around politics.

This mural in Oaxaca centro depicts two not uncommon themes in the city—local culture and political discourse.

Of course, as someone in recovery, I feel quite connected to the strong recovery community, and some of my closer friends come from that group. As a naturalized Mexican, I’m finding myself more and more able to identify as Mexican (mexicano gringo, some of my Mexican friends will note) and that feels both a little weird and very satisfying. And I remain very much a US citizen, with all the pride and (current) embarrassment that comes with that.

In the last few years, I’ve also come to understand the importance of the different, often overlapping, literary communities of which I’m part. There’s the vibrant one here. In the last months or so, with the publication of my translation of Araceli Mancilla Zayas’ House of Ciervo, and the English language version by Efraín Velasco and me of his Spanish text Scenes Left Out Of […], my sense of belonging to the literary community has deepened greatly. We’ve done readings together from those books and for the New Orleans Poetry Festival we made the film The World in Red and Black, directed by Cannonball Statman—which also featured the Zapotec poet Pergentino José Ruiz. I have given readings over the years here, in bookstores, libraries, museums, galleries, and participated in literary festivals here and elsewhere in Mexico. At our rancho, we hold occasional music, poetry, and art events, featuring both local and visiting artists—the poetry is usually in Spanish, English, and original languages. I have to admit, though, it’s only been in the last three or four years that I find myself more and more able to see myself as a part of the Oaxaca and Mexican literary communities. Which is as it should be. To become a member of any community ought to take time.

The World in Red and Black (2026), New Orleans Poetry Festival cut.

In a certain way, I do still identify with literary communities in the United States, most notably in New York where I lived for most of my life. I’ve been back in the US a number of times over the years to read from new books, to see family and friends, though since the onslaught of Covid there have been fewer northern trips. In the almost ten years, since Katherine and I have moved to Mexico, the connections have become a little harder to maintain. Distance will do that, as will daily life. It’s one of the reasons that this Poet in Mexico substack has taken on real importance for me. It’s a way to have greater contact with my friends in the US, to write and talk with them, to publish their work. It’s also given me a chance to introduce some of my friends up north to some of the Mexican poets I’ve come to know and admire. I was recently looking through the poets and poems I’ve had the chance to publish in Poet in Mexico in the last almost year-and-a half since I started the substack. I have to say, it feels like some kind of honor roll. If you are new to reading Poet in Mexico, I invite you to go through the archives and read the poetry there. And if you aren’t new, I invite you to go back anyway and be amazed perhaps (as I was), by the wonderful work.

Some Poems:

All this brings me to today’s featured poet, Paul Hoover. Paul, who has written novels, translated a number of poets (including Friedrich Hölderlin, Maria Baranda, as well as poetry from the Vietnamese), is best known (by me) as a poet. He has written 16 books of them, won awards, and is generally just one of the more important poets out there.

Paul Hoover and Maxine Chernoff, 1982.

Paul for many years, along with Maxine Chernoff, was more legend to me than someone I actually knew, because for the longest time I didn’t know him. But Paul and Maxine were legends. In the 1970’s Paul was living in Chicago—he had moved there after graduating from college, worked in a hospital as part of his service as a conscientious objector to the war in Vietnam. Along with two other poets (Dean Faulwell and James Leonard) he founded Oink! magazine. When Faulwell and Leonard left, Maxine, who had joined the staff earlier, became coeditor. By the time I had become aware of Oink!—it was when I was an undergraduate in the late 70’s, the magazine was already a must-read for any poet. This was despite it coming out of Chicago, because in those heady days, many of us in NYC weren’t really sure poetry was being written anywhere else. The list of contributors is a who’s who of American (and world) poetry. Eventually Oink! became New American Writing, which comes out annually. Paul will publish issue number 44 of NAW in August 2026. Paul and Maxine eventually moved to the Bay Area in the mid-2000’s, where Paul still lives and teaches poetry at San Francisco State University.

I first met Paul in real life at the annual PEN America awards ceremony in NYC in 2015 (I think it was that year). I had been one of the judges for one of the translation prizes and Paul was also attending. Katherine remembers it was our friend, the poet Sharon Mesmer, who introduced us to each other at the event. Paul mentioned to me (as he shouldn’t have, but that’s one of the great things that makes Paul Paul) that he had been reading my work because he was serving on a review committee for me at the college I taught at. He was enthusiastic. We met up a little later at the American Literary Translators Association (ALTA) annual meeting where Paul heard me read from my translations of Martín Barea Mattos’ Never Made in America, which diálogos would publish in 2017. Paul asked me if I would send him some of these for NAW.

When New American Writing 35 appeared in 2017 with those translations, Katherine and I had already moved to Mexico. Efraín Velasco, who was even then one of my closest friends down here, was intrigued and wondered if I didn’t want to do an evening/reading built around those translations and other poems in the issue. We would hold it at the Proveedora Escolar bookstore, one of the cool places to read in Oaxaca. I wrote Paul and asked him if he could send me 15-20 issues, I’d pay, that we could give away as part of the event. Paul wrote me back and wondered if he couldn’t just bring them down and deliver them himself!

Reading and talking about poetry with Paul and Efraín at Proveedora Escolar.

And he did. It turned into a marvelous event. We read from the issue, Paul, Efraín, and I read new poems as well, and we had a terrific discussion, with a lot of audience involvement about poetry in the United States and Mexico. Of course we had a fun dinner afterwards. Paul stayed in Oaxaca for a few more days. We went to a party. We went to Monte Albán and to the Sunday sprawling outdoor market in Tlacolula de Matamoros (the oldest active market in the western hemisphere). And, as these things happen, I got Paul to the airport late, about half an hour before his flight for Mexico City was to leave. The pilot had just closed the plane door and there was nothing to be done. No entry. Paul (graciously) didn’t hold it against me. There’d be another flight in an hour.

With Paul and Katherine at the ruin at Monte Álban. Yes, he’s pretty tall…

I’ve had a chance to write with Paul over the years and to see him as well. He has generously published my poems and translations in more than a few other issues of New American Writing. We had a lovely dinner together the last time I was in the Bay Area in 2019. Maxine and I were reading together—I also had the chance that trip to read with one of my oldest and closest friends Joseph Lease, who has also been featured in Poet in Mexico—and as I remember all this and write these names, it reminds me of the pleasure and meaning of that literary community.

Which brings me to a last thought. I think, in a sense, if you are reading this, you are a part of another growing community, in which discussions of poetry, love, and social justice in my two great neighboring nations come together. Yes. So, for this post, please help me welcome my friend, Paul Hoover, to Poet in Mexico.

Four Poems from Paul Hoover

Libretto
 
Insistently, in the evening, a book is singing to you,
pushing you gently along the cliff-edge of sleep, until clouds brighten
a tablet abandoned near the foundry, near a river of molten steel,
creating the gray sculptural shapes of a father who punishes when he blesses.
 
In admiration of itself, the restless aptitude of mirrors
carries you within, where the image of mother cries to no one
in the heartless parlors of West Virginia, with thunderstorms passing
and guns in the narrow hallway, the glistening rain her master.
 
Perhaps now it’s acceptable for the husband to crash over fields
in his fat black car, allegro.  The clamor
of hysterical men is within us, their motors run
too loudly in the vestibule of sleep, they drive like children into the future.
 

Dwelling
 
You dwell at green lights
longer than expected.
Thoughts that had gone far
are slow in returning.
 
You pause before a panel
of highly reflective metal
and stay there, half in love.
 
A thousand dwellings,
all of them strange:
dripping of a faucet,
yawning of a cat. 
On your way to the bathroom,
the squeaking of bats.
 
Reason is persuaded
by peaches and cream.
Anything held to a mirror
makes you want to dwell.
 
The moustache and the pipe,
so dreamlike in appearance.                                                           
You have to live a while
to understand such things.                                                                                                                        
The squirrel with its teeth, 
grackle with yellow eyes,
used to be familiar.                                   
You must be dwelling.
Horseman, pass by.
 
The dream surrounds us
with the grace of the strange.
Snow falls sideways,
and the owl flies so low
it’s mirrored in the pond.
The trees are covered
with sleeves of ice
after a winter rain, crazed
with light and the shattering
of their crystal.  This too is
dwelling, the thing in its
richness, a kind of winter mind.


The Fish
 
The goldfish swims in its bowl
near a window facing the street.
It’s 1959 and Peggy Lee’s “Fever”
passes through the open window.
It’s two in the afternoon forever.
 
Perhaps the fish can see the street
with its slow-moving cars, 
the man smoking Chesterfields
on his way to church,
and the prim little boy walking
with a white mouse in his hand,
a gift from his maiden aunt.
 
Circling in its bowl, it seems to see
the giant standing in the room,
wearing the bluest dress her mother could find.
 
Perhaps the fish is coming up with a theory
relating to one and zero,
unity and difference.
But no, it only swims and eats,
with no concept of escape or recreation.
 
It’s got it good, in its way,
the way we got it good,
our clothes pressed for school,
father released from jail
and working again in his shed.
 
The world also goes in a circle,
tilting away from the sun.
It’s out there looking for something
but comes back every year
with little for the finding.
 
Time, too, goes in circles,
on watches only the old people wear,
the ones who think they’re short on time
and go to the bank for conversation.
 

“The One Who Will Come Has Come”
 
-Ghassan Zaqtan
 
The rain has rained, and the storm has stormed
over the tiendas and used car lots,
coursing into the rivers and oceans; in thunder
and sonorous calm, they have come and gone.
 
In Tlaquepaque, the old men who sang
“Sabor a mi” and “Contigo”
have returned to thoughts of their wives,
as if they were still alive.
They smoke a bowl and lie down for a nap
that could last the rest of their lives.
 
The one who will come has come.
She speaks of the new sadness, sadder than the old,
She knows of a new realism, richer and deeper
than the one we are living.
 
She signs you up for the new sleep
and the new risk-taking,
but it’s an ancient lovemaking
that arrives once a week. 
 
Like the mouth of a woman thinking
the most uncomfortable things,
like a word meeting the object
to which it most belongs,
the one who will come has come.
 
Rivers pass, clouds pass,
and the rumble of cars is eternal
on the street where your family lives.
A mountain passes as only a mountain can,
so slowly you’d think it was still.
Hours turning into weeks,
these also pass, quite pleasantly it seems,
and later, the hours we no longer have.

Good Links: Paul Hoover and Linda Oaxaca

Paul Hoover, O, and Green: New and Selected Poems (Mad Hat, 2021)

Readers of Poet in Mexico know what comes here. While this book is available from online dealers (including the publisher), even greater is to go to your local, independent bookstore and order a copy for yourself and ask them to get a couple of copies for the poetry section. Support independent bookstores! And independent literary presses! https://madhat-press.com/products/o-and-green-by-paul-hoover?_pos=1&_sid=5921dc504&_ss=r

Linda Oaxaca, Patricia Lujano y Grupo Bohemio

A lovely version of this song. Some nice photos as well!

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This map of Oaxaca is part of an extraordinary series of city maps from VanDam publishing, which is run by my friend Stephan Van Dam. Other maps in the series include Havana, Mexico City, Madrid, Rome, London, and New York. The list goes on and on. They are terrific for their size, durability, accuracy, and, most of all, for a keen sense of the local.

a gift

			from Jesse

no longer a baby
but just not
you held yourself up
by the kitchen window
backyards Brooklyn

you said
write me a poem
called a map of the winds

already you believed
there was something I could do

write me a poem

my happy sense
you believed I could
even if this one
wasn’t mine to write

             —Mark Statman, from A Map of the Winds (Lavender Ink, 2013)

I love maps. I always have. They can set my imagination spinning. Road maps. Country and world maps. Maps of the solar system. Globes. I like seeing them in all their variations—the names of places, of geographical locations. I like seeing the contours that show rivers, mountains, deserts. I like them most when they make me feel, yes, that’s the next place to go, to be, to explore. That’s the next adventure.

My family was big on car trips. For years AAA Triptiks were a big part of that. They were prepared by AAA and while the truth is that they followed a general formula in preparation, one alway had the feeling, as the cover of the Triptiks would suggest, that this trip had been prepared just for you and your family. My dad bringing home the Triptiks for the next vacation always seemed an important part of our travel rituals. Another? I loved collecting brochures from attractions, usually found at highway rest areas. I’d bring them home from one vacation, save them, and then out they’d come in planning the next. Did we ever go to any of these places? I think not, but somehow it made me feel part of the planning.

There was something really interesting about watching my mother and father together as a trip progressed, my mother as navigator, my dad as pilot. The AAA Triptiks not only outlined the different possible car routes, they recommended restaurants, sites to see. They identified the all-important gas stations we might find along the way. The Triptiks had possible routes highlighted in different colors—yellow, pink, and blue are the ones I seem to remember. I think my mom liked the idea of the faster trip, interstate highway system. My dad had an interest in the longer, meandering routes that detoured us through smaller towns. Me? I liked both. Who wanted to sit for hours in a car? And yet, there we were, passing by and sometimes stopping at all those little places on the map.

When Katherine and I first started driving to Mexico from the US—we did this a number of times, the first time in 1990—we discovered the fun of the Sanborn’s Minimaps and Atlas. Sanborn’s, which sells car insurance at the border for folks from the US driving into Mexico, as a part of their service, also offered, (and, like AAA, still does) a similar kind of mapping—a kilometer by kilometer description of the route one was on. Sometimes it would be just the population of the small pueblo one was passing through, sometimes longer descriptions connected to Mexican history. We’d drive along, Katherine as navigator, me as pilot, and Katherine would read me the stories that came with our trip. One of the more amusing things for us? The Sanborn’s guide offered tips just about every page on the best ways a northern traveler could get by in Mexico. The tips mainly seemed to be about how to be polite, how to ask for directions, how not to be an offensive idiot. They advocated strongly for what they (seriously) called the Amigo Club.

(For those wondering, Sanborn auto insurance is not connected with the iconic retail store/restaurant chain, though in the founding of the auto insurance version, there are family ties—I was curious so I looked it up!).

The Guia Roji maps can be found in print and digital editions In Mexico, these range from individual city and state maps, to more expanded and comprehensive guides like the above, with single volumes that include maps not only of Mexico but the United States, Guatemala, and Belize.

(In the US, we always had a Rand McNally Road Atlas; in Mexico, we used the Guia Roji, which was a kind of hybrid between the Rand McNally and the Sanborn’s guides. Since the advent of GPS, Google Maps, and the like, the need for these kinds of guide seems less essential, though even today, an old Rand McNally atlas sits in the RAV4 we drive around Mexico—hard to give up on old habits. The Rand McNally remains a pretty good atlas; the newer versions of the Guia Roji, which in its older incarnations reminded me as well of Michelin guides, now seems more imitation of the Rand McNally and a shadow of the essential atlas it once was).

I got to thinking about maps and their importance for me because of today’s featured Poet in Mexico poet, Haydee Ramos Cadena. Araceli Mancilla Zayas first introduced me to Haydee, suggesting that she’d be a good poet for one of the music/poetry/art events we occasionally have out at our rancho. Haydee—poet, educator, cultural worker— had just published some poems in an extraordinary anthology that she and four other women poets had put together. The anthology, La Tierra Se Levanta: Mapa Geopoético (Editorial Ultramarina C & D, 2024) is made up of poems that, essentially, create a poetry mapping of the city and state of Oaxaca. Some of the poems are quite specific in their geographical mapping, naming streets, buildings, towns. Others offer another kind of mapping, ones that unite the geographic with the emotional, cultural, and spiritual. It’s an extraordinary collection. The other poets are Sara Aquino, Angelíca Ambrosio, Yendi Ramos, and Enna Osorio Montejo. Readers of Poet in Mexico may remember Enna as a featured poet last year: https://markstatman.substack.com/p/final-nola-thoughts-french-quarter?utm_source=publication-search).

Enna Osorio, Haydee Ramos, and Sara Aquino reading from La Tierra Se Levanta: Mapa Geopoético at Ático Librería in Oaxaca.

It’s with great pleasure that I welcome to and present my friend, Haydee Ramos Cadena, in Poet in Mexico.

Haydee reading at the Centro Cultural Liliana Loth, August 2024.

Four Poems by Haydee Ramos Cadena, from
La Tierra Se Levanta: Mapa Geopoético
Translations: Mark Statman

Mapa

Un sol feroz 
hierve raíces. 
Los pasos enfrían 
fronteras.

Map

A fierce sun
boils roots.
Footsteps chill
the frontier.


Hogar

Gotas caen 
grandes y turbias, 
cielo negro 
revienta en furor.

Gotas caen 
sobre faldones 
mojan cabezas, 
muchos pies 
corren en lluvia.

Gotas ruedan 
sobre el vidrio, 
abajo la sala 
en la pared tu rostro.

Gotas azotan 
granizos blancos 
sobre la cama caen, 
yo con frío, 
tú, en foto. 

Home

Drops fall
large, clouded,
a black sky
in fury explodes.

Drops fall
on skirts,
wet heads,
countless feet
in the rain running.

Down the window
drops roll,
the room below,
on the wall, your face.

Drops whip 
white hailstones
that fall on the bed,
and me cold,
a photo, you.


Un llanto de vecindario

Los vecinos se agazapan, 
temerosos, 
tras sus puertas 
miran a través de los cristales, 
un chillido persistente 
inunda la oscuridad.

Un gato llora con el agua 
que cae, toda la noche 
se moja a la orilla de la cornisa, 
nadie le abre, 
no lo conocen, 
llora para no sentir el frío 
ni el hambre 
ni el calor que le falta.

Un gato perdido entre árboles 
que nadie busca, el gato 
negro de las brujas, 
el gato de la tía, 
el gato que mamá patea siempre.

Yo soy ese gato 
perdido en la azotea. 

Neighborhood Cry

Neighbors huddle,
afraid;
behind their doors,
they peek out windows,
a persistent shriek
floods the dark.

It’s a cat soaked at a ledge’s edge
crying in the
night long rain.
Not knowing whose she is
no one opens their door.
She cries not to feel the cold,
nor her hunger, 
nor the warmth that isn’t there.

A black cat lost among the trees, 
a cat no one looks for, a witches',
or an Aunt's,
a cat Mom always kicks.

I’m that lost
rooftop cat.


Migrante

He ido caminando cien 
memorias en incendios, 
con las manos llenas de hojas 
que aúllan a la lluvia.

He dio caminando en tacones 
altos de sosiego, altos de pena, 
gritan mi nombre haydeeee 
con sus puntas en la tierra.

