30 Poems for the Tricentennial

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Thirty Poems o for the Tricentennial

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In 2017, Department of Arts & Culture of the City of San Antonio, with support from Gemini Ink, sponsored a poetry contest in honor of San Antonio’s Tricentennial. More than 300 poems were submitted by the San Antonio community. The thirty poems featured in this anthology were selected by a panel of nationally recognized poets and tell the story of San Antonio, celebrating the people, places, and history of our great city.

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Table of Contents Pre-Columbian or Yanaguana (prior to 1718) Fray Damián Massanet Meets Los Payayas on June 13, 1691. Jacinto Cardona................3 The Hunter-Gather Could Swaddle in Deerskin. Aaron Deutsch.......................................5 Gone Yanaguana. Pablo Miguel Martínez..........................................................................7 Legacy of the Blue Hole. Linda Simone..............................................................................8 Yanaguana. John Tribble....................................................................................................9 Spanish Colonial (1718-1809) Heads or Tails. Sofia Fortuna............................................................................................13 San Antonio River by Concepción Mission 1740. Lisha Adela García..............................14 Hijos Dalgos. Lucas Jacob................................................................................................15 Ese Rinconcito del Mundo. Regina Moya........................................................................16 Resurrection Song. Ravi Shankar......................................................................................18 Mexican Era (1810-1836) Esperanza. Irene Chavez..................................................................................................23 Rio Medina. Joyce Henefield Coleman...........................................................................24 Merged Mundos. Anjela Ratliff.........................................................................................25 Honey Mesquite Dreams the People. Mobi Warren..........................................................26 Texas Republic (1836-1846) Lines in the Sand. Carolyn Chatham................................................................................31 Goat Man of San Antonio. Robert McGowan.................................................................33 Remember. Maya Obregon..............................................................................................35 San Antonio: Crossroads City (1846-1946) Drought in San Antonio. Mariana Aitches........................................................................41

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El Paradiso de Texas. Dario Beniquez.............................................................................43 Anthem for the God of Justice. Ariana Brown..................................................................44 The First Jews of San Antonio. Cassandra Farrin.............................................................46 “‘La Posta del Palo Alto’ as San Antonio Poeta, 1935.” Kamala Platt...............................47 Modern Times (1947-2017) Lily, Pad, and Pond. Diane Bertrand................................................................................51 One Sunday Morning at Travis Park United Methodist Church. Cyra Dumitru..............53 Song for America: V. (Yo soy San Antonio). Fernando Esteban Flores............................55 “dates in the 210” #6. John Fry........................................................................................57 A San Anto poem For Reals because we’ve spent 300 years celebrating The Wrong Things.

Bárbara Renaud González...................................................................................58 La Verdad Olvidada. Seres Jaime Magaña........................................................................59 San Antonio Son. Burgin Streetman................................................................................61 Paleta-Man. Eduardo Vega.............................................................................................64

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Pre-Columbian or Yanaguana

(prior to 1718) o

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Fray Damián Massanet Meets Los Payayas on June 13, 1691

Los Payayas pick tunas de nopal laughing about how clever coyotes

brush off the thorns with their tails

to eat their nopalito delicacy

children pinch cochineal insects

smear their fingers and faces

with the red dye

Come autumn they go

to the Medina River pecan groves

the trick is to shell without breaking

the precious paired meat

Returning to their ranchería

they drink from the refreshing Yanaguana

shaded by cypresses mulberries

willows and giant cottonwoods

When Fray Damián Massanet meets los Payayas

he asks what they call

their pleasant place

Yanaguana says a Cuahuilteco speaking Payaya Yanaguana

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Fray Massanet tells them

it shall now be named

San Antonio de Padua Mass is celebrated in a cottonwood arbor

soldiers salute the event

with gun powder On the banks of the Medina River

poplar leaves tremble in the breeze

los Payayas squeezed between

invading Apaches and the missions where they die

from smallpox or the measles

dance around the fire

at their all-night mitotes

almost self-destructing echando gritos

de alegrĂ­a y melancolĂ­a

pJacinto JesĂşs Cardona

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The Hunter-Gather Could Swaddle in Deerskin River Spirit, teach me to run so I never lose sight of the pregnant bats overhead.

Swole and hungry for prickly pears on the outstretched arms of cactus (for the sweetest things lie

beyond palms full of needles).

Though you’ve never seen a cactus

muddled by night in the desert you know it all the same. River Spirit.

Catcher of words

Indígenas

spoke when their clay faces hung over your mirror

of a thousand tiny lips puckering.

Glassy. Mouthing

what you heard: Fruta del Nopales.

Payaya.

Yanaguana.

River Spirit.

teach me about a time before conquistador.

Imperio.

Conversión.

Before children’s tongues

were dry from masa and salt

as they gathered to play taste the Eucharist

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in your shallows.

Where the creator god provided a buck.

The hunter-gather could swaddle in deerskin.

When the sun unfurled itself over open plazas, you, in its deadly glinting,

and the rock

and the snorting calf and the breast-feeding Coahuila mother’s teat-red irritation were one under this blanket of fire.

