In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

  • no more barbed wired fences, and: october 12, 2013
  • Ire’ne Lara Silva (bio)

no more barbed wired fences

not here. i won’t bear them anymore, no more demarcations. no more chameleon. nomore masks. i will not hide myself. will not divide myself. i will not besilent when the words want to burst out of me. i will be a poeteverywhere.

a poet in the doctor’s office. a poet at my 8 to 5 bread and butter job. a poet on the bus. apoet in my home. a poet in the bookstore. at the grocery store. a poetwhen i am sick and a poet when i am strong. i will be a poet with orwithout poems in my hands. a poet with or without new poems on mytongue.

i will be a poet in this town in that town in this country in that country. i will be a poetwhen i am angry when i am sad and when i am content. a poet when iam remembering and when i am forgetting. a poet when i am sleepingand when i wake. i will go back over all my childhood girlhood youngwomanhood memories and remember that through all those years iwas a poet too.

in the first thirty five years of my life i ceased to be a poet near my family. poetry didn’texist. words had no power. art had no power. vision had no power.and so i crumpled all the heat and liquid metal that lived inside me andspoke poetry. i crushed it until it was cold and silent and black. until icould be daughter sister aunt but poet didn’t exist even as a whisper.

i returned after being gone a handful of years. returned after death had come and gone. ihad to fling away the memory of barbed wire. its weight. its sharpness.and you would not see me because i would not cease to be poet.

sister, my blood is poet now. my flesh is poet now. my eyes are poet now. poet lives inmy bones now. life is not long enough for me to run from one face toanother, one life to another. i cannot live in a series of boxes. i cannotstrip away what i am so that you can understand the little of what/ will remain.

i am a poet and even the air i breathe is poetry. [End Page 171]

october 12, 2013

    521 years still mourning the losses still carrying the scars underour skin     pain that pricks that writhes that     pierces     weremember with hollowed eyes mourn what we do not even know     mournlosses too immense for names     collapsing in fits with     weepingand wailing     butchered hair scattered on the ground     giveme smoke for my hands ashes for my skin flames for my eyes        something more than loss should name us kin something morethan the land riven wounded bloody     something more than flags ortheir absence     speak to me in the language of the sky so that werecognize one another     weep with me     remember with me oneyear or five centuries     always     we are still mourning [End Page 172]

Ire’ne Lara Silva
Chicana
Ire’ne Lara Silva

ire’ne lara silva lives in Austin, TX, and is the author of furia (poetry, Mouthfeel Press, 2010) which received an Honorable Mention for the 2011 International Latino Book Award and flesh to bone (short stories, Aunt Lute Books, 2013) which won 2nd place for the 2014 NACCS Tejas Foco Award for Fiction. She was the Fiction Finalist for AROHO’s 2013 Gift of Freedom Award; the 2008 recipient of the Gloria Anzaldúa Milagro Award; a Macondo Workshop member; and a CantoMundo Inaugural Fellow. She and Moisés S. L. Lara are currently coordinators for the Flor De Nopal Literary Festival.

...

pdf

Share