He ido caminando he ido caminando 
de tu mano de vidrio, de espuma, 
cuento las calles y sus nombres: 
una Noria sin agua, 
una Independencia tardía, 
Morelos laica, 
camino a La Soledad 
sin rezos.

He ido he ido por avenidas 
universitarias 
sin coladeras de hierro, 
ahí caen las palabras 
de virgenes en Oaxaca. 

He ido caminando de tu mano 
de nube o garra, 
de sueño u alma de penas, 
he ido he ido quién sabe a dónde he ido 
en el silencio y sus noches, 
he ido dando adioses 
en el zócalo Señor del Rayo 
pequeñas blasfemias en la tarde 
cuando el sol quema mi cabeza.

He ido haciéndome a tu cuerpo 
de agua oscura en el frío, 
de humo de opio u orgasmo mudo 
he ido 
he ido. 

Migrant

I’ve walked a hundred 
memories through fire,
my hands full of leaves
that howl at rain.

I’ve walked in heels
tall in tranquility, tall in sorrow,
they shout my name, haydeeee
heel tips on the earth.

I’ve walked, I’ve walked,
your hand of foam and glass,
I count streets, their names:
waterless Noria,
belated Independencia,
secular Morelos,
on my way, no prayers,
to Soledad.

I’ve walked, walked—
no iron drains—
the university streets
where the words of
Oaxaca’s virgins fall.

I’ve walked holding your hand,
cloud or claw,
dream or soul of sorrow,
I’ve gone, gone, who knows where I’ve gone,
silence, its nights,
bidding farewell,
on the Zócalo, Lightning Lord,
small afternoon blasphemies
where the sun burns my head.

I’ve gone and become your
body, watery cold dark,
opium smoke, mute orgasm,
have gone, I’ve 
gone and gone.

Good Links: Haydee, Steven Brown, and a wandering/life on the road song…

La Tierra Se Levanta: Mapa Geopoético

La Tierra Se Levanta: Mapa Geopoético can be found in bookstores in Oaxaca and throughout México or through the press in Mexico and the US, both in paper and as a digital edition. https://tiendaultramarina.com/index.php/producto/la-tierra-se-levanta-mapa-geopoetico-de-sara-aquino-angelica-ambrosio-enna-osorio-montejo-haydee-ramos-cadena-yendi-ramos/

Those of you who know me know I suggest you go to your local independent bookstore and ask them to order a copy for you as well as one or two for their poetry sections. Support independent bookstores! Support independent literary presses!

Wordsworth, Steven Brown (2026)

I’ve recently gotten to know/become friends with Steven Brown, the extraordinary musician/songwriter who happens to live not too far from us out in the country. He has an amazing new album just out, In This Very World, from Crammed Discs. Jesse (Cannonball) and I were at the release party, and his performances of a number of songs from it, as well as some older ones, blew me away. I recommend In This Very World quite highly.

El Andariego, Alvaro Carrillo, 1966

In this amazing (too short) footage, the beloved Oaxaca musician/songwriter performs one of his (many) extraordinary songs. Astonishing.

Please comment! Please share! Restack! Respond!

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We were going to read. More than once. Four poets from Oaxaca at the New Orleans Poetry Festival, one of the highlights on any poet’s calendar. From April 16-19, we would gather in New Orleans with poets from all over the US and the world. This year’s particular international focus was poetry from Mexico. It made us perfect. We were 4 Mexicans!

We would read in Spanish, English, and Zapoteco. We were going to talk about different kinds of border-crossings: aesthetic, political, cultural, spiritual. I would be able to show off one of my favorite cities anywhere to three friends. We’d eat beignets and gumbo, po’boys and muffulettas. Listen to great music. Walk to the Mississippi. I’d present them to many of my US poet friends. And, of course, we’d hear some great poetry.

The Zapotec ruin at Dainzú, view of the Valles Centrales de Oaxaca. Photo Araceli Mancilla Zayas.

It wasn’t meant to be. From the moment we were invited to read, the signals and messages we were getting all said the same thing: This not a good time to come to NOLA. ICE is all over New Orleans. We heard about real fear. Stories of legal residents and US citizens getting picked up on the street, transported to ICE facilities in different parts of the country. Then, the mistake discovered, the ICE victims left out on the street, no phones, no identification, no cash, and told to somehow make it back home.

With Araceli Mancilla Zayas and Efraín Velasco at the Henestrosa Library. Photo Jesse (Cannonball) Statman.

I was advised that despite being a US citizen, my status as a dual national would mean my Mexican citizenship would make me a target as well. That and the healthy amount of writing I have done against the current regime. The organizers of the fest were open about how they would do what they could to help but there was no real way they could protect us.

With Efraín Velasco at Parque El Llano for the March No Kings Rally. Photo Jesse (Cannonball) Statman

Efraín Velasco, Araceli Mancilla Zayas, Pergentino José Ruiz, and I had a long talk and then another. Another. Again. We wrote back and forth. What to do? What to do? A major question: Was this really worth the risk? We talked about that a lot. We wanted to go to NOLA, but was it a good idea?

In the end, we decided no. Still we wanted to be a part of things, to participate and have our voices heard. Needed to. We came up with the idea of making a video. My son Jesse, known professionally as a musician and filmmaker as Cannonball Statman, agreed to make the film. The organizers of the fest agreed to show it in a prime location at one of the times we’d have been reading. Rodger Kamenetz, poet and good friend, who spent last August in Oaxaca and knew Araceli and Efraín, agreed to present the video.

Reading with Pergentino José Ruiz at Dainzú. Photo Araceli Mancilla Zayas.

The video is called The World in Red and Black—the náhuatl phrase for red and black ink signifies the power and permanence of the written word. It was filmed in several locations in the state. One was the small Zapotec ruin of Dainzú, about 40 minutes from Oaxaca city, off the PanAmerican Highway. A second was in Parque el Llano, the second largest park in Oaxaca city, both during and after the March No Kings celebration in which Efraín and I had read. Our plan had been for all of us to read at Dainzú but scheduling proved harder than we thought.

A key element in the video is Jesse/Cannonball’s use of place, the different ways of thinking about landscape and presence. For me, this comes in the way he connects the poems with image and the ways in which the poems become part of the location. A telling moment is how in certain parts of the video, the winds at Dainzú overwhelm the voices of the poets. At first I wondered if this was problematic. But Jesse, after a kind of cool conversation between us about aesthetics, reassured me that it had become precisely the idea, that we poets were a part of the place and what the wind was doing was precisely the effect to make that clear.

Here is The World in Red and Black.

And here are some of the poems, in Spanish, English, and Zapotec. You may recognize others in the film from previous Poet in Mexico posts (in particular from this one: https://markstatman.substack.com/p/poetry-months-and-no-kings)

¡Que disfruten! Enjoy!

 Efraín Velasco, from Scenes Left Out Of […], English version Velasco and Statman

GOLDILOCKS TIGER 

[…] in a dream I saw tigers of a color I had never
seen before and for which I found no suitable word.
—Jorge Luis Borges


Who sat in my little chair?
              I am the landscape.
Who ate from my little plate?
       I am the landscape.
And ate my bread?
              I am the landscape.
My vegetables?
       I am the landscape.
Who pierced with my fork?
              I am the landscape.
Who cut with my knife?
       I am the landscape.
Who drank from my glass?
              I am the landscape.
Who walked on my bed? Just
       gilding the lily
               in gold,
             the landscape
                                 says.


Pergentino José Ruiz, LE NZIRIN/EL JILGUERO, (English translation Statman)

Nà nyólta nzirín lò nza lò laxio. Lo nayóltra njuand ták tox ngò nzíb. Nà ndjóx nguí nza
lò laxhio lónd, na ndié láx nza yòlá lò lusmbíl. Na ngendcho kedii re tíl lò mend yól, nalò nzínd ndie láx nza gádbend nza mbzíe.

Ya no le canta el jilguero al rostro de las deidades de la tierra. Como ya no canta ha
encontrado cosas valiosas. Sus dioses lo persiguen con sus miradas y sus lazos de
bejucos. Ya nadie canta a las deidades en la mañana y cuando toman la siesta de la
tarde.

Mbxúbii, na ndie láxta ngák nzirin. Mbtàb nza nyól, njuand ndli làxond, nza ndie mbii,
nzè nyák lò mbii, mèñex nit lò mbzie’, rekè ndònád nguch ládna, re dii lò là nduyál lò yà, ngób lò mbxiè. Ndíab laxhónd re mbind nzò lend guand do’.

Ha volado, ya no desea ser jilguero. Ha extraviado su canto, las cosas en que su corazón cree, el camino del aire, el silencio del rostro del aire, la brisa de la tarde, las piedras cubiertas con mucho musgo, el canto de las hojas que brotan en el rostro del árbol, el rocío de la tarde. Su corazón ha olvidado los pájaros que viven en el bosque sagrado.

Mblò ma’ kè nzílma, nda ndielaxtra nzirin ke’ dii ti’l ndo yii rei, nzaja kuind mend kè
nkuind ma’ nzílma’. Ngendtra xkál ti’l nague tóx nie ntiob ma’. Pa bire nzirin na chò nei, ngénd plo nzínd ma’. Mtónd ma’ re nzeb, re xnii, re njuand nzèj nyák, re njuand nzá laxho mend nak larmbréb ndiux kua’ lò do’ mbakxil nagad.

Ha colocado piedras en sus alas, ya no desea el jilguero cantar esta mañana de lluvia,
como se mueve una piedra así mueve sus alas. No estará la hermosa sombra fresca de la mañana para que descanse. No regresará el jilguero y quizás, no llegue a ningún lugar.

Ha borrado sus temores, su luz, el silencio de las cosas, las cosas que el corazón sueña,
una prenda bordada con hilos de lana negra.

Ntáb nzirin xkíx mbind. Re njuand ndùyál lò xnii lo nzind tèlax mbire Yèsgól. Ndùye
njuand narend na njuand nza ñee lò mbe’ lad nzílna. Náya, mbiè laxho nzirin, le ma’ yà
lax plo nzite njuand nzièb mend, mplo ndiéx laxhio, mplo nzi nza ro’lja ned nak nzayól.
Nji yòdo’ lud, yòkè, yò dii lòkii nié, yò lind tox ndob, nzoza njuand ndlí laxhó mend,
njuand nzób yek mend. Ntiaja mbdab nzirin nàya.

Ha extraviado el jilguero su lenguaje de pájaros. Las cosas que brotan en el rostro de la
luz cuando decida regresar a el Pueblo Viejo. Se va derritiendo el color rojo y azul del
rostro del cielo de sus alas. Ahora, el jilguero ha vuelto duro su corazón, quiere ir la
ciudad de los temores, de los ruidos, donde habitan los hombres que a medio camino se piensan dioses. En una iglesia pequeña, de piedra, de color gris, de muchos años, donde se guardan las cosas en las que la gente cree. Allí se arriesga a volar.

The Goldfinch

The goldfinch no longer sings to the faces of the earth's deities. And, no longer singing, it has found valuable things.The gazes of its gods pursue it with their vine-like snares.

No one sings to these deities anymore not in the morning or at the afternoon siesta.
The goldfinch has flown, no longer wishes to be finch. It has lost its song, lost what its
heart believes, the path of air, silence of the air's face, the evening breeze, moss
covered stones, song of the leaves on the face of the tree, evening dew. Its heart has
forgotten the birds of the sacred forest.

It has placed stones on its wings; no longer wishing to sing this rainy morning. It moves it’s stony wings. There’ll be no beautiful, cool shade of the morning in which to rest. 

The goldfinch will not return, nor perhaps find someplace to arrive. The finch has erased its fears, its light, the silence of the things the heart dreams, a garment embroidered with threads of black wool.

The goldfinch has lost its language. What sprouts on the face of light when it decides to return to the Old Town. The sky's red and blue face on its wings melts away. The
goldfinch has hardened its heart; it wants to go to the city of fear, of noise, where men
dwell who, halfway through life, now think themselves gods. In a small ancient church of gray stone, where sacred things are kept, there the finch risks flying.


Araceli Mancilla Zayas, The House of Ciervo (English translation Statman)

22.

Entre invierno y primavera
el lamento de las hierbas;
su quebrarse entre tus patas,
Ciervo.
Comes su irse volviendo desierto
y ya en tu sangre descansan del sol.
Esa intimidad hecha sopor nos detiene.
Los velos de la luz bambolean rodeándote.
Te consumen en su claridad.
Te llevan lejos de mí.
Pero estás.
Aun disuelto en el día
vas a mi lado.
Es tiempo de buscar la sombra.
Entraremos al atardecer de la bromelia.
Hagámonos pues pequeños
para recuperar el Ser.
En el silencio laborioso de las hormigas
hay un lugar para nosotros.
Los lamentos del agua se escuchan ahí.
Su huida hacia el centro de la tierra.
Mientras el cielo se decide a escucharla,
penetremos en el polvo.
Abajo la humedad sabrá decirnos
de su pacto con la paciencia.
Hemos de aprender a dar su lugar
a las llamas.
La quemadura de la luz
es un alto;
una advertencia.
Se incinera en su talud
lo que ya no soporta la tierra.
Respetemos la hoguera.

22.

Ciervo, between winter and spring,
under your hooves,
a lament and breaking
of dried grasses.
You eat them and make this a desert.
In your blood the grasses rest from the sun.
An intimacy, turned to slumber, holds us back.
Veils of light waver around you.
That with their clarity consume you.
Carry you from me.
Yet you remain.
Dissolved in the day,
you’re still with me.
It’s time to seek shade.
To enter the bromeliad's dusk.
To make ourselves small,
recover Being.
The laborious silence of ants
holds a place for us
where as if fleeing the earth’s center
one hears the water’s lament.
While the sky decides if it will listen,
let’s penetrate the dust.
Below, the humidity speaks
of a pact with patience.
How we must learn to allow fire
its place.
The burning light
is a stop sign;
a warning.
What the earth can bear no longer
burns up this slope.
We honor fire.


Mark Statman, from Volverse/Volver (Spanish translation Velasco)

crazy you are

I say
for you the
craziness growing
yellow flowers
Buena Vista all those
nations under gods one
goat two goats a
field full of stones
orchids orchards
eclipse of suns
moons eclipses and
twilights a night
of fire that’s
how craziness will
burn like fields not
burning like lies
not burning burns
infinite burns
slow relieving renewing
comic relief of
begging dogs
of roosters that
crow three times
what’s next
old bears that lead
cubs that race up
trees into woods
of snakes
woodmen deer
crazy swooping
caracara world
words at broil
kettle flame
crazy alive crazy
for you yesterday
tomorrow your loving
eyes your hair cascades
it’s water like water
crazy more crazy
crazy-making
newspaper quagmire
clothing in piles
sentences piles
you don’t understand
I don’t understand the
crazy world a lost
crazy look we’ve
unknown coins in
our mouths moths
in our mouths
the insane lack
conscience locura
lust says
bring me
water bring ice
hills below the
mountains roll along
mountains
green their ranges silent
lizards scurry
on rooftops on
tables they are
being into nothingness
nothing into something
we’ll measure by
growth eyes the
craziness of
embrace the crazy a
crazy let go

loco eres tú

digo yo que
para ti la
locura creciendo
flores amarillas
Buena Vista debajo de los dioses
todas las naciones una cabra dos
cabras un campo
repleto de rocas
orquídeas hortalizas
eclipse de soles
lunas eclipses y
ocasos una noche
de fuego así es como
arderá la locura como campos
que no arden como mentiras
que no arden arde el
infinito arde
despacio liberando renovando
el alivio cómico de los
perros suplicando de los
gallos que
cantan tres veces
¿qué sigue?
osos viejos que guían a los
cachorros que trepan los
árboles que se
adentran en el bosque
de serpientes
leñadores ciervo
loco caracara
en picada mundo
palabras a la parrilla
tetera flama
loco vivo loco
por ti ayer
mañana tus amorosos
ojos la cascada de tu cabello
es agua como agua
loca muy loca
desquiciantes
periódicos el pantano de
montones de ropa
montones de frases
tú no entiendes
yo no entiendo este
mundo loco una mirada
de locura perdida que
desconocemos el óbolo en
nuestras bocas polillas
en nuestras bocas
la insana escasez de
conciencia locura
lujuria dice
tráeme
agua trae hielo
colinas debajo de las
montañas verdes
montaña abajo sus
cordilleras calladas
lagartijas se escabullen
por los tejados por
las mesas que están
siendo en la nada
ninguna cosa en algo que
nosotros mediremos en el
crecimiento de los
ojos la locura de
aceptar al loco unde serpientes
leñadores ciervo
loco caracara
en picada mundo
palabras a la parrilla
tetera flama
loco vivo loco
por ti ayer
mañana tus amorosos
ojos la cascada de tu cabello
es agua como agua
loca muy loca
desquiciantes
periódicos el pantano de
montones de ropa
montones de frases
tú no entiendes
yo no entiendo este
mundo loco una mirada
de locura perdida que
desconocemos el óbolo en
nuestras bocas polillas
en nuestras bocas
la insana escasez de
conciencia locura
lujuria dice
tráeme
agua trae hielo
colinas debajo de las
montañas verdes
montaña abajo sus
cordilleras calladas
lagartijas se escabullen
por los tejados por
las mesas que están
siendo en la nada
ninguna cosa en algo que
nosotros mediremos en el
crecimiento de los
ojos la locura de
aceptar al loco un
loco dejar ir

Jesse (Cannonball) Statman filming at Dainzú. Photo Araceli Mancilla Zayas.

Good Links: Pergentino, Efraín, and Araceli!

Red Ants

Pergentino has published a number of books. This collection of short stories is the only one available in translation to English and through Amazon (as a Kindle book and in paper). His poetry collections are astonishing, if you can find them!

Red Ants https://a.co/d/0dilgOUO

Scenes Left Out Of […]

For Scenes, go to your local independent bookstore. Ask them to order Scenes for you. Ask them to order a few copies to put on their shelves. If you have no independent bookstore near you, get it straight from the publisher! Support independent bookstores! And independent literary presses!

https://www.lavenderink.org/site/shop/scenes-left-out-of/?v=a906dcd34dae

The House of Ciervo

As with Red Ants, the best way to get Ciervo in the United States is through Amazon (paperback and Kindle). In Mexico, it’s available as a paperback and Kindle through Amazon as well and there are paperbacks available in selected bookstores

from Amazon: The House of Ciervo (Literature of the Americas) https://a.co/d/0f4eyfvX

from the publisher: https://www.aliformpublishing.com/product/the-house-of-ciervo/3MYI2G3BHXYIOWTOLNETY7UY

Please comment! Please share! Restack! Respond!