River Spirit, listen no more

to strange language. Sing your own song: Water rushing over stone.

Wind-bent sage stems hammering your slick face.

Lovers at night

—damp with the smell of love-making—

transfixed by the reflection of white stars above them.

The universe bending

under a million blue minnows.

pAaron Deutsch

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Gone Yanaguana It was the generous mother’s prayer, gushing—full and sweet and cool. She opened her brown mouth when we needed her blessing most. Too long in the bonecolored light we walked, so much mean dust that hid the way ahead, what was to be. But her murmur brought us here—Come and kiss this wildgrass place, this shimmering fish place. This friendly clearwater. This answering place.

Here she would stay, she said, her songwords swimming, endless, if we listened, if we guarded and watched. But I augur other ways, the stars’ dance, wanton, in the skies beyond: In a cracked-lip, wicked-wind time, her stirred waters will make stomachs twist as limbs in a loudvoice blowing. And after we are bent, like wood, a clan of tall, thirsty ghosts will tame the wild flow. This I see. Then, after many bison runs, it will go dry—the gurgle stilled, the flowering gone. Throats will ache, the heartplace, too, from blood-making thorns.

When many leaves separate from their mothertrees, it will all cease.

They will wonder, some ones to come, how the clearwater trickled to a dream far and ash-smeared, foul and selfish.

Gone the streaming prayer. Gone forever. Gone Yanaguana.

pPablo Miguel Martínez

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Legacy of the Blue Hole A 1970s Olmos Dam excavation uncovers ancient Payayan burial site.

Good spot to stop, camp, barter, hunt, for purification, trek the Sacred Circle, 16 springs that defy cactus-choked heat.

By sky-painted waters we bury our dead with shards of shell and bone, antlers of the white-tail deer.

The Blue Panther thrived here, chased Water Bird who released from widespread wings aqua crystals to quench the jagged land— and the river rose.

We beat the drum for our beloveds shimmering in rain flying to azure light.

pLinda Simone

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Yanaguana Before huisache was huisache, blackbrush or catclaw or velvet mesquite held or tore or caressed the skin of jackrabbits, hid the lounge of horned lizards in their thorns, fed the javelina with their leaves; before the river had a name beyond life, sustenance, succor, there was this place, forgiving in its promise, undeniable in its fierce reason that would bring together lives under the harsh sun, a God before there were other stories.

pJohn Tribble

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Spanish Colonial (1718-1809) o

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Heads or Tails Payaya Native American

Spaniards

I am Payaya.

I am Spanish.

My people rise from the earth like the grass crawls towards the stars.

My people are vessels of God, nourished by His flesh.

We have visitors.

They are so different.

They are so different.

They want to change us.

We want to change them.

Our will is strong, but theirs— —is stronger.

I don’t understand them.

I don’t understand them.

My sister does not speak like she used to.

My mother’s eyes are pecans, no longer blinking, no longer seeing.

My family—

My family— —is in a Spanish villa.

—is in a Spanish mission.

I want to make them proud.

I want to make them proud.

My heart is raw.

My pride is bleeding.

When will they learn?

When will they learn?

pSofia Fortuno

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San Antonio River by Concepción Mission 1740 The log perch’s mouth is round as it dies near the limestone quarry of the Mission and runoff from bullet making drips into the Wen Akkan. The pajalache path along the irrigation canal, is Spanish-engineered, with mesquite to shade the unloading of canoes full of squash and beans.

Safe from Comanche warriors for a time, Payana women bathe in its warm temperature. They steal the green hues of the water to paint pictures with their fingers on the quarried stone of their fathers, sons and brothers lost tending the corn during raids.

A vanishing remembrance of family for the Ojo de Dios looking down from the convent ceiling during Mass.

Death in Tejas arrives when it hooks each mouth in its heat.

pLisha Adela García

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Hijos Dalgos In the 1720s, the King promised titles to Canary-Island colonists willing to settle the first secular outpost at San Antonio.

A bastardization of the children of something, which in this case truly was something, since algo connoted riches unknown to all but the most fearsome men.

The King imagined two hundred island families trading the old colony for the new. It made sense: the Canaries invited war with wealth; you’d understand that death comes to the master and to the slave, having been the one and lashed the other, if you came from Tenerife. Another land: one more conjugation of to have.

Besides: the acequias carried water pure as the blood of any native daughter.

pLucas Jacob

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Ese Rinconcito del Mundo Ese rinconcito del mundo Es grande y lleno de sabiduría En su brisa caliente quedaron impregnados vapores de frijoles y chiles humeantes brisas de piloncillo y buñuelos perfumados recetas que quisieran pertenecer a otro tiempo El río que cruzó este rinconcito, vio alzarse las misiones, vio transformar las mentes de un pueblo indio conquistado, sometido y transformado para siempre y ahora ese río, orgulloso, serpentea el rinconcito salpicando de robles por donde quiera que pasa A ese rinconcito del mundo lo surcaron caminos con pisadas