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Seriously, who would you rather have negotiate peace?

A strange week. If anyone had the idea that J.D. Vance was a stellar choice to negotiate anything more important than whether he would permit his wife to go sky-diving (he won’t), or that the cracker-jack duo of Kushner and Witkoff could be counted on to negotiate anything that didn’t include grift, corruption, and sleaze, then this past weekend in Islamabad should have perished those thoughts pretty quickly. Twenty-one hours and the three musketeers gave up? Maybe it was because that was the plan all along? After all, the malevolent perversion of mind, body, and soul that occupies the White House seemed way too busy to pursue any kind of deal for real; along with some of his lemmings that man among men decided it was more important to go to a UFC fight in Florida where he could make pillow-talk with some of the warriors in the cages there than it was to even be in touch with the hapless trio in Pakistan. I wonder what the troops were thinking, what their families were thinking, knowing how much attention the monster was paying them all.

Of course, given that the deals the self-proclaimed master of the art of the deal has made in the past—from casinos to universities to steaks and vodka—have usually resulted in one form of bankruptcy or another, it was probably for the best he wasn’t engaged in the negotiations. One can just see him in the negotiating room, throwing ketchup at the walls, talking about drapes for the East Wing and giant triumphal arches, stolen elections, fake news polls, and that softy-on-crime Pope Leo, with his demented less-than-presidential hideousness on display for all to see in its grotesque hellishness.

Still, as I wrote last week, I watch the financial pages as much as the front ones and there seems to be something going on. Something investors think positive. Because all the major markets are rising. I’ll keep looking, waiting to see why.

The optimist in me wants to think that maybe it’s because the indications in the US and abroad suggest there are things happening that are positive. It isn’t clear to me that those things would influence the markets, but who knows?

A year ago, nobody gave the Democratic Party a shot at taking back the Senate—now the odds are getting better and better, with more red states suddenly in play. How likely it happens? Turnout, turnout, turnout. Talk to your friends. Let’s make like Hungary?

Three things on my mind, in particular are giving me some kind of hope: the first is the recent elections in the US. The MAGA GOP keeps getting outperformed in elections across the country. From Georgia to Wisconsin, most recently. And the polls keep showing that not only is the US House of Representatives going to go blue, there’s a good chance that the Senate does as well. Does this signal a need for an Alito watch? Will the creepy anti-democracy Justice retire early to give Trump a chance to nominate someone horrible and young for the Supreme Court while the Senate is still red? Is there any way to convince the egotistical and creepy Alito that he is divine and immortal so he declines retirement until we have a Dem in the White House?

The second thing is, of course, Hungary. My mom’s family on her mother’s side is from Hungary and my older brother and sister-in-law have lived in Hungary and are in touch with the family (Jesse has also spent time with them while on tour in Europe). My cousins were cautiously optimistic that Orban would be defeated—one of them even returned home from Paris where she is living in order to vote. When the news came that the opposition party (soon to be the party in power) would have a greater than 2/3 majority in the parliament, meaning they’d be able to overturn Orban’s corrupt and anti-democratic laws, there was real joy. Rest assured that I’m aware that Petér Magyar and the Tisza party are more center/right or right than anything but they do represent a move away from authoritarian rule and even those baby-steps matter a lot.

Budapest, election night.

So, for those of us committed to democracy, the defeat of Orban and his brand of illiberal authoritarianism is a great moment and one that we can only hope is repeated throughout the world.

Finally? My third reason for hope is much closer to home and very meaningful for we Mexicans and even for those who are residents here (both temporary and permanent, of which Jesse is the former though soon to be next month, and like his mom, my wife Katherine, the latter).

The Mexican constitution is quite clear that free and universal health care is guaranteed to all citizens and residents of Mexico. Yes. Unfortunately access to that healthcare traditionally has been tied to employment or ability to pay for a policy if one’s employer did not. So what has been the model is that employers of Mexicans who worked in the formal economy would pay into one of the three national systems or those who could afford the insurance would pay for it out of pocket on a yearly basis.

What this has meant is that despite the constitutional guarantee of universal healthcare, most Mexicans—the informal economy includes between 70-80% of the workforce—have gone without. All that, though, is about to change.

Yes we (and she) did.

Last week, Presidenta Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo announced that as of January 1, 2027, not only would the three systems of health care begin to work together in a unified way, but that all Mexican citizens, and all Mexican residents, would begin to receive free, universal healthcare. As guaranteed. At first there will be some limits as the system expands to all citizens and residents: initial coverage would include proactive healthcare with screenings and checkups, especially among the elderly, young, and those in need, as well as emergency room care; heart attack, stroke, and breast cancer care; prescription benefits; and so on. By 2030, though, the system would be so comprehensive as to include all medical needs.

There are, of course, critics of this. Mainly they suggest the systems can’t handle it. They remind me very much of those who criticized the universal pension system (instituted by Sheinbaum’s predecessor, AndrésManuel López Obrador) which guaranteed a pension to all Mexican citizens over the age of 65, regardless of whether they had paid into the system and which Sheinbaum expanded to include all women and the handicapped beginning at the age of 60 (full disclosure? Yes, I collect a Mexican pension, as a citizen over 65).

It was the same issue. The constitution guarantees a pension. Those in the informal economy hadn’t paid into the pension system. Critics couldn’t figure out how Mexico would pay for all this. In the same way they couldn’t figure out how Claudia had raised the minimum wage 13% last year. As I wrote in Poet in Mexico (https://open.substack.com/pub/markstatman/p/mexican-rich-paying-their-share?utm_source=app-post-stats-page&r=46wah&utm_medium=ios), the answer was simple. The government started making corporations and the wealthy pay their taxes. Taxes weren’t raised for anyone. It was just that suddenly those who owed started having to pay. Pay back taxes as well. And of course this has raised billions and billions and billions (thank you Carl Sagan).

Yeah, it’s Carl. Can’t you hear him still?

So here we are. In the coming months, all of us will have the opportunity to register in the new system (for the month of April, it’s folks over the age of 85). I’ll keep you informed.

At any rate, those are some things making me hopeful. And you? Please feel free to let me know below in the comments what might be on your list.

Some Poetry:

Last April 2025, as the New Orleans Poetry Festival kicked off, I kicked it off myself by publishing poems from Bill Lavender’s city of god manuscript. city of god is now in book form, with Mad Hat Press, and it is breathtaking. This week I want to celebrate the NOPF, of which I’ll have more to say next week, by publishing some more poems from it. Go back to the Poet in Mexico archives if you want to see more of the poems and to know a little bit more about my good friend (and terrific publisher), the poet Bill Lavender. https://open.substack.com/pub/markstatman/p/new-orleans-poetry-festival-part?utm_source=app-post-stats-page&r=46wah&utm_medium=ios

A note on the poems here: when I wrote Bill to ask if he had any suggestions for what to publish, he wrote this: Very difficult for me to suggest excerpts. There are several themes that surface and resurface... Ukraine war (or just plain war), homeless folk and/or the one-armed beggar (sister natalie), various biblical motifs like Abram and Sarai (i.e. the birth of the West, Augustine’s anti-semitism as basis for present), Roman law/statecraft/rhetoric, the “grosse luge” (Hitler’s term the “great lie”), resurrection of the body, Augustine’s bio (life in the cloister), etc. There are also personal moments that have nothing to do with history, or else link to it in some way...

You could almost just spin the wheel, tell me something that catches your eye and I might be able to steer you to similar.... Or just pick some at random.

So I thought about this a while. One of the things that I love about the book is the way I was drawn into it, kept wanting to keep reading the next poem, the next poem, the next. So I’ve kind of done something that maybe repeats for the reader my experience of city of god. The book is divided into three parts, part 1, which contains 10 books, an interregnum, and then part 2, which contains another 12 books. In all, city of god is epic in its scope, well over 300 pages of poetry, along with a glossary.

What I’ve done here is given you poems from the first 3 books, the opening ones from each of them. I’m hoping that you’ll get drawn in, realize you need more, then drop down to Good Links below and make sure to order a copy for yourself and another or two for some good friends who you know need some epic poetry in their lives.

Bill Lavender, from city of god (Mad Hat Press, 2026):

1.01
1/6/21
city of romance
city of law
city of fable
city of souls
ruled solely by
the lust to rule
“earthly dignities…
totter on this shifting scene”
bacchae along the trellis
goths in the garden
“painted barbarians”
bull helmet, fawn skin
boots on marble
hooves on broken glass
we speak of an earthly
and of the other city
and of the enemies
of both
those who flame with hatred
“unable to utter a single
word to its prejudice”
city of granite
city of vapor
walls raised up
in the smoke of war
shrine at the gate

1.02
we persist
in an image
we assemble
as the castaway
lashes debris into a raft
then climbs aboard
how invoke a
god who does not exist?
how invoke
one who does?

1.03
a history of raised banners
pauses for a moment
of rhetorical silence
guardian gods
flicker on the nightstand,
product accumulates
as wet-hoarders
assemble evidence
for the Q conspiracy

1.04
senators huddle
in the stairwells
clutching torn scrolls,
theologians roam the halls
horror film suspense
thumb cocking the pistol
perhaps poets and reporters
transcribe what did not happen?
or “what the truth
extorted from them”?
for what does an enemy do
when sacking a city?
(to be sacked is not to fall
alaric recalls)

1.05
virgins and boys were violated
augustine says
temples and great
houses plundered
slaughter and burning
corpses blood and wailing and
not from foreign foes
but from citizens
citizens inside

1.06
the VP (princeps senatus)
cut off from above
huddles with his family
beneath a table
lips moving silently
through the litany of jingos
they’ve been handed
to pray with
while rams batter
the door and voices
shout the most
worldly admonitions
‘they’re in here’
‘bring a hammer’
‘give me that crow-bar’

2.01
“therefore I do not wish my
writings to be judged
even by you…”
and since you “require
a reply to every exception
which you hear taken…”
well one can’t be bothered
in one’s inarguably charitable
argument
to attend to every objection
every contestation of fact
one runs into along the way
no time to tarry along
the road to truth

2.02
now let us once more in
mind’s eye pat
the hand of the young woman
as she is ravaged (“lawfully”
according to “custom of war”)
by the furry visigoth—
for she suffers chastely and
“despite the temptation”
doesn’t get into it

2.04
“if this is purification what exactly
would pollution look like?”
the concubine mother of your son
dumped in the gutter so you could
marry a rich tween? how could
any god worthy of the name
let all this happen?
if it were a movie
could you talk about it
in front of your mother?

2.05
now if the goddess-mother were
to know your soul
know what you do
what you think in the wee hours
wouldn’t friends and family
blush for you?
unless with the flip
of a switch
she become an adultress
to “entangle you in her deceit”
causing you to lust
for just
what you justly loathe?
try to be temperate
as scipio
so that the senate
lays in your hands
this image of
the double-woman
which you may convey
one day
into the capitol

2.06
the rhetor proves with impeccable
logic that the gods
which do not exist
could give a shit about the city
and let people party at mardi gras
even as the flood water rises
secret messages
whispered in my ear
or is that just
the mushrooms?
but here they come
like every mardi gras
lugging their crosses
by the gay bars
and the boys in chaps
offer up their asses

2.07
it’s not the pathos
but the brazen immorality
of the cutter-priests
that plato cannot (theoretically)
abide
but a junkie on a mattress
is the mutilated priest
of our city
basking in god’s
“golden shower”

2.08
it is the fiction itself
that poses its fiction i.e.
the god creates
the god
hauls itself
into existence
by guiding
the poet’s incantation
“extortion”
augustine calls it—
believe in me
or else

3.02
like hitler and trump
augustine worries that
his enemies may “corrupt
the people’s votes”

3.03
augustine scoffs at
the primitive notions that romulus
was descended from venus
and caesar from mars, though
he does admit the profligacy
of the pantheon could allow for most
anything, including wife-swapping
with terrestrial guys as well as the more
traditional extra-marital & extra-
special inseminations
the simple point being that these
gods are reprobates—they didn’t
stand by troy, they fucked
paris over, in-
credible

3.04
but then one can make
the argument that
rulers are more intrepid and
attempt more great
things if they believe
themselves descended
from a god, however
false the belief may or
may not be, thus out
of expedience
are the sacred
legends “feigned”

3.05
“the human bed”
tousled, cum-stained
where sylvia got
it on with mars
and founded
rome, unless of
course the sly bitch
made it all up
to save her vestal
ass from being
buried alive, I’m not
coming down one way
or another on the de-
bate just saying it’s
a possibility
for as we all know
a god likes to get a little
now and then
happens all the time
about mare nostrum

3.06
when manwoman stole
its neighbor’s wife
and took what it called
its brother’s life
the gods hid
behind a bush
when manwoman cast
the first stone
then cried out
and ran all the way home
the gods hid
behind a bush
when manwoman
was born into the city
and began to discover
sorrow and pity
the gods hid
behind a bush
but when manwoman
left the city behind
and wandered in the desert
out of its mind
the gods came out
laughing and dancing

3.07
now in ilium and rome and
DC we gods deserve
something of a pass
for truly our hands
were tied and not (no matter
what your twisted imagi-
nation might conjure) just
for sex games and not
only by the profligacy
of the populace but
by our own irremediable non-
existence
what effect could our
indignant sermons have
on this physical world
where fimbria and alaric and
trump parade their carnal
triumphs, grasping at pussies and
franchising the piss
out of the porn-flick they
make of the city?
are we to be blamed
for not whispering
loudly enough?
then fuck off
& we’ll
be silent

Good Links:

city of god, Bill Lavender, Mad Hat Press, 2026

If you know me, you know what I think you should do. Go to your local independent bookstore and ask them to order a copy for you, one or two for the shelves. Or you can order directly from the publisher! Support local bookstores! Support independent literary presses!https://madhat-press.com/products/city-of-god-by-bill-lavender

Louis Armstrong, Basin Street Blues

Thinking about New Orleans this week and the great music of that great city, one of the songs that always comes to mind, the great Louis Armstrong and the Basin Street Blues.

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I held off on writing this Poet in Mexico post. My biggest fear was that I’d be writing about a genocide committed on the part of the United States, one that had been ordered up by the sick and twisted malevolent presence that occupies the White House.

I suspected around 1:30 pm local time, 3:30 pm Eastern, though, that something was afoot that might prevent my other country from delivering on the Trump promised war crimes. Many years ago, at the college where I taught for 31 years, because of my work as a journalist, in addition to my other courses, I taught one in media studies. In that course, which I taught for four or five years and which went by the name of Inventing Reality (I borrowed it from a book of the same name by the brilliant Michael Parenti), I advised my students to pay as much attention to the financial pages as they did any others. I told them that there they’d find a lot more news than almost anywhere else.

Sure enough, a quick glance at the markets (here I was following the Dow, S & P, NASDAQ, and NYSE), which had all started the day in a seeming free fall, had suddenly taken an upward turn. An hour before closing and whoops! Investors must have heard something to make them think, with a certain dose of caution, that something was going to happen to change the situation. Would it be another TACO (Trump Always Chickens Out)? Would an international disaster be averted?

The Dow, NASDAQ, and S & P at the close of the business day on Tuesday, April 7, four hours ahead of Trump’s deadline for Iran to open the Straits of Hormuz, which TACO enough, is not included in any of th 10 points that led to the cease-fire (the times on the graph shown are CST, so the upturn took place only an hour before the markets closed at 2 CST and 4 Eastern).

And then there it was: a two week cease-fire, with Trump claiming that the 10 point plan offered by the Iranians had enough to it to warrant a pause. (The market futures, as could be expected, responded favorably with the Dow, NASDAQ, and S & P futures jumping to between 2.4 and 3%). Looking at that plan, though, I have to wonder what exactly Trump really sees in it that he can sell back home in the US and somehow brag about victory. There’s nothing that suggests the US will have gained anything from this fiasco he created by attacking Iran. In fact, it’s a starting point for a strengthened Iran in the Middle East and a sadly diminished US in the world.

All Trump gains with the two week delay is a chance to walk away from a war he had no explanation for, no understanding of, and which had become a complete economic and military disaster. According to many reports, it was one had become bored with. Bored. So that’s it. He gets to walk away. Nothing else. And what he loses? A lot. Politically at home. US influence abroad. He confirms even further to the world what a pathetic loser he is.

That’s the take-away in Mexico. A close economic partner, a close friend to the people of the US, looks across the border with a kind of sad disbelief. If the tariffs and border policy, if the heavy-handed attempts to influence and even control Mexican domestic politics, particularly around the cartels, hadn’t soured many of us here on US treatment of its neighbor, if the invasion of Venezuela and the human rights crisis created by the treatment of Cuba hadn’t reinforced old stereotypes of gunboat diplomacy, what the war against Iran has provoked is a kind of horror that the United States could have so quickly been led into a hellish abyss by a traitorous malignant narcissist.

From La Jornada: Solidarity with the people of Cuba is solidarity with all of Latin America. Sheinbaum has been clear that solidarity is about sovereignty and she extends that to Venezuela as well.

Mexico is in the middle of some significant negotiations with the United States. Our presidenta, Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo, has condemned the US actions in the region. We have continued to provide humanitarian aid to help the Cuban people survive. She has been forceful about the illegality of the war in Iran. She has also maintained a calm presence. She works a lot behind the scenes on behalf of the Mexican people and Mexican sovereignty. The madman to the north is an issue here, yes, along with his kool-aid drinking MAGA lemmings. Still, Claudia remains a Trump whisperer. She knows how to talk sense to him in a way that he listens to. Which everyday feels more and more a good thing as the diminishing-before-our-eyes United States seems to spiral further and further out of control.

For now? A two week wait? Hoping the TACO effect continues. Maybe the monster can be caged. Until then, it’s deep breaths. Very deep breaths. And, yes, poetry.

Some Poems:

John Yamrus, who I featured in Poet in Mexico last year, has a new book out this month. It’s quite something. If you want to read about who John is, the story of our friendship, I invite you to go back in time, which is to say, to go into the Poet in Mexico archives from May 21, 2025 (Bullies Never Win). There I describe how John and I met, the contours of our friendship.

With great joy, I present these poems from Seriously, John’s new book from Anxiety Press, his 5th with this terrific publisher.

you mean you just split? took off?

yeah,
i’m gone
all fuckin’ day

and
all night

and
i do what i want
and come and go when i feel like it.

sure,
the place is small
and there’s no room for anything,

but
it’s mine
and that’s all i care about.

but,
what about Sandy?

never mind her.

she can
take care of herself.
always has and always will.

besides...

he was gonna say something more,

but
he didn’t.

he just
looked at the floor...

and
the wall
and the window.

and
he stared at
the faces passing by,

one
by one,

in the ever changing light.


reading Proust

for
the umpteenth time,

i
came across
the word “buttercup”

and,
like that
famous madeleine cookie

in
the beginning
of that long and wonderfully
difficult book,

i thought
back to a time
when me and my sister

used to walk
into the wood behind our house

and
pick these
little yellow flowers,

and
she taught me
how to hold them

under
her chin
where i could
see the reflection

of
the flower,
bright and yellow

and gone
the second i took
my eight year old hand away.


i worked in a phone room once...

selling
light bulbs
over the phone.

can you
imagine that?

god-damn light bulbs.

it
was in
this little office
on the second floor

above
a pool room,

with
folding tables set up
with chairs and maybe 16 phones.

we each
had a stack of sheets
with names of prospects.

i
don’t know

where they got the names
or
why,

because
it didn’t matter.

because
no one ever bought the bulbs.

i
don’t
even remember

how
we were
supposed to take an order

and
all i did
was dial the phone,

make
my pitch and
wait for them to hang up.

which they always did.

the job
lasted maybe
a couple of days
before i got tired of it

and
stopped going.

the
whole place
smelled of sweat

and
desperation

and
a certain
kind of failure
you never can forget.


she looked

like
lightning
the moment it
flashed and lit the world
and you and me and everything else

on fire.


no matter how hard

he
tried,
or wished or hoped,

things
never got any
better for Tommy,

they
always got worse.

so,
it wasn’t
any big surprise

when
he hooked up
with Big Leg Betty.

not
the Betty
with the scar on her cheek,

but,
the Betty who
walked with a limp and
always kept a doughnut in her purse.

if
you asked
anybody on the scene,

they’d tell you
Tommy wasn’t afraid of anything.

not god.

not man.

but, he was sure afraid of Betty.

her,
and those
great big legs
and that doughnut
and that god-awful limp.


sitting in the sun room,

this
Sunday morning,

reading
Victor Hugo,

i
find it
difficult to concentrate,

distracted
(as i am)

by this
great big spider
climbing the wall on my right.

Good Links:

Seriously, John Yamrus

You can find Anxiety Press books at https://www.athinsliceofanxiety.com/p/books.html. The website seems to send you to Amazon. As many of you know, I prefer that you get your books from independent bookstores. I’m aware, though, that many independent literary presses depend on Amazon for distribution of their books. In fact, it’s because of Amazon that many of them survive and even thrive. It’s not the greatest, thinking about Bezos and his creepiness. Still, out of crap, flowers can grow. This book is one of John’s best. seriously! https://a.co/d/0hX26Qli.

Juan Sin Tierra, Amparo Ochoa

A corrido of the Mexican Revolution by one of the great Mexican cantautoras. ¡Andale!

In my previous post, I talked about walking the dogs and someone wrote and asked for a photo. Here we are this past Tuesday about to head out from the rancho, off to Arrazola. Xochipilli up front, followed by Apollo. Photo Katherine Koch.

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No Kings Day in Oaxaca, Parque El Llano (photo by Gail Pellett).

I’m back! Well, kind of. That is, did I ever leave? (And a big thank you to those of you who wrote to ask if I was okay, to wonder what was going on…).

Yes, I needed a break. After more than a year of publishing A Poet in Mexico, after writing mostly once and sometimes twice a week on the intersections and entanglements between poetry and politics, my life in southern Mexico as a Mexican/US dual citizen-poet, I started to see that my life was getting thrown out of balance. Which for someone in recovery is a very bad idea.

It isn’t that there was a change in how much I was thinking about these things, but writing about them, in particular about the monstrosity in the White House, about his lemming followers, had started to crowd out other important things in my life. In the past year I’ve published three new books (one of poetry, one poetry translation, and the third a collaboration combining both), yet the pleasure I would have liked to take from these eluded me. And other things: I seemed to spend less time talking with people, in particular my own family. My walks with the dogs were getting shortened. I wasn’t thinking about cooking. I lost sight of baseball. I was even reading and writing less poetry.

Which wasn’t exactly what I’d envisioned for the substack. I had seen it as a way of opening up my life, not closing parts of it down.

So for the future? There may be fewer posts. So many other things to do! But they will continue. I will continue to include the work of poets who matter to me. I’ll include my own. The politics of Mexico and the politics of the US, the politics of my worlds, will still be front and center.

It just may be on a slightly different calendar than before. Thinking of the sun’s observation to the poet in Frank O’Hara’s A True Account of Talking to the Sun on Fire Island, my insistence I realize for myself is that I be making my own days.

No Kings

On an overcast day, more than 70 turned out in Oaxaca centro to rally in favor of No Kings and for democracy, both in the United States and world-wide. It was joyous—and, yes, that is a Trump piñata and, yes, there was candy inside (photos by Gail Pellett).

Here in Oaxaca, we had a terrific No Kings rally on the 28th. There were around 70 people gathered in Llano Park. Among other things, there was music from local musicians Tania Siglinde and Alberto Revilla, a recitation of the names of all those murdered by ICE from February 24, 2025 through March 1, 2026, testimonials from US and Mexican citizens on the effects of Trumpism in the US, in Mexico, and in the world, and a piñata! Efraín Velasco and I were invited to read and we read poems and our translations of each other. Organized by US Democrats Abroad and the newly formed chapter of Indivisible Oaxaca, it was an upbeat event, the overriding theme for me was one of hope. The hope borne of resistance.

Tania Siglinde and Alberto Revilla at No Kings March 2026 in Parque El Llano (photo Gail Pellett).

Poetry Months

Reading with Araceli and Efraín at the Oaxaca Lending Library (photo Siobhan Grogan).

In the United States, April is National Poetry Month. For the rest of the world? It’s a little different. For us, March is International Poetry Month and March 21 is International Poetry Day. Of course, I have a great (different kind of) resistance to the designations of months this way. Women’s History Month? Black History Month? And the rest of the year? No history at all? For poets, every month is poetry month and every day is poetry day. Why not for everyone else?

Still, I was quite happy to participate in events here in Oaxaca. Of two new books just out last month, one is a translation of Araceli Mancilla’s The House of Ciervo (Aliform Publishing, 2026) and the other is a collaborative version with Efraín Velasco of a text he wrote in Spanish which inspired ours in English called Scenes left Out Of […] (Lavender Ink/Diálogos, 2026). Ciervo is a bilingual text. Scenes is only in English because the Spanish version almost disappeared as we worked and revised and changed what it had previously been. In a sense, as we note in our prologue to the book, the original Spanish became a ghost text, more guiding spirit than actual presence.

Reading with Araceli and Efraín at the Biblioteca Andres Henestrosa.

The three of us have started to give readings together from these two books and in March we read at the Oaxaca Lending Library, one of the largest English language libraries in Latin America and at the Biblioteca Andres Henestrosa, which is one of the best venues for poetry I’ve ever had the privilege to read at. For International Poetry Day on March 21, I was not only the featured reader, but the only reader at my favorite book store in Oaxaca, Ático Librería. A real treat for me there was that the young bookstore owner, my friend Samantha Kubli Moreno, decided to read Spanish versions of my poems that Efraín had done. It’s a lovely, intimate space and the exchange between myself and Samantha made for a rather special evening.

Reading at Ático Librería with Samantha Kubli Moreno on International Poetry Day (photo Cannonball Statman).

Some Poems:

I’m very proud of The House of Ciervo and Scenes Left Out Of […]. I’ll be publishing more from both of these in the coming weeks. Here’s a poem from each.

from The House of Ciervo (Aliform Publishing, 2026):

1.

Entre dos inexistencias ocurre todo o nada, Ciervo, 
y ese absoluto tiene entrada y salida.

Puede empezar en un portal oscuro, entre mesas vacías, 
mientras alguien dice adiós: 
ves la figura caminando, pero ha de regresar.

¿Entre dos inexistencias sucede lo que ha de ser? 
¿Se sabe sin saber?

Se entra en la narración porque se lanzan los mensajes. 
No importa si en principio o para siempre.

Ese es en realidad el estado perpetuo de las cosas.

Así pues, hay entrada y salida. 
En medio lo posible imposible.

Un avanzar en carreteras donde nadie transita 
porque ciertos mundos se acaban para la turba, 
gracias a Dios. 

Se pierde el interés por algunos paisajes, 
entonces el abandono nos concede el milagro: 
el heno que cuelga de los árboles te habla del destierro.

Te invita a entrar en él.

Los encinos cantan desde las raíces.

Ululan los espacios donde se esconde la distancia.

Entre más habitaciones más razones para encaminarse 
hacia una posible desaparición.

¿Entre dos inexistencias se crea lo que se nombra?

Los seres, al escuchar, producen los sonidos.

Los ojos, al mirar, crean el color.

La lengua bebe del viento y se sabe viva, real.

En la medida del acontecer lo acontecido se manifiesta: 
la hojarasca se troza bajo un peso constante.

Bajo la sombra del encino las lagartijas copulan.

Silba la luz.

Tras ese cordel se sigue penetrando, Ciervo, 
sin ver aún el final.

Sigue siendo un entrar.

Un balanceo del zanate detenido largamente en la rama.

Un negarse del sol que intimida a las orquídeas.

Por ahora, sólo el heno, los árboles.

La sustancia de la historia de hoy.

Un mundo existe porque lo ves 
y deja de existir sin que lo veas, 
mientras alguien regresó 
y se dirige a la salida. 

1.

Ciervo, between two states of non-being, nothing or everything happens;
the absolute has an entrance, an exit.

It can begin as dark doorway, empty tables, 
someone saying goodbye: 
you see them walk away, they’ll return.

With the two non-being states, will what has to happen happen? 
Does one know without knowing?

One enters the narrative through messages sent. 
It doesn't matter if at the beginning or forever.

That’s reality: a perpetual state of things.

There, between entry and exit, 
the possible impossible.

Thank God: on these roads 
no one travels, we follow them to
worlds where the crowd don’t want to go. 

They don’t care for the landscape, 
which gives us this miracle: 
the moss hanging from trees speaks to you of exile.

Invites you to enter.

The oaks sing from their roots.

The space howls, hiding distance.

The more rooms there are, the more likely the paths
on which we set out disappear.

Is it that only in living we name what we create? 

We listen, yield to sound.

In seeing our eyes create color.

Our tongues drink the wind, it let’s us know we’re real, alive.

The things that come to pass take control:
leaves torn under constant weight.

Under the oak shade, lizards copulate.

Light whistles.

Beyond that barrier, we continue, go deeper: No end, Ciervo,
no end.

And yet? An entry.

The  grackle paused, balanced itself a long time on a branch.

The orchids fear the sun’s absence .

For now? Only moss, trees.

The totality of history today.

Worlds exist when seen 
and cease when not;
And heading for the exit
the one who returned.

from Scenes Left Out Of […] (Lavender Ink/diálogos, 2026):

JUST A LOG, 
BUT A LOG IN LOVE

			—Once upon a time… 
			—A king!— my little readers will immediately say
			—No, my dears, you're mistaken. This time, it was a piece 
			of wood.
							— Carlo Collodi




                                                                                          To Francisco Toledo


When death was 
        giving birth 
              to wood
		like a frog 
			born 
                        of fire
	virile and all 
			night
		riverbed 
			of history

			, no calm no memory


			, then the
						
                         light 		

					and

					transparency 
                                               of a whale
								
                                                         in whale
							
                                                 doubt of sky
								
                                                                doubt
                                                                     blue

						                 beloved 
							fairy godmother

								, innocent 

When just 
	born croaks
		infinitesimal
		, shadow 
                       of itself doll

		, fluvial 
			grace

			, multiplied

				, flying 
					jewel

					I divined
                                 beloved fairy
                                        godmother, crocodile
                                                 sheepskin

					, then you

								descended

			, pure prophecy and thigh

					of sanguine 
					silver

			, pure movement of narcissus
					flower 
						, lemon blossom 
								fury

                                        You say 
	                                those most ardent
			                blues

				, deluge 
					of mirrors

				, talisman

					your neck


							color me


							of May


							, like holy 

							smell


						                  I want 
							to be

							your flesh

						   





                                      , you said

Good Links:

Scenes Left Out Of […]

If you know me, you know what I think. Go to your local independent bookstore. Ask them to order Scenes for you. Ask them to order a few copies to put on their shelves. If you have no independent bookstore near you, get it straight from the publisher! Support independent bookstores! And independent literary presses!

https://www.lavenderink.org/site/shop/scenes-left-out-of/?v=a906dcd34dae

The House of Ciervo

Ciervo is available in the US and Mexico both as Kindle and as a paperback. For the Kindle, it’s Amazon, for the paperback, as with Scenes, local bookstore! Have them order it! Or order it directly from the publisher! If you are in Oaxaca? It’s at Ático and other stores.

Aliform: https://www.aliformpublishing.com/product/the-house-of-ciervo/3MYI2G3BHXYIOWTOLNETY7UY

Amazon:https://a.co/d/0f4eyfvX

Canción Mixteca, Luis Aguilar and Miguel Aceves Mejia

This song, nostalgic and sentimental, breaks the heart of many from Oaxaca; written by the great Oaxaca composer, José López Alavez, this short clip comes from the 1957 film Hay angeles con espuelas and features two marvelous voices. ¡Que disfrutes! Enjoy!

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An important part of being in recovery is accepting the things that life hands you. Sometimes the things aren’t the best. Sometimes? They are wonderful.

My childhood friend, Cynthia Odierna (known to me as Cyndi, I still call her that, but no one else does), sent me the above video of NYC mayor Zohran Mamdani. Cynthia is an educator, an activist, a singer. Before you read another word of this post? Please watch it.

You watched it? Okay. No? Please. So you understand my pride.

I am a New Yorker. I was born in NYC, I grew up in Queens, went to PS 176. My family moved to Long Island in 1965 (that’s how I met Cyndi—we lived not far from each other on Wesleyan Road). When I graduated from high school in 1976, I went to Columbia—I loved how it calls itself Columbia University, in the City of New York—what else could a young poet want? I only left living in the city when Katherine and I got married in 1982. We lived in France and Italy for a little while, a few years in the mountains in the west of Virginia. Then we came home, to Brooklyn in 1985, where we were until 2016 and our move to southern Mexico.

I am a New Yorker. Not because I was born in the city and lived there for more than 40 of my 67 years. Not because you can hear it in the inflections in my speech (even in Spanish). Not because in any US federal election my vote comes out of Brooklyn—because every US citizen who lives abroad votes from their last residence in the US and I am proudly Brooklyn.

And, no, not because, even down here in San Pedro Ixtlahuaca in our little Buena Vista colonia in the state of Oaxaca where as a dual citizen of both Mexico and the US, where I am writing this right now, even as I root for the Guerreros (our baseball team) and the Alebrijes (our soccer team), I still root for and listen to and watch the games for the Mets, (football) Giants, Rangers, and Knicks—and wondering in this writing how many know why I included (football) when writing about the Giants?

I’m a New Yorker because I believe in what Mayor Mamdani believes (if you didn’t watch the video, please?). I’m a neoyorquino by birth, by habit, by love, and by belief. I believe in what our NYC mayor believes. I love how he brings in scripture. Old Testament, New Testament, Koran. He brings in the Bhagavad-Gita. He talks about Buddhism.

He is addressing faith leaders and he talks hope. He addresses the pain ICE may bring and talks about healing and relief. He reminds us that all of us have been strangers. And in that is the reminder that it is our responsibility to welcome the stranger.

Strangers. Become friends.

So much is going wrong in the US right now. I think? Maybe more is going right. Led by people like Mayor Mamdani. Going right because moving left.

Gratitude today to my friend Cyndi for sending me this video. My happiness in sending it to you.

Next week? Poetry. This week? Hazme un favor y abrazar a un foraster@.

Hug a stranger.

In case you missed it?

(okay—Apollo turned 11 this past week—happy birthday puppy!).

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The last week the news from the US seemed almost unbearable. The murder of Alex Pretti, the Minneapolis Veteran Administration ICU nurse who was shot ten times in the back while helpless on the ground after trying to help a fellow protester who was being unjustifiably pepper-sprayed, was at the heart of it. The lies that subsequently came out from DHS and the White House, contradicted clearly by all the video, were just one more deception from the authoritarian playbook.

He was a “domestic terrorist.” He was bent on massacre. The ridiculous question asked by more than one administration sycophant, and by the wannabe dictator at the head of it all: What was he doing with a concealed weapon and extra rounds of ammunition? Maybe because he had a license to carry in a concealed carry state? It was something to watch: the administration, which routinely attacks the First, Fourth, and Tenth Amendments, suddenly attacking the Second Amendment, to the profound disturbance of the MAGA NRA cult faithful.

That wasn’t all. Not even close. There were other ICE shootings. Other kidnappings. There was more lunacy and corruption. It was more of the same nightmarish cruelty and venality emanating from north of the border that no longer surprises anyone in the world. It only reveals greater proof that the United States is firmly in decline, no longer a trusted ally, no longer a trusted trading partner, no longer a democracy to be admired but a potent example of what happens when a formerly respected country loses any sense of balance.

Of course, all isn’t hopeless. Domestically, the pushback is there, the resistance that greets ICE agents wherever they go. The resistance that across the country rejects the DHS attempts to build prisons to illegally house visitors and citizens wherever it sees an opening. It’s the resistance that is causing Democratic representatives to grow backbones, It causes the courts to see that the law is upheld. It’s the resistance that with seriousness and humor is saying No Kings, no tyrants. Is saying No to the violence and meeting the attempts to divide and conquer with community and compassion. To a spirit of Yes We Can.

I watch and marvel at the strength and spirit. Watch and find power in the people on the streets in frigid cold facing down tear gas, pepper spray, and armed untrained (deceived) fellow citizens with a spirit that goes back a few hundred years.

Here, at times, it’s easy to lose heart. Easy to lose faith. Another death, another kidnapping, another deportation. The feeling of what’s to be done from abroad? And then one sees it. Europe uniting behind Greenland. Mexico making clear it’s a sovereign nation. Canada standing up at Davos to the southern bully. And both Mexico and Canada going into trade negotiations with the US with a sense of commitment.

Gratitude today to all who are standing their ground. Fighting the good fight. Making the best kind of trouble.

Catching Up:

I’ve been a little worn out the past weeks. In good ways. But a lot. And right now? A bad head cold. Still:

1. Two books: one a collaboration in English with Efraín Velasco, based on his Spanish text, Scenes Left Out Of […], which came out last week with Diálogos. The other, with Aliform, The House of Ciervo, my translation of Araceli Manzilla’s book, which will be in print at the end of next week here in Mexico in a bilingual edition. It comes out in the US end of February in paper and as a Kindle edition.

I’m proud of both these books, grateful for all who supported our work. I’ll be featuring both Scenes and Ciervo in Poet in Mexico in the coming weeks. As they say, watch this space.

2. Last week I wrote about the election here this past Sunday, in which midway through the current governor of Oaxaca’s term, we would have the chance to recall him, revoke his mandate. It was the first election of its kind in the country. The election was triggered by a recall petition of over 500,000 signatures. The vote required a turnout of over 40% of registered voters. Salomón Jara received support from just around 60% of the voters; the turnout was just under a 30%. Although the vote wasn’t binding because of that low percentage, it seemed to many of us a great exercise in democracy. The state of Oaxaca, as one observer noted, often leads the way in this kind of thing for the country. Many thought it boded well for future attempts at keeping governments honest: 40% of the people expressing dissatisfaction is hard to ignore.

3. In an earlier Poet in Mexico, I wrote about how the government of Presidenta Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo was going after businesses and wealthy individuals who hadn’t and haven’t been paying their share of taxes. I talked about the success of that tax collection, how the money was being used to pay for the costs of the extensive infrastructure, health, education, and multiple social welfare programs in the country. I noted the objections on the parts of some prominent right wing individuals, who didn’t like seeing their money go to the common good. I brought up the example of Ricardo Salinas Pliego in particular, who has been using his wealth to fund anti-government protests and his media operations to object to having to pay the estimated 2.5 to 4 billion dollars he and his companies owe in taxes.

In a victory for Sheinbaum and the Mexican people, Salinas Pliego came to the table this past week to admit he owed. He’ll pay. It sets a great example for the rest of the country.

Okay. That’s it, folks. I’m out of gas. After the Super Bowl, I’ll resume Poet in Mexico. I need a little time off though. Battery recharging. Coming soon will be Mancilla, Velasco, and myself.

For now? Some Klezmatics. I AIN’T AFRAID.

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Educators in December protesting the state government of Governor Salomón Jara Cruz after it failed to pay teacher salaries and the federally mandated end of year bonuses.

There’s been an awful lot of activity in Oaxaca lately, a lot of new street repair, lots of workers out paving and making the usually awful roads, full of potholes, non-functioning traffic lights, seem almost safe. There are a lot of signs, all praising the current governor, Salomón Jara Cruz, for what he refers to as Primavera Oaxaqueña, the Oaxacan Spring.

It’s all a reminder that this Sunday, January 25, we Oaxacans will do something never done before in the state nor in the country. Under a relatively new state law, we will vote on whether we want our current governor, who has served two years, to continue in the job for the remaining two. This law, linked to the Fourth Transformation initiated by President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (better known as AMLO) and continued by his successor, current President Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo, is meant to give citizens a greater voice in how the government is run.

Over half a million people signed a petition calling for the revocation of the mandate of Salomón Jara which triggered the law to go into effect. For the election to be binding, the law requires a minimum voter turnout of 40%. A simple majority of voters voting against Jara would mean the state congress would appoint a new governor. Mexico has a similar law on the presidential level, introduced in 2019, though no petition is required. During AMLO’s term, he won approval of his mandate, though turnout was under 40% so the vote ended up being non-binding.

Two visions of Governor Jara: above, signs calling for voters to continue with him; below, the opposition, claiming he hasn’t lived up to his promises and needs to be removed from office. Wouldn’t it be great if the US had this option?

I’m not a big fan of the current governor. He’s of the Morena party, which I generally support, but a number of his actions have bothered me. Though he has worked hard on infrastructure, his record on working with human rights groups, in particular around femicide and indigenous rights, has been pretty poor. Nepotism plays a big role in his administration, with a number of people being fired when he took office (including a sizable group of workers with disabilities) and replaced by family members, including his own daughter. The outcry was so great on the last that she subsequently left the government. Still, the cronyism has been blatant. Oddly enough, Jara is fairly popular, ranking in the top 10 of governors in the country with an approval rating of around 57%.

It will be interesting to see how the vote goes. Though I was already a citizen, I didn’t yet have my voting credentials for Jara’s initial election. I probably would have voted for him the first time around. This time?

That, of course, brings me to the mad wannabe king north of the border. Since there’s no petition/voting mechanism in the US, the way there is in Mexico, this does raise a different question: When will the 25th Amendment revoking his mandate come into play? The warmonger lunatic is threatening (illegal) tariffs on all countries who oppose his demand that Greenland become a part of the US. In other words, on our NATO allies. NATO has sent troops to Greenland, fearing the worst. Trump also wrote a letter, full of historical inaccuracies and his usual bad grammar, to Norway’s prime minister in which Trump blamed that country’s government for him not receiving the Nobel Peace Prize, using that as a further justification for annexing Greenland. As if the government of Norway has anything to do with the awarding of the prize.

Further? There are his threats to invoke the Insurrection Act within the US because the ICE agents he has sent to Minnesota have exacerbated the dangerous situation they created. He took the half a billion dolllars realized from the sale of Venezuelan oil that he stole and put it in a bank in Qatar, beyond the reach of the Congress, which in theory controls the budget. He is selling seats on his Gaza Peace Board, which he imagines will rival the United Nations, for 1 billion dollars a piece (that money, again, will not go to the US Treasury but will be held in bank accounts that only Trump controls). In addition, Trump offered Vladimir Putin a free seat on that board, because no one reeks of peace so much as the Russian butcher (and one has to wonder what this says for US support for Ukraine).

Trump is bent on ruining the US economy, ruining the health of Americans, bent on environmental destruction, on the cessation of First Amendment protections. It’s not that there’s the danger of an authoritarian government. There already is one. Plain and simple.

Here in Mexico, we sign a petition and we get to vote again. Trump wants to suspend elections. How serious is he? Very.

As I’ve written before, I’m heartened by the protests across the United States. By the polling that shows how dramatically unpopular the open cesspool his lemmings call dear leader has become.

Are polls and protests enough? Last week I cited Rachel Maddow on the 3.5% rule. That when 3.5% or more of the people are out protesting—and she suspects there are already that many— that’s when dictators fall. I can only hope she’s right.

SOME POETRY

Then there’s another kind of Wright, Jeffrey Cyphers Wright. We first met in the early 80’s. Only a few years older than me, Jeff was already a major force on the poetry scene of the Lower East Side. I went to a number of his readings, some had open mikes, and after reading at a few of those, I started getting invited to be one of the featured readers. Jeff was also the publisher of Cover magazine. He gave me the chance to write for him, mainly music and art reviews. My favorite of those was getting to do a cover story on Nanci Griffith during a stunning series of concerts she gave in NYC.

Jeff, a New Romantic poet, is also a publisher, art and literary critic, eco-activist, impresario, filmmaker, and artist. He’s written 20 books of poetry, including Party Everywhere, Erato’s Inbox, and Doppelängster; Self Portraits in a Funhouse Mirror. His work appears in Best American Poetry, 2023. He has received a Kathy Acker Award for both publishing and writing and a recent collection, Fuel for Love, won the James Tate Award. Wright publishes Live Mag! You can see his films and puppet shows on Youtube.

Jeff has an MFA. He was a student of Allen Ginsberg. He has been running readings in NYC for the longest time. If you get a chance to look at Live Mag, you get a very good sense of the poets writing in NYC today (http://www.livemag.org).

His poetry reflects strongly on the poet himself, wonderful, witty, and smart. Politically and socially engaged, it’s work deeply rooted in the New York scene that somehow breaks out of that territory and becomes worldly and exciting, just as at home on Avenue C as it is in Montevideo. It’s a pleasure to include my good friend, Jeffrey Cyphers Wright in A Poet in Mexico.

photo: John Sarsgard

Five poems from Long Play (mss)

by Jeffrey Cyphers Wright

LEAVES OF GLASS

                … I give the sign of democracy.
    —Walt Whitman

You brought red cherries. We shared a muffin
at Union Square 'til a shower drove us in- 
to a doorway. I saved some thunder for later.

The sky is no poorer for all its endless gifts.

Hanging on to every word, let me call you
“Sweetheart.” Let me keep you company
in the long shadows we’ve come to box up.

A Phoenix in every pot! My mind is afire,
rummaging through the ashes of old adages,
looking for good badinage to rally the masses.

Time to take ukulele lessons, citizen activists.
Time to make brass knuckles out of memes.

More Moët, my sun drop on a golden chain?
I could live forever on what your glass leaves.


UNITED STATE

Cherry blossoms cascade from branches,
slanting down. They slide over the street,
a moving rug, and turn the gutters pink.

People are happy to watch the Titans play.
To practice their backhand. To stream
the latest meme about societal extremes.

The marrow of sorrow stirs in my bones.

I like it when you correct my misnomers.
We look up how to pronounce sepulcher. 

We look up George de la Tour. Then we
eat strawberries and kiss the good night.
In the dark, eyes shut, our states unite.

When I get to Portland, I’ll send a card.
The sea will begin and white lilies ignite.


SO LONG

I’ve been inspecting me, Inspector. I’m sure
you’ll find everything in ardor. October’s 
yellow leaves blowing across an amber ledger.

The sun spends its whole day here in labor.

Midtown Tunnel traffic cop’s white-gloved
hand-jive juggles the rush hour’s agenda. 

Stately Benin Mission on the corner of 38th
faces demolition—fluted pilasters, witnesses
to kisses, curses, oaths, avowals, betrayals.

Ah, Benin. Empire grown exchanging slaves
with weapons. A reckoning can also wreck.

The trap door is a great trope to fall for! 

Our usher’s a tease, keeping us in line so long. 
My ticket is a fever. Your hair maps the wind.


FUNNEL OF LOVE

Acorns bounce at the base of an oak 
and toss their wee caps into the air.

I dedicate myself to the proposition
that all is fare for love or war.

My friend, the artist, paints what 
can’t be seen. Magnetic waves 

in peach and green. Translucid
spirits that beckon like chauffeurs

at the airport holding a sign 
bearing your name. Her hymn.

O, to be a necklace around the sun.
A scarecrow dancing with a firenado.

Oblivion’s All Stars preach thus:
Acorns, like us, fall so they can grow.


ERATO’S INBOX

Erato plaits with both hands, wreathes of roses
(the flower of love.)
        —Sextus Propertious 

A cherry dogwood rocks its yellow frock.
The red star clover sheds its sticky sepals. 

Minding the gap, I vault into your heart
securing the supply route to our future. 

Pant by the numbers. And make it count.
A little Polish on the train. A little patois.

I’m just someone’s boo, a Tupelo tulip.
A runaway kite over Tompkins Square.

Don’t go anywhere. Let me look at you.
Reasons to be beautiful. Shoes drop-

ping upstairs. Because of each other.
A salvo of salvation bursting through air.

Devoured by devotion, we’ve earned us
and flame unto flame, furnish the furnace.

photo: Luigi Cazzaniga

Good Links: Jeff, Nanci, Townes, and Silvio

Jeffrey Cyphers Wright, Fuel for Love, SurVision Books, 2024

As usual, I recommend you go to your local independent bookstore and ask them to order a few copies of this 2023 James Tate Prize winning collection, one for you and then one or two more for the poetry section. Support independent bookstores! Support literary presses! https://survisionmagazine.com/bookshop.htm

Nanci Griffith and Townes Van Zandt, Tecumseh Valley

Not the greatest quality video of an incredibly great song.

Silvio Rodríguez, Te doy una canción

A beautiful song of love and country.

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Last week, posting in Poet in Mexico about the earthquakes here and the earthquake impact of the invasion of Venezuela, the kidnapping of its president and his wife, I wrote that this week I would write about my hopes for 2026.

Could I have known—should I have known?—of the insane awful to come? That the stable genius in the White House, well on his path to dementia, would continue the crazy? That he would assert that the US would remain in Venezuela for an (unspecified) much longer time than previously announced? Would continue with threats to Greenland, Cuba, Colombia, and, of course, Mexico? That he would tell the New York Times that the only limits to his power were not US law, not international law, but his own morality, his own mind? This from a twice-impeached president, a convicted sex abuser, a 34 time convicted felon?

Could I have known—wasn’t it inevitable?—that ICE would murder a US citizen? Renee Good. A mother, a wife, a poet. How she would calmly address her killer? How ICE agent Jonathan Ross, after he shot her in the face, would walk away, muttering, Fucking bitch? How the White House cretins would claim there was nothing wrong with what he did, that Renee Good deserved to die?

Here in Mexico there’s a growing wariness, growing weariness, with the cruelty we see to the north. We know the threats are real. We know the mad wannabe dictator understands nothing except his own venal impulses. Like all narcissists, this open cesspool of a human being lacks any kind of self-awareness. He lives in the moment of his own insanity, surrounded by some who have sold their souls to be in his inner circle, some who long before already had, all grotesquely aligning themselves within his satanic constellation.

These days the front pages of the newspapers too often look disconcertingly like this: headlines that confront the possibility of a US invasion of Mexico, protests in the United States, protests in other countries, international news (China and Venezuela, Cuba and Venezuela), an opinion piece on the US (read Trump) imperial vision of itself.

The newspaper headlines on a daily basis note this. The reporting adds to the feelings of unreality. More ICE shootings. More gaslighting of the facts. And the speculation of what’s going on abroad. The repeat repeat repeat. What will be the next war crime? Will there really be a second wave of attacks on Venezuela? Did Trump really declare himself Acting President there? Will the US really invade Cuba? Colombia? Mexico? Will there be US soldiers in Iran? Will Trump declare war on NATO by trying to seize Greenland? If Article 5 is invoked, in which all NATO members have agreed to defend all NATO members from aggression, will the US defend itself from itself?

Defending ourselves from ourselves. It really is what’s going on in the US. That’s another aspect of this. How one part of the United States now has to defy the other. Has to stand up and say Enough. No more. No more killing, no more murder, no kings. It’s stunning and it’s happening. The protests are everywhere. They are stirring and inspiring. They are depressing. Civil war is not the dream of anyone sane.

In my time in recovery I’ve learned a lot about my limitations. I’ve learned to think about what I can do, what I can’t. I know there are things beyond my control. I’ve learned the dangers that come from anger, from resentments.

I’ve also learned the value of community. I’ve learned that things I can’t do on my own I can do with others. I’ve had strengthened in me the strength that comes out of collaboration, how creative, thoughtful, compassionate action can lead to great changes in and for everyone engaged.

I’ve learned how to be engaged in the deepest, most profound ways with the world. Which is what makes for the sadness I feel for the world right now, for the grief. What the MAGA administration, in all its soullessness and evil, brings. Vile craziness, blatant immorality.

Then the hope. As the US spins out of control and the Mar-A-Lago moron posts endless BS, there’s light. Because of the resistance. Because of the folks saying No. This is our country. You will not destroy it. States are suing the federal government, the Department of Justice. The MAGA coalition appears to be fracturing. There are millions in the streets.

Can anyone say what comes next?

Last week, Rachel Maddow was a guest of Jimmy Kimmel’s. She talked about her own hopefulness. She reminded the viewers of the 3.5% idea. That throughout history when 3.5% or more of a population protests totalitarianism, those protesters, in her words, become an unstoppable force that precludes them [dictators] from consolidating dictatorial power. Maddow noted that she thought with the protests maybe we were already there.

To which Kimmel responded, and it was something chilling. I feel like 3.5 % of the population is babies. If all the babies mobilize, they could take care of this on their own.

Of course there was laughter. Except then Kimmel added: It’s their future, you know. And with that, at least for me, it wasn’t funny anymore.

The babies. The babies. Their future. This isn’t just about this moment. It’s about the babies. The ones whose parents are being deported. Murdered. And it’s about the ones whose parents do the deporting, the torturing. The one who have become murderers. Their future.

It’s about all of us. All sides. Our future and our present. We who watch and witness, who protest, who applaud, who pay attention and ignore. Hate and love.

There’s so much work to do. Every day. Are we up for it? That question—are we?—defines the moment. It defines who we are, who we aren’t. Who we will become and be.

Some Poetry

In these times, I need poetry. I need art. Beauty. I need to be uplifted about the strength and brilliance of the human spirit. A poet whose work gives me the sense that yes, we’ll make it, is my friend, Jesse Lee Kercheval.

I first met Jesse Lee—I call her Jesse Lee because of my son named Jesse, most know her without the Lee—at one of the annual conferences of the American Literary Translators Association (ALTA). I’m not sure I remember which one, 2013? 2014? Jesse Lee was looking for folks to translate poets from Uruguay for an anthology she was preparing. She asked me if I’d be interested. I said said I was, not knowing how important it was going to be.

I write important. I could write momentous. For me at least. Working on América invertida: an anthology of emerging Uruguayan poets (UNM Press, 2016) brought me into a world of wonderful and strikingly original poets. For this anthology and then another she would edit Earth, Water and Sky: A Bilingual Anthology of Environmental Poetry (diálogos, 2016) Jesse Lee asked me to translate Martín Barea Mattos. Martín is a kind of rock star in the poetry world of Montevideo, of Uruguay, and South America. He is the organizer of the annual international poetry gathering, the Mundial Poetico; I had the chance to participate in two of these. Astonishing. In addition, I had the privilege of translating two of Martín’s books, published by Lavender Ink/diálogos in 2017 in a single volume, Never Made in America: Selected Poems from Martín Barea Mattos. I’ve had the chance to read with Martín in the US, notably at the New Orleans Poetry Festival and, again, in Uruguay. It’s been an important friendship.

Once one gets to know Jesse Lee, one doesn’t want to stop. Her energy is boundless. The Zona Gale Professor of English at the University of Wisconsin, and the director of the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing, she is also always on the move. I never quite know where she is. Madison? Montevideo? When I wrote her this past week, she was flying home from Paris. A little under the weather, but the antibiotics were doing the trick.

Jesse Lee has written over 20 books of poetry, fiction, and memoir and edited or translated over 15 volumes. Productive? She makes me feel almost pathetically lazy.

The poems here come from a chapbook in progress of prose poems, Alphabet Abandon, based on words she randomly selects in alphabetical order. In the last decade or so Jesse has started to do visual art (her books include graphic ones, yep) and I asked her if we could include some of that here. So, with pleasure, I present to the readers of Poet in Mexico, poems and art by Jesse Lee Kercheval.

Alphabet

I stand in the middle of a field in The Driftless and the open space makes me a letter. Me plus my rat terrier a word. Us plus four sandhill cranes a sentence walking forward on skinny bent legs. I stand in the middle of the West Fork of the Kickapoo and I am, at the very least, an exclamation point—emphasizing the fast flowing water. Add the yellow canoe I tipped out of, racing down the river, and there is the start—or end—of a sentence. The day an alphabet in a line above the blackboard in a classroom. Lines, the odd dot. A convenience store of language. But it’s the space around the letters gives that shape to the words. Swimmers coordinate their strokes and inside the crook of an elbow, water ballet is born. Existence makes a thing useful. Nonexistence makes it work. The hollow in our hearts makes room for all the blood.


Coronillas
 
Two bones, white, in an open field. A horse’s pelvis. A long, broken leg bone. In the distance, brown hills. Around the bones, three horses crop the long grass. Behind them a circle of spiky coronillas, thorny trees that grow so slowly it has taken them four hundred years to stand slightly taller than the horses. Inside, I know, is deep shade, a circle of earth packed by the hoofs of animals who take shelter there. Once there were four horses. Now only three. One brown, one red, one white, but not as white as the bones. I think the coronillas are a doorway to something only horses can see. I think these bones are the foundations of a temple. I think the hills are too far away for any of us to reach while we live. 

Meddler

What caused my wounds was milk. Or was not milk. Or was the lack of everything. Mock food. Mock drink. In the mud, I had a son. On the ice, I had a daughter. We know in advance how each of us will die but forget until our last breath comes so sore. I was a medlar, a fruit so out of fashion I bet you’ve never seen one. To be edible, a medlar has to blet, be left to rot, half frozen on the tree. How can such a fruit be exist? But Romans dined on them. Medieval kings. If such fruit did not exist, why a word like bletted? We name what is. I was lost. I tried to climb a tree. Who wouldn’t want to be sweeter, riper, hanging in the cold? The man who stopped me was a meddler and a fool. He said, You need a fire around you. He said, You need a fever hot enough to break your bones.


Palm
 
At the end of every sleeve, a palm. I press my palm to yours. Mine is colder. Outside the window, snow. If we were young, there would be a palm tree, strung with Christmas lights. If it were spring two thousand years ago, there would be palm fronds waving, a young carpenter on a donkey, no holes yet in his calloused palms. There are 2,600 species of palm. But in the Florida where we grew up, the palm outside the window would have been a cabbage palm—such a plain name. Sabel palmetto, state tree of Florida, nearly indestructible. Still standing after hurricanes uproot live oaks, snap pine trees in two. Are you a cabbage palm? Am I? Married 37 years last June. In palm reading, if the heart line starts underneath your index finger, it means contentment in relationships. Even after all these years, I am afraid to look. I cup my palm around your chin, to keep you from nodding or nodding off. Shhh, I say. Press my palm across your mouth. What more is there to say?

Zinc

Dah dah dah dum. Four notes of Beethoven in each ear, the tune my hearing aids play to say their zinc battery is dead. Not a note more of that symphony, both song and sound dead as I walk into a borrowed room in a borrowed house in a body made of borrowed elements like zinc, that second most abundant trace metal in humans. Zinc, slightly brittle at room temperature. Zinc, named by the alchemist Paracelsus after the German word Zinke (tooth). My teeth, like my bones, are more brittle each year. Last night, I dreamed of another bed, of a younger body, exposed bone by bone like an X-ray, every femur and joint the dull gray silver of zinc. Your drawing/ your writing/ your weight—zinc. The zinc in my body the same zinc in those hearing aid batteries which stand in, valiantly, for one expired body part. A miracle. I open the hatch on each metal ear. Out with the old in with the new. The sound as they reboot not Beethoven, but a digital ding ding ding ding, like a robot singing, like an elevator going up up up up, like a timer telling me the cake I have been baking all these years is finally done.

Good Links: Jesse Lee and John

Jesse Lee Kercheval, I Want To Tell You (Pitt Poetry Series, 2023)

Jesse Lee’s most recent book of poems is I Want To Tell You. I’ll suggest here what I always do: go to your local independent bookstore and suggest they order you a copy and then a copy or two for the bookstore’s poetry section. Support independent booksellers! Support literary presses!

John Prine, That’s How Every Empire Falls

And this empire? Well, what do you think?

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A little before 8 AM on the morning of January 2, the warning went out of the first and strongest of a series of sismos that rocked Mexico all day.

ephemeral

the sismos
have rocked our
houses again we
are up in arms 
all in knots is it
to the street for safety
or the doorways
between rooms
where do we stand 
to view the cracking
earth the oceans 
leaking oil the 
cosmos gas 
this universe is
waves of sound 
light particles that
bounce like dry 
season gnats in the
afternoon air 
filled with baking
bread and cooking 
beans the jacaranda 
bloom lavender
bougainvillea 
planets rise fall 
astronomers see
geographers see
we whisper dark 
science spells
the ones we surround
surround us

—Mark Statman, from Volverse/Volver, Lavender Ink, 2025

(Note: This week’s Poet in Mexico comes early. I hadn’t meant it to be that way, hadn’t meant to write what I have. My plan had been to look at some of the brighter things I see coming for 2026. But the stench from the White House, the hypocrisy, venality, and cruelty, overwhelmed me. Next week? The plan’s to move on, with luck, and write the hope for the future I feel).

Last week, I received a lot of messages from friends who had heard about the big earthquake in the state of Guerrero, 6.5 on the Richter Scale. We had been alerted about a minute before it happened by the nation-wide cellular phone alert system. The warning gives one just enough time to try and gather oneself and head someplace safe. Katherine and I were in the country at the rancho, so heading to our designated earthquake spot (which doubles as our fire pit patio) was pretty easy. The dogs were pretty excited about all the early morning even before breakfast activity.

Quakes kept coming all day, small aftershocks that were barely discernible, if at all. They are, however, a reminder that where we live, it isn’t tornadoes or hurricanes, it isn’t blizzards or ice we need to worry about. It’s the idea that the earth might open up right beneath us, that the land might crack so wide and far as to destroy and kill.

We were okay. Some folks in Guerrero, which is one state over to the west, weren’t. There were collapsed buildings, deaths. The government and people here did what we always do. We took stock, took measure, took care of each other. It’s a thing I love about Mexico. Like people all over the world, when faced with disaster, we rise.

We received a second quake only days later. I was up late on Friday night/Saturday morning reading, listening to music, when across my ipad came news of a US attack on Venezuela. As the details unfolded of the illegal invasion of a sovereign nation to abduct its president and his wife, what struck many of us here wasn’t just the illegality of it, how it violated the US Constitution and international treaties, but how at Trump’s press conference, the US president didn’t even bother to hide that this was all about one thing. Not restoring Venezuela’s democracy, not dealing with the flow of fentanyl into the US (no fentanyl flows from Venezuela anywhere). Nor was it about forging alliances with other nations for any of the great crises currently confronting the world. No.

No. What this was about was oil. What this was about was money. It was just one more way in which the corrupt president of the United States was going to continue his pattern of using his office to enrich himself, his family, his cronies. If anybody doubts this pattern, note how Trump’s net worth, according to Forbes, has increased by 273%, from 2.3 to 6.3 billion dollars since he returned to office a year ago.

For those who aren’t clear about how Trump has managed to use the office of the presidency to enrich himself, here’s a handy graph, sourced by Forbes, provided by Senator Bernie Sanders, to make it easier.

It was also was hard too not to think about the timing: maybe it had something to do with the sudden release of the Jack Smith transcripts that made clear the government’s case that Trump was directly responsible for the January 6 insurrection? Or the fact that there had been a release of even more Epstein files, over 5,000,000 pages worth? Or did it have something to do with the expiring ACÁ subsidies that would cause medical insurance costs across the US to skyrocket? It wasn’t hard either not to think about the ways in which the invasion was not only done without any consultation with the US Congress, but that it was done after Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, fully knowing what Trump was planning, lied to Congress about those plans.

What made the whole thing even more bizarre was how the descending into dementia would-be dictator, during his morning press conference, mused on how Mexico might be next. He already had his MAGA bullshit rationale: Mexico is a country ruled by cartels. Mexico’s presidenta refuses to allow US troops to help. Mexico is out of control.

Those of us who live here know the truth. Trump looks at Mexico the way he looks at everything: What’s in it for me? Trump is aware of a few things. Mexico is the world’s 12th largest economy. Mexico ranks 17th in the world in oil reserves. Mexico also has enormous reserves of the rare earth and minerals Trump covets. He knows that Mexico’s natural resources are carefully controlled by the Mexican government. He knows that to have access to those for more self-enrichment he has to come up with an excuse to exercise his version of the Monroe Doctrine. Whatever Trump wants, he’ll steal it. He’ll cheat to get at it. He’ll lie, send US troops for his own venal interests. He is sick, pathetic, and powerful.

Presidenta Claudia Sheinbaum has been firm with Trump that Mexico is not subservient to the whims of the United States; despite the fact that Mexico is the United States’ single largest trading partner, she has recognized that the clueless policies of the current administration have made the United States increasingly unreliable and she has been successful at forging economic and political alliances with other countries in the region and across the globe.

And no doubt he wasn’t happy that our presidenta’s response to his illegal invasion of a neighboring nation wasn’t one of praise; rather Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo’s response was to condemn. Rather than fawn over his bloated fake strongman tactics, she posted to X/Twitter this from the UN Charter, to which the United States is a signatory: The Members of the Organization, in their international relations, shall refrain from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any State, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the United Nations.

In other words, her response was to say, There are treaties. There are rules. Venezuela is a sovereign nation. She sees through all of the Maduro is an awful man (he is) BS. As do many leaders in the world. She saw Trump’s actions for what they were. And she called it out: No. You won’t bully us.

Sheinbaum has been rightly called a Trump-whisperer. She has dealt with Trump firmly and with great degrees of success. Sheinbaum also has something Trump doesn’t have: the courage that comes from patriotism and conviction, from believing in her country and the knowledge that leaderships means standing up for her citizens. Trump understands nothing of this. There is nothing high-minded about him. He is a cesspool who doesn’t understand what an easily manipulated loser so much of the world considers him.

Her popularity in Mexico is twice that of his in the US. And Trump can’t stand that. He can’t stand people he knows can see through him, who aren’t afraid of him. He thinks the earth quakes before him, fearing his power and greed. It doesn’t. And we Mexicans don’t. How can one possibly fear someone who reeks so much of his own fear? His own decadence? His own failures as a president, as a human being?

consolation

light between 
dawn and day
blessings into 
questions of
become return 
my eyes into 
faraway age 
I think to
take this minute
flute and drum 
minute for 
cicada songs 
mezclas of
liberties we carry
wave and light
the unaligned 
planets Mercury
retrograde Venus
wandering we 
stroll through 
damage 
the imagined theaters 
the constellations 
Orion and bears 
medicines messengers 
today the 
silver and copper
coins taste of
silver copper 
chits in your 
back pocket 
the going rate for 
celestial is illusion
and ink 
dust and nails 
in trustworthy
loneliness I’m
lost in voice  
barges of immigrant
neediness the
forgetting that 
speaks of 
lilacs those fragile 
blooms in 
silver moss

—Mark Statman, from Volverse/Volver, Lavender Ink, 2025

Good Links: Elvis and Isabel

Elvis Costello, Peace In Our Time

And the heavyweight international propaganda—it’s been going on a long time, this cruel interventionism, this lying that wraps itself in a flag. Costello here is haunting.

Isabel Parra, Porque los pobres no tienen

Written by the Chilean cantautora Violeta Parra and sung here by her daughter, Isabel. One of the greatest ever social protest songs.

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Our Christmas Cactus.

fiesta mortal 

one kiss could
take hold of the
soul could send 
us spinning off
the cliffs the masks 
disguises we carry 
on our bodies
tattooed with 
equal signs and
parentheses hammered
silver copper we
own the world
because of love
because illusion 
small beds of the
past boats on the
rise the kiss
changes winter a
fall and embrace of
knowledge eyes
that light up when
you enter the
room a boomerang 
so many things
we never thought
and here they
are figures in 
columns addition
subtraction I count
syllables sometimes
other times words I
listen for rhymes 
at the end of the
day and how
love with love is
lined up

—Mark Statman, from Hechizo (Lavender Ink, 2022)

At some point, long before our move to Mexico in 2016, I posted a photo on social media of our Christmas tree. My friend, the novelist and essayist Lisa Solod responded: I thought you were Jewish?

Some folks wondered to me if Lisa was being aggressive. I answered that I didn’t think she was at all. I thought she was asking me an important question. Because I am Jewish. My faith matters to me. A lot. Though it’s true that the way I understand Judaism is a little outside of the mainstream. I find myself most closely singing in the process theology Judaism choir. And I’m grateful I can say that my faith informs my principles in all my affairs.

So, while it can be a little difficult in southern Mexico to even think about any kind of regular in-person synagogue attendance, being a Jew has continued to define a lot of who I am as poet, (retired) professor, activist, husband, father, brother, son, friend, human being. It richly informs my aesthetics and my ethics, my politics, my thoughts and actions. Obviously it’s essential to my spiritual life. It’s a part of how I understand what I wrote about last week in thinking about gratitude: Keatsian soul-making.

When I was in high school (shout out to the Commack High School North class of 1976—fifty years ago this June we graduated!), I had the good fortune to take a senior year elective class on world religions, taught by Jane Kramer. I had no idea then what that would mean to me. The class was inspiring, giving me ways of thinking about faith and practice that were unexpected and deep. In Ms. Kramer’s class, among other things, we read William James’ Varieties of Religious Experience, which was (still is) quite eye opening for me. I would go on, as an undergraduate at Columbia to major in Comparative Religions, a precursor to my even deeper interest in religious studies. I knew early in school that my commitment was to poetry. I also could see how immersing myself in this other study, as an academic and as a believer, would matter to me as someone committed to love, social justice, and beauty.

All that thinking back then gave me a respect for difference and mystery. It opened me up to the meanings behind greatness and smallness, to the challenges posed by knowledge, silence, and commitment.

(Interestingly enough, for me, is that the work in Comparative Religons, gave me the opportunity to take courses in Indian and Chinese theology/literature with, among others, two of the foremost translators in the field, Barbara Stoler Miller and Burton Watson; working with them inspired my senior thesis, a translation and analysis of the hymns of Martin Luther—back then my German was pretty good—which eventually led me to see how serious creative translation could be. Of my 16 books, 6 are of poetry in translation).

If, as Antonio Machado writes, Hacemos el camino por andar/ We make the road by walking, I found my paths crossing and crossing again the paths of so many others. It has been an extraordinarily powerful journey.

As for the Christmas tree? Katherine grew up a Quaker. She celebrated Christmas. Even before we got married, I started celebrating it with her. And I really loved how she and her extended family also celebrated. In most ways, it was pretty secular. Great food. Drink. Great conversation. Gift giving. A lot of laughing and a lot of closeness. Eventually, many of us had kids, and the chance to watch their joy in celebrating the holiday together was considerable.

I loved thinking idiosyncratically about Christmas. I was an outsider who felt welcomed. My favorite part happened to be the tree. There was something wonderful about having it indoors, how it would make home smell of pine. I loved conventional ornaments as well as weird ones. When we moved to Mexico, in place of a tree, we decided to switch over to our Christmas cactus (see again photo above). It’s different, with the same silly spirit.

The most celebratory days of Christmas in Mexico are Christmas Eve and Three Kings Day. In Oaxaca, in addition to those, there’s December 23, the Noche de Rabanos. On the Zócalo, there’s a giant fest and display of sculptures made out of, yes, radishes. Artists come from all over the state to display their artwork and the crowds are enormous,with folks lining up for hours ahead of time to have a view. I encourage you to do a search for images for the Noche de Rabanos in Oaxaca. You won’t be disappointed.

Of course, there were too many Christmases in the past that had too much sturm und drang. In which I was a principal actor. And cause of too much unnecessary harmful drama. In recovery, there’s less, though memory always has a voice in the present no matter the best intentions. We’ve found it best in recent years to make any Christmas celebration lower key, less stressful. And? More loving.

So how not to celebrate Christmas? As a Jew, thinking about the beauty of it is easy and welcome. How not to want to celebrate a life that stands for love and tolerance, for caring for the sick and needy, that represents commitment to equality, compassion, hope? Who doesn’t want to take a moment, given the state and situations of this world, to dream one in which peace, good will, and kindness guide us?

So this: It’s been a little less than a year since I started this Poet in Mexico project—my first actual post was January 14 of 2025. The support I’ve received for it, from readers and contributing poets, has been astonishing and inspiring. A gift beyond measure. As this year closes out, looking forward to the next one, I wish all of you serenity, tranquility, and joy. May your days be full of love.

Oaxaca Zócalo, December at night..

every hour a life

what you say what
I say says something
always never
said our hearts like 
mirrors looking glass
fate and the fates 
know more each
passing second they 
grow threads in
their teeth threads
in the clouds a
galaxy threaded with
meteor storms and 
sacred constellations how

will it happen
language of sound 
distance radiance
a thoroughfare of thorough-
breds every act of
contrition an act
the fates draw in
concentric circles 
arcs of stones like
the stones we threw  
thrown to ocean 
thrown to sky earthly  
mornings clove copal
rosemary honey 
the field cleared
the well in the middle 
brims with brackish 
life-saving water

I have a memory of
your eyes melodies  
chained the rest 
of the night 
hands over hands
we slide into beds like 
birth like death then 
the end of the
picture we know
what happened
thieves and fates
in the trees every-
day I say perdón I
mean it like a prayer
meant to be heard
we’re in on the 
secret a surprise 
morning light

—Mark Statman, from Volverse/Volver (Lavender Ink, 2025)

Good Links: Three of my favorite Christmas songs: John and Yoko, Judy, and José

John Lennon, Yoko Ono, the Plastic Ono Band, Happy Xmas (War Is Over)

Why does this song feel so relevant for me right now?

Judy Garland, Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas, from Meet Me in St Louis

This movie, which came out in 1944, has so much in it. And this scene so much to love. Through the years, if the fates allow.

José Feliciano, Feliz Navidad

In the late 1980’s, in early December, I was teaching poetry to kids in a school in the South Bronx, and I arrived early to one of the second grade classes I regularly taught. The second graders were seated in their seats. Their teacher in the front of the room. had just handed out a sheet of paper and the teacher was explaining to them that this was a song they were going to sing for their parents. He took them through the words in Spanish (many of the kids didn’t know them) and then the words in English. He then quietly sang for them the song. Then he asked them to join in. They (very) quietly sang along with him in Spanish and then, without any prompting, as soon as they got to the English, two girls jumped up out their seats and started bopping around and singing I want to wish you a merry Christmas. Suddenly, all the kids were up and clapping. Singing. The teacher sat there, surprised. He turned to me. Smiled. I think they know the song.

An indelible image in my brain.

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Oaxaca Zócalo, December 2025.

Last week I had breakfast with my friend Pat on the Zócalo, the big town square in Oaxaca centro. Pat and I try and get together once a month or so. We became close during Covid when circumstances would seem to throw us together. Which was pretty hard to do since almost everything was closed down. But somehow Pat and I would see each other every week or so.

These days, it’s for breakfast. Usually I’m coming in from the rancho, dropping the car off at the house in town, and walking down to the big plaza. Pat lives outside the city too, except in the complete opposite direction (I’m coming from southeast of town, he’s coming from northwest). Last week though it was time for car maintenance and so I dropped the car off at the Toyota dealership and walked the 2 miles or so into centro (I really like to walk…)

It’s hard to get mediocre food in southern Mexico. You have to try. Where we meet, the breakfasts are just a step up from that. Pat noted that he always order the vegetarian omelet, hoping this time it will sing. As usual, it didn’t. I had the huevos a la mexicana, which were good but just. We agreed, that the one thing they never mess up at this restaurant is the entomatadas (tortillas covered in a rich, slightly spicy tomato sauce) or the enfrijoladas (tortillas, again, only this time in a sauce from beans). For some protein, an egg or chicken. Already I’m pretty sure that next time one of those is my order (stay tuned…).

So why go there? One because the Zócalo can be lovely, with its band shell, its benches and trees, the gardens. With shops and restaurants on two sides, government offices on the third, and the metropolitan cathedral on the fourth, it’s always humming with activity, full of people, vendors, street musicians of all kinds. Right now it’s been decorated for Christmas. At its heart, Oaxaca remains a sleepy kind of town, one that closes early at night, even on the weekends. The Zócalo, though, always feels alive, no matter the time of day. It can be quite the show.

Pat and Mary dancing at Pat’s 90th birthday party earlier this fall.

Pat and I talked the way we always do, with a kind of relaxed intensity, the conversation ranging from politics to theology, recovery, baseball, and football, to family, friends and our lives in Oaxaca and in those United States. Pat and his wife, Mary, have lived here since 2002. Something about Pat? Though you wouldn’t know it on first meeting him? He turned 90 this past fall. There’s a whole lot of accumulated wisdom there.

Usually when Pat and I finish breakfast, we walk around the Zócalo a little in the direction of a parking garage just north of the square. This week though I had a doctor’s appointment and was going south and east. So we shook hands and hugged and off I went. And that’s when, only a block or two later, something hit me. Something very hard.

Gratitude. I was overwhelmed suddenly by wave of gratitude unlike anything I’d ever experienced before. As I’ve noted in the last few posts of Poet in Mexico, there’s been some curveballs and changeups coming at us, making the balancing act of life a little difficult.

Yet there, then, I just got hit. It had been a radiant morning, sun and blue skies, a morning chill that was suddenly warm and comfortable. Comforting even. Something Pat had said over breakfast—we had been talking about certain linkages between Jungian thought and scientific developments within the context of contemporary theology— and Pat had remarked, with a kind of studied determination, I think I’m beginning to figure this out. 90 years old and he’s searching, investigating, learning, making a difference in the world.

I looked around, at all the life of Oaxaca, at the activity and life here on these streets, I looked up and out at the backdrop mountains on on side, at the open space leading to the Oaxaca valley on the other.

I thought of the friends we’ve made here, thought of the life we have, the things we get to do. The life in town, life in the country. I thought about how much I’ve learned since we moved here, about the world, my place in it. I thought about poetry and engagement. I was reminded of Keats and his idea of this world as a vale of soul-making. I felt this peace, this sudden Yes as an answer to the woes of all the No.

That peace translated into so much gratitude. To feeling it and seeing why and a desire to say it loud and on the page. Gratitude for the morning, for the moment. How in that instant a kind of rightness with the world. So this week? A shout out to my friend Pat, for helping spark it all. For that sudden, welcome, great big Wow.

Some Poetry

I’ve known Anselm Berrigan for a number of years, though, as with a number of people on the NYC poetry scene, for a long time I couldn’t say I knew him well. Anselm and I had read together once, in 2010?, 2011? 2012? along with his brother Eddie, at the Ethical Culture Society, as part of an evening arranged by a friend of theirs who was a student of mine at the time. Anselm, who has published some 20 books, generously blurbed one of mine, A Map of the Winds (Lavender Ink, 2013), and I’ve always been grateful for that.

Which is why it was a real pleasure to spend some good time with him last April at the New Orleans Poetry Festival. Our reading schedules overlapped to the point that neither of us could see the other read, but we had a couple of chances for longer conversations, touching on our lives, our work, the state of the world. A few months later I reached out to Anselm about contributing poems for Poet in Mexico, thinking that maybe they could come from his recent book, Don’t Forget to Love Me (Wave Books, 2024). This was shortly before his mom, Alice Notley, had passed away. Anselm was in Paris doing what he could to help out his poetry icon parent and thought that putting together some poems would be a good idea. Alice died soon after and we put a hold on things. Then Anselm sent me a long poem, a work in progress, a meditation of life and grief. He wasn’t sure it was ready, but it seemed to me it certainly was.

I don’t think the poem need any commentary from me, other than to say it moves me a lot. Anselm is a terrific poet and here one sees that, in the frame of someone wanting to make sense of loss and grief, of friendships and family, of memory, how living delivers life.

The poem is too long to publish here in its entirety. Unfortunately. I look forward to seeing it in his next book. It’s with pleasure tinged with some sadness I welcome my friend Anselm Berrigan to Poet in Mexico.

Anselm reading.

from what is the purpose of a guinea hen

I.

I didn’t have a bug on my back
but I did bring two dog ticks to

New York from Vermont recently
You know how some words are 

dysfunctional? Literally is one of 
them. You think you’re being emphatic 

saying that literally happened, but it 
would be of greater strength and acuity 

to say that happened, even if you’re not 
especially fond of reserve. This could 

be said to be a matter of character
such as you are in your own works

and their days. We would like to think 
all doctors, having taken the hippocratic 

oath, will be good at their jobs, the tasks 
of which at hand are many, as with poets

But I’ve had bad doctors and great doctors
and the difference is not hard to suss out -- 

pain will make you understand who’s good 
at their job. You don’t want your doctor 

being a fifty-five percenter, when it comes
to attention to your physical particulars

I had one surgeon have to sew up my hernias 
two times, and somehow the jobs didn’t take

I don’t know if he was good or bad -- some
times it’s all genetics, which feels like a cop out

whatever that is -- see you later officer -- 
you will just have these holes opening up 

in your belly and that’s that. Call us when 
the next one opens and your intestine 

starts poking through again. Ok. The 
French medical system is more humane 

than the American system -- that is in fact 
true. Mainly because the French take money 

mostly out of the system’s equation, for you
and A-mericans aren’t taught how to understand 

the practicality of such separation. That doesn’t
mean there aren’t expenses -- when our mother 

died recently, we had to pony up 3200 euros 
for cremation a casket and an urn. Do you want 

flowers? Nah. Do you guys want music? Nah 
dude. You get thirty minutes in a room to do 

a ceremony. Ok. Do you want to project any 
images? No. Do you want to come to hospital

& ride in the car with the casket to Pere La Chaise? 
No! We’ll take the Metro -- it’ll be faster. 

The undertaker got it -- we wanted to read 
some poems, keep it plain and keep the cost

down. But the hospital bill after a month of 
Mom being there, and a surgery to remove 

one of her kidneys, and a biopsy and endless 
scans and tests and shots and morphine near the 

end we didn’t see, when her neuropathy pain 
was overwhelming, but not enough that we

couldn’t keep talking, about the pain, the music
the poems, our family, our friends, the state

of the world, as we fought to understand, our
stupid country and all its qualities, our humor...

plus regular meals three times a day, she said 
they weren’t bad, when she could keep the food 

down, & kind and well-trained nurses, on hand 
at all points, mostly? No bill. Everything was 

handled as matter of ordinary course. Alice
never stopped talking with anyone near her. 

V.

Turns out if you run in circles
with folks every day for months

at a stretch you can make friends
I wouldn’t have put it that way

at the time but that’s what I think
happened to me when I was 15 &

16 in high school at the prestigious 
public but you have to take a test to 

get in Stuyvesant of the pegleg: horrible... 
worse than whatever Brando’s Kurtz 

went through I mean nobody was 
filming me from the head down

to hide my what but just school ok
So I went from having two friends

Ulysses and Daryl -- hi guys
to a bunch more and some of their 

friends and every day we - most of us 
would meet up after classes were done 

but before homework had to be done 
and go run in circles together -- the

x-county team ran in non-circles 
sometimes or longer non-ones -- 

the reservoir at central park is a type 
of circle but whatever those paths

are in Van Cortland Park are not -- 
and x-country was a little more fun

because we didn’t have or need a coach 
but track indoor & outdoor you run 

in circles, in incredible growing legions
of pain, and you bond with the people 

you’re running in circles with because you 
know it sucks, together, and you’re supposed

to be smart so why are you subjecting 
yrself to this shit and the other athletes 

on other teams at Stuy and other schools
don’t respect you & the coach maybe
 
respects you if he’s coming around
and yr former teammates who bailed 

don’t respect you but might pretend to
& no one watches or goes to the meets 

and you won’t still even go on a date until 
you’re two years into college but these 

are the names that I conjure when I need 
to remember without knowing the need

is even there when I remember who helped
me start to become a person who could

talk and get to know other kids and be some
thing like happy again after some hard years:

Wahley, Ji, Danny, Carlo, Gen, Jun, Tito 
(Sumatra), Surendranauth, Brian, Kathy J &
 
Kathy M, Sylvia, Mike, Michael, James
Mervin, David Rhee, Betty, Lyle, David 

Tsai, Anthony, Waylon, Noam, Wendy
Noel, Duncan, Coach Dennis, I have no 

idea where most of you are, other than 
in my heart, & this thing I call a poem.


VI.


That said, we should have maybe let Trump nuke that hurricane

his first time around as president -- it would have been catastrophic

but I don’t think he’d have been reelected, I could be wrong

but I don’t think you reelect the person who nukes the hurricane

We might -- we might is all I’m suggesting now -- this is a forum here for imagination 

don’t forget that before you freak out on me, however elsewhere you might be 

we might be better off with a nuked hurricane and no second Trump presidency

Now I’m just sitting here talking out loud to myself and saying really amazing things

but its weirding out the folks around me who are noticing that I’m just talking to myself 

it’s late and I’m talking out loud to myself about how weird it would be to read everything

someone ever wrote -- I was thinking about Ron -- I don’t need to read what he just wrote yesterday

or what he was writing when he was 15 and his dad was a bootlegger -- though I would

but not for research -- just out of curiosity which might be the same thing some times

but not all the time and Ron was reading French poetry by surrealists in translation -- and maybe

we have to acknowledge the French are so strange to the point where someone really bonkers

like Magritte, is just another guy for them -- that’s not true -- I’m just thinking about Magritte

who was very much only who he had to be, and his mom died when he was young and it makes me upset

but I also get it but I can’t be putting no hood over anybody’s head, but I understand and was he more of 

a fantast than a surrealist -- as CC and PG posited -- in that unpublished interview I sent you

and maybe even made you read aloud from so we could talk about the difference between

fantasy & enigma? Hi. I miss you too. Sort of. But really surrealism is just a pathway to talking 

about baseball, the players will say it’s really surreal when something cool happens and they

have to talk about it live, because professional sports is about the last live tv thing that goes on

and I’m sitting somewhere and I’m thinking that’s not surreal, that’s a dream’s script turned into fate

turned into you and there are no animal heads or pretend-random breasts on your gear 

but then for a kid who is 22 and just learning english in order to do a job that is a game

that is really hard and demanding but can pay well but you have to go to weird places to work 

that you wouldn’t likely choose to go hang out at, and then someone puts a mic in your face 

and asks you how you feel? That could be called surreal. In the song Daisy Dukes 

the rapper rhymes on with on: “look at those girls wythe the Daisy Dukes on / 

they really got it going on” - I remember that. And I know I can do that. Because they 

did that. And got a certain amount of mileage out of jean shorts worn by Catherine Bach 

in a show that came on before Dallas once a week that I used to watch with Mom & Eddie

Bobby dreamed a whole season. The dukes drove a car named the general lee. The cops 

were corrupt bumblers but deep down there were supposed to be fragments of heart. 

Remember when Mike Tyson said everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face? 

All the sports writers did. Politicians borrow sports language all the time, and don’t 

know shit about sources. Sources don’t always make it to the surface. Why should they 

have to? Do you remember last year? The jacket is furniture. I have to fix, I have to fix all 

the tools. Oh Daddy, who can stand it? What a strange life. We keep saying things to stay. 

Anselm Berrigan, photo by Paola Valenzuela.

Good Links: Anselm, France, Peter, Paul, and Mary

Don’t Forget to Love Me, Anselm Berrigan (Wave Books, 2024)

This is a terrific book and had Anselm not sent me the above long poem, I’d have printed poems from it. As always, my recommendation is you go to your local independent bookstore and order a copy. Suggest they order a few more for their poetry section. Support your local bookstore! Support your independent literary presses! https://www.wavepoetry.com/products/dont-forget-to-love-me

Blue Snow, France de Griessen, 2025

This video was released this past week, with a screening in Paris, and here already on YouTube. It was filmed by Cannonball Statman and features this wonderful song that will be on France de Griessen’s new album, coming out in February 2026.

Light One Candle, Peter, Paul, and Mary, 1988

Chanukah/Hanukkah is a holiday of freedom, justice, and love, and the candles on the menorah—and Peter, Pauli and Mary—remind me why we mustn’t fail.

Please comment! Please share! Restack! Respond!

Follow me on BlueSky: markstatman.bsky.social

Claudia Sheinbaum in 2024 in Oaxaca state at a celebration for the Corredor Interoceánico del Istmo de Tehuantepec, a railway system connecting the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. It crosses the Istmo, carrying passengers and freight. Though controversial, it’s seen as an important part of the steadily growing Mexican economy.

This past Thursday, nuestra presidenta, Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo, announced that the government, labor unions, and business groups had negotiated a 13% increase in the minimum wage, up to 315 pesos a day in 2026. Currently there are a little over 18 Mexican pesos to the US dollar. In addition, they negotiated a reduction in the work week to 40 hours to be implemented by 2030.

It would have been an extraordinary announcement if it didn’t seem kind of normal. Just about every week brings word of some program, policy, or action from Sheinbaum’s government—initiatives in education, healthcare, the environment, the economy—designed to make life better for Mexicans.

Some Mexicans, skeptical of Mexican politicians, as history has taught us to be, question it all. Where’s she getting the money for this? A friend of mine here asked me that question. I noted that she was doing something kind of novel. Something unexpected and weird. Like her predecessor, she’s paying attention to the law.

She’s making the rich pay their taxes.

That’s right. Believe it or not, she’s demanding folks pay their fair share. Corporations, too. Because there’s a lot that’s owed. Samsung, for example, a major corporation here, owes 16 billion US dollars in back taxes. Companies like Walmart and América Móvil have already settled huge debts with the government.

One of the big stories in this, though not as big as some of the non-Mexico media have made it out to be, has to do with Ricardo Salinas Pliego and his debt. Salinas is a right-wing billionaire whose Grupo Elektra owns, among many companies, TV Azteca, the second largest broadcasting company in the country. In a case that went to the Supreme Court, Salinas was ordered to pay 2.5 of the 4 billion US dollars the government claimed he owed in back taxes.

(The legitimacy of Mexico’s Supreme Court, which this past year went from being a body selected by the President to elected by the people—an election that, yes, I voted in and which I wrote about in a June Poet in Mexico—has been questioned more by people in the US than in Mexico, leading many here to suggest folks in the US might want to get their own Supreme Court in order),

Salinas, who may be a presidential candidate in the next election in 2030 for the party of the right-wing PAN and its various coalitions, of course, has been protesting. He admits he owes the government and has offered to pay 400 million. One tenth? Even one sixth? Why would the government accept that? Salinas, who uses his media company to attack Sheinbaum and her leading Morena party, was recently accused by the Mexican government of spending 5 million dollars on coordinating protests in November in Mexico City and nationwide. Salinas denies this, though a close look in the days leading up to the rallies makes it hard not to see how social media manipulation was one of the primary organizing means for the rallies whose participants were primarily Gen Z. Another curious note? One of the leading coordinators of the protests was the libertarian Atlas Foundation, based in the United States.

Mexican media (apart from the company Salinas owns) sees a lot of the complaining coming from Salinas as kind of normal political posturing—the Supreme Court decision is final. However, in expected non-Mexican media misunderstanding of the politics here, reporting from Reuters suggests that asking the rich to pay their taxes could create future fuel for the opposition in bringing down Sheinbaum’s government. Under Claudia’s predecessor, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, the Senate passed a law requiring a vote of no confidence for the president on the part of the electorate midway through the six year term (in Mexico, it’s one term and done for the presidency). So there’s always the possibility of that.

It’s hard, though, for me to imagine a campaign whose main platform is I’m rich and I don’t want to pay taxes. Especially when those taxes are doing things like providing social security for every single Mexican citizen, every man 65 and older, every woman 62. Or providing funding for infrastructure. Education. Health care. Just last week I got my free flu and Covid vaccines! Yes, free. And easily available (pay attention RFK, Jr).

Those who oppose Claudia suggest that Salinas’ criticisms may be having an impact. Because her approval rating has sunk! It’s now only at 74%. Yes, 74%.

I’m sure that’s keeping her up at night. Probably frightened to death that raising the minimum wage by 13% will cause her to lose even more support?

The three leaders of Mexico, the US, and Canada respectively, Sheinbaum, Trump, and Carney, at last week’s announcement of the FIFA World Cup draws. Mexico, the US, and Canada are cohosts of next year’s tournament; this was the first time la presidenta met Trump in person.

Which does get me thinking. If Donald Trump and his MAGA hoodlums can continue to claim a mandate with his latest Gallup poll popularity at 36%, less than half of that of Claudia’s, with his extraordinarily unpopular programs around infrastructure, tariffs, education, health care, treatment of legal immigrants, war posturing, etc etc etc, what word in the English language describes what Claudia has?

Some Poetry

Nicole Callihan, December 2025, photo Caitlin McDonnell

Speaking of the English language, it’s a pleasure this week to present the poetry of my friend Nicole Callihan. I first met Nicole decades ago when we were both doing work for the Teachers & Writers Collaborative in NYC. If you don’t know the work of the Collaborative, one of the leading arts in education organizations in the US, you should. I taught poetry in the schools for them for many years, in NYC and other places. They also have a strong publications program; T & W published two of my books, Listener in the Snow: The Practice and Teaching of Poetry and The Alphabet of the Trees: A Guide to Nature Writing, the latter with Christian McEwen. I’ve also published over 20 articles in their terrific magazine and contributed essays to a number of their teaching books. For more on T & W, go here: https://twc.org

Nicole has published eleven books—poetry, essays, fiction—and has received numerous awards for her work. She’s a terrific poet. I love the intimacy in her work, the accompanying toughness. She writes with great affection for the world, for family, with a kind of hard-edged sense of questioning, an openness to love and disappointment, to the joy and awful that life can throw at us, and with a powerful sense of the questions raised as it does. She uses language in a way that teases this all out rather beautifully. The poems, see below, never disappoint.

She writes: And poems, for me, are the most sacred of language: prayers of a sort, prayers from the deepest, darkest, most tender place. It never ceases to amaze me that if we draw enough circles in the dirt someone might understand them. Maybe that someone will just be us, or our mother, or an old, old friend, but maybe it will be someone else in the world, someone who recognizes the circles and says yes, yes, I know just what you mean.

It’s with a lot of pleasure I present Nicole Callihan here in Poet in Mexico.

Why I Write

I write because there is a knock at the door. I write because of the wild geese in the CVS parking lot. I write because even though I ate eggs I am hungry. I write because it may snow tomorrow and I want to remember the feeling of waiting for snow. I write because there is a window. Of course there is a window. Why wouldn’t there be a window. There is nearly always a window. The room has four corners; the room has more than four corners; in each corner are multiple corners; in each multiplicity is an intersection. I write because proper dress is required in the lobby area. I write because of ceramic dishes of cellophane wrapped candies. I write because of the clementines I could not carry in my bag. I write because I know no other way of being. I write to hear the click. I write to run my finger along the body of the mouse. I write because language opens up the jar. Because inside the jar is jelly or bees or tens of plastic bracelets. I write because my mother is a voracious reader. She would always rather be reading. A compulsive reader. I write because I want her to find this thing that she would not be able to look away from. I write because from far away it all looks the same but if there is enough light and/ or if you need readers and have them and/ or if you bring the page close enough and/ or the room has started to warm and if/ then you are inclined towards care, of having care for such things and if/ then you allow that care to accompany you well, then, even just in sixteen or so lines you will feel less lonely. The images will accumulate around you in the room. The lemons, the bird cage, the chemist and dancer, and you will no longer be waiting for snow but remembering the snow that fell tomorrow but will soon be back then.  


Our Shared Condition

The world was a tiny dot. No, it was a marble from a felt bag. A marble among marbles. I reached in and selected it. No, I put the first three back. I wanted a cat’s eye. Ella had played with kittens the day before, and if I had a cat’s eye, I’d be closer to her. On the fourth draw, I got it. If I let it get to me, it would get to me, and I did, so it did. Always there were planes flying overhead. I looked out the window to see if the sky was crowded. Once in all those years, I opened my eyes to check the clock. There were motorcycles too. And one minute twelve seconds remaining. I breathed heavy on the marble and wiped it on my jeans. I put it in my pocket. More planes and dogs barking far away. I did not want to throw up which reminded me I should take my medicine because the way I know I’ve taken my medicine is that I want to throw up. The other night, counting pills, I thought, I’m glad the aliens made this medication available to me. The next morning is the morning I keep referring to. Yesterday, I call it. It’s when I sat in my backyard and heard angels singing. Maybe this is what happens when your body is cut off from desire. The little buildings built on the earth began poking my leg. I thought of what Mother Teresa said about anger. I looked up Rothko quotes but found them uninteresting. When my husband noticed the world in my pocket, I made a joke. I was just happy to see him, I said. The door opened again and closed. Someone’s keys in the little dish. Hello? I yelled. Who’s there.


Somewhere somebody

is quiet, and there is no violence, and outside the window is a hot air balloon, and inside the basket of the hot air balloon are two birders who love birds nearly as much as they love each other. Neither have lost their mothers. Neither have been terribly ill. Neither have horrific images burned on the backs of their lids. The sky is flush and matte. The dogs are unchained. The invisible is visible. It is not painful. Or it is, but it is only painfully beautiful. One birder pushes a lock of rust colored hair from the other birder’s mouth. The birder says, it’s not as windy as I thought it would be. The birder says, all the perilchance was for nothing. The birder says, look down. The fields are purple. There are so many flowers where the buildings used to be. The balloon rises and rises. It hangs onto the horizon for a little while; it lets itself slide through the keyhole of heaven. The woman who is watching it through her window sighs. The news from the other room. The echo. Two American Birders dead. But they are not dead. They’ve taken the blanket and laid a pallet on the soft grass. There are no knives in heaven, but the apple is sliced, and the birders feed each other. The woman rests her head on the kitchen table. From here, it looks like yesterday, but maybe it’s tomorrow. The pale pink phone mounted to the woman’s wall rings. She rises from the table. She answers. On the other end is the exact voice she needs to hear.   


Oh Lord,

that I shall pee myself
and cough, cough

and pee myself, walk
while talking, play

this instrument
while reading sheet music,

can talk bad at self
while staring into a glass,

though I do not read
sheet music. O Lord,

make me a sheet
of music, make of me

a sheet with eyes
poked through to see.

Of what a maker
makes while unmaking.

While unmaking
what is made. What

is meant. The scent.
This is a limb

moving away from. This,
a limb moving towards.   


Inheritance

I am in no way a feminist,
my mother says over a bowl 
of beans. Okay, I say. She hasn’t
forgiven me for losing her earring,
for leaving that striped bathing suit
on a doorknob in Mexico, for never
learning cursive, for wearing down
the serrated knife, snickering
at the dying, burning the skillet
for popcorn, trading in whoever
I was for whoever I am. The details
are blurry. Mountains more smoky
than emerald, more froglet than
frog. I stuffed everything I owned
into a black trash bag and made
my way to the moral north. I started
flossing, ripped from my mouth
any trace of my grandpa. Why fret
about tomorrow when yesterday
is burning on the hill? Listen,
even my cancer wounds are velvet
markers of the life I chose. Most 
mornings, I sit in the purgatory
of my breath. Little Miss I Don’t
Want Your Hand Me Downs,
but don’t I? Cut to: a golden river.
Now, jump. 


A Linear Affinity

	There was a thin line
		between
	this and that,

		thinner still
		between
	the other and water.

	More tightrope
		than bridge.
	That man

		between towers.
		My lover
		was working

	at the Met.
	You cannot ask
	someone not to touch

		something,
		he told me.
		Only not to touch it

	again. In this way,
		it is solely
	a moving forwards,

		not back. When
		my mother decided
		to no longer be

	my reader. When
		a pitiful image
	hangs

		on a page like
		a little god. Like
			the crosses,

	gold, my daughters,
	hang around
		their necks. I think
		how language,

	how close
	goose to noose,
	warm to war,

			a sick stick.
			The horse,
			its bridle,

	my father,
	his bride.
	His next bride.

		The week
		becomes.
		The weak become.

				How illness
				might
				become a man.

	There was
	a theory,
	something about

		infinity, I think.
		How you can
		take a line	

			and erase one
			part of it. Or no.
			it was about

		what is finite.
		My willful naivete.
		Back when being

				was believing.
	
Crush

You are the perfect breakfast. You are my coffee egg. I have caught your yawn, and I conspire to perspire with you. You, slippery vessel, you. You tight five armadillo. You abracadabra rose petal. I have been to the river. I have swum with seven swans. I have laced up my silver sneakers. I have passed out on the couch during the Thunder game. I have stood under the sycamore and imagined its limbs your limbs because I am a sad sack but you, you are a bright quartz. O captain my captain swerve into me, splatter our love on the barn walls, brush my hair with a pork chop, tango me under the mango trees. You are a dog and I am Felix the Cat. You are a fish and I am a koozie on a Coors Light can. This is all justified! One two three and I’d marry you again. Four five six I’d pick up all your sticks. Seven eight and how laborious my fears, my dear. How morally flexible my dominos game. How I scratched even when I didn’t itch. How I called my hangover grumpiness but you with your coffee egg and cantaloupe, you eloped me in the station wagon, all rain on the powerlines, dope in the breeze. My ambiguous milkweed, my closed caption, my surprise deal on the McDonald’s App, my season opener, my lullaby, my undefinable metaphor of a spouse currently telling me to finish whatever I’m doing so we can get to the DMV, would you do it again? Say yes.


Shattering

It is a difficult computation,
the being and un-being.
Shards swept in a dust pail.
The pale light coming in.
Day deployed, in spite of.
Not because. Nothing causal.
I’m more than midway through.
Already the cough. The rag
dragged through waters. I like
when your hair gets loose,
just a few strands, and falls
in front of your face, how I
imagine the gemstone
doorknob that leads to your
mind. If dawn loops to
heaven. If home chances. If
a chainsaw to the cornflowers.  
If feet and furnace. If too
just quiet. The militance of
the bodily. To love and lose.
Pick and choose. I felt and felt,
and what was not acrylic
on canvas, what was not
representational, what was,
in fact, the thing itself,
or a fractal of such. It’s all
too much. Come touch.  

Good Links: Nicole, Maria, Bonnie, and Norah

Nicole Callihan, Slip (2025, Saturnalia)

You can get Slip, Nicole’s most recent book, from many different sources. As readers of Poet in Mexico know, my recommendation is you go to your local independent bookstore and ask them to order it for you, suggesting they order a few more for their poetry section. Support independent bookstores! And independent literary presses! https://www.ipgbook.com/slip-products-9781947817760.php

María de Lourdes, Tehuantepec

Maria de Lourdes, who died in 1997 at the age of 57, was an extraordinary singer of rancheras and boleros, among others. She was considered a major ambassador of Mexican music to the world, particularly in Europe, and especially in the Netherlands. Here, a lovely version of this song of the Istmo.

Norah Jones and Bonnie Raitt, Tennessee Waltz

This song was going through my head in the days leading up to the special House of Representatives election in Tennessee, a district Trump won by 22 points, and some polls nearing the election had as a statistical tie. While the GOP still won, it was in single digits and that has put a major scare into the MAGA GOP. It gives me a lot of hope for the future. This Raitt/Jones version of the 1950 Patti Page classic is lovely.

Please comment! Please share! Restack! Respond!

Follow me on BlueSky: markstatman.bsky.social

This is my study,and it’s view, in one of the two houses at the rancho. This is the lower house, named Casita Cannonball, for our black Labrador who died in 2017.

El Día de accíon de gracias (Thanksgiving) isn’t a holiday Mexicans celebrate. At least not in Mexico. I’ll hold off on wondering why some folks I know in the United States greet this news with some kind of surprise. As in Doesn’t everyone everywhere celebrate US Thanksgiving? There are some in the expatriate community here who do (expatriate a very charged word, subject to a lot of debate—one from which I’m quite grateful being a Mexican citizen has happily removed me). And, in the past, we have celebrated Thanksgiving too. Had we been inclined to celebrate it this year, it would have been quite the challenge.

Because we were greeted that Thursday morning with some fun. Our rancho in the country is located at the end of a privada—a short private dirt road—we share with 15 other families (all of them are related—brothers, sisters, cousins—farmers, shepherds, artisans—we’re the only non-family). They all had decided that Thanksgiving Thursday would be an excellent day to install new water tubes under the privada, to replace what were some aging under and overground hoses (it’s how our water arrives).

So…before 8 in the morning, a backhoe plowed everything up and the families started laying the tubería. There were about thirty men and women—mainly women, the ages of the group ranging from teens to seventies—with tubes, shovels, etc. Since the privada is the only way out with a car, and the privada was all dug up with everyone working, Katherine and I were kind of stuck. If we had planned on going out to a Thanksgiving dinner? Forget it. And if we had been having guests? Imagining the pesadilla (nightmare).

Amazingly? A little after sunset, all the tubes were down, the dirt was back in place, and you wouldn’t know a major construction job had been started and finished in one day.

It was kind of cool. But weird. My bad back doesn’t let me shovel, so my work consisted of running errands for others, going to a local ferretería (hardware/construction supply store) for different needed missing pieces. I watched others, engaged in the banter that comes with these kinds of moments.

I was kind of moved by it all. At one point, we all pooled some money and two returned with a feast of chicken, pork, tortillas, and the like. Everyone took a break from shoveling and laying tubes to have a bite to eat. It was 15 minutes, maybe 20.

A different Thanksgiving dinner, no? Another way of being in the world.

The privada road leading to the entrance to Rancho Alegre Apolo.

* * *

It was a rather complicated November. When the month started, I had a lot of wonderful plans. As I wrote in my last post, I was scheduled to give readings at two poetry/literary festivals in Oaxaca. One was the Versidromo, part of a movable international poetry gathering that started years ago in Madrid. It’s a kind of frenetic all day fest, starting at 10 in the morning and continuing well into the night. Invited poets come from all over Mexico and it’s kind of amazing. The other festival, LEO, which has as its theme the meeting of reading and writing, took place over four days.

I was able to do both of those. It was a great deal of fun. One thing I really liked was how it showed off the literary culture of Oaxaca. A lot of the time the literary world of Mexico City overshadows the work being done in the smaller cities, especially the further south one goes. These two fests were quite the fiesta and reminded me that one of the reasons I was so attracted to Oaxaca, to believe we could live here, is because of the quality of the literary scene.

Reading with Efrain Velasco at the LEO festival.

What I didn’t get to do was make it to Cuernavaca Poesía, a four day festival that took place in that city in the middle of November and which featured a gathering of poets from all over the world. I was scheduled to give four different readings. Health problems decided to intervene and we had to stay home. Which was unfortunate but we roll with whatever punches come our way, knowing that some days there’ll be more than others. I was able to contribute to the poetry anthology that came out of it, Donde la poesía florece. It’s available on Amazon at https://a.co/d/3uzqT0r and it’s worth your pesos.

This coming weekend has two dates that matter to me. First comes December 6. Two years ago, in late November, after some time of solid sobriety, I had a slip. It was a ten day nightmare, one which I don’t want to repeat but from which I learned a lot. I’m glad I’m alive to write about it. So Saturday, December 6, I celebrate two years back.

The other is December 7, which most folks in the US think of as Pearl Harbor Day. In my family, we think of it as my dad’s birthday. Al Statman, who died in March 2018, would have been 92 this year. I think a lot these days about him, his enthusiasm and great love for life and for the world. My dad was probably the most optimistic person I knew. Almost every day, into the day, I ask out loud, So, Dad, what do you think about that?

And whatever it is I’m talking about, he answers. With his usual wisdom and, always, with a laugh. He reminds me, like the Beatles, It’s going to be all right.

This poem, from my book, A Map of the Winds (Lavender Ink, 2013), with its beautiful Katherine Koch painting on the cover, is for him. Happy birthday, Dad!

the right way

my father would always say 
you’re never lost as long 
as there’s gas in the car

but that didn’t mean 
he knew
where he was going

the faded Rand McNally maps 
with roads on them 
no longer there

new ones 
appearing 
the old edition didn’t show

we would wander 
through the smallest towns 
never stopping 
at the burger place 
at the ice cream place 
at the novelty store 
that looked like maybe 
a real burger place 
a place where the homemade ice cream was 
or the novelties real 
and not some replicas of real 
made to make us think 
they were

no such thing as lost 
as long as there was 
a Shell station 
a Sinclair dinosaur 
a Texaco star

sometimes we would pass them 
late night, already closed 
our gas gauge arrow 
pointing perilously close 
to E

next town, he’d say 
next town 
on old back roads 
of an America he was certain  
would provide

it was 
the only way we knew 
heading into darkness 
an impossibility of lost-ness 
impossibility that 
at the split in the road 
we might head off 
wrong way 
go even deeper deeper deeper 
into gone 

A note: after several weeks off, this marks my return to regularly writing Poet in Mexico. Many thanks to those of you who wrote to make sure all was okay. I’m looking forward to writing posts again and to publishing the work of others. In the next couple of weeks, look for poems by Nicole Callihan and Anselm Berrigan.

It’s going to be a busy time. There’s the holiday season. And early in this coming 2026 I have two new books coming out. One is a translation of Araceli Mancilla Zayas’ La Casa del Ciervo, appearing with Aliform Publishing, a terrific publisher based here and in Minneapolis. The other is a new version, written collaboratively with Efraín Velasco in English, of his collection Escenas Eliminadas […], titled Scenes Left Out Of […], to be published by my regular (incredible) editorial, Lavender Ink/diálogos. I’m excited about both books. The remaining work to be done, though, means there may be some breaks in the Poet in Mexico poetry action.

It’s all part of the happiness of life happening.

Good Links: Olinka, Nanci, and John

Olinka, Cantadoras de la Tierra

Olinka is a Mexico City based, award winning singer-songwriter and actress, who brings folk, reggae, cumbia, and hip hop together in some pretty amazing ways; powerful personal and political work .

Nanci Griffith and John Prine, Speed of the Sound of Loneliness

Two of my all-time favorite singer-songwriters singing one of those Prine songs which makes me stop and think, and leaves me breathless with its beauty.

Please comment! Please share! Restack! Respond!

Follow me on BlueSky: markstatman.bsky.social

Hi all—20 de Noviembre 1910 marked the beginning of the Mexican Revolution. It was the start of the movement that ended the dictatorship of Porfirio Díaz and put Mexico on the road to democracy and social justice. We’re still on that brilliant journey.

I remain on break from Poet in Mexico. I expect to resume full posts in December with lots of great poets to share. Until then, blessings to all.

Abrazos.

Follow me on BlueSky: markstatman.bsky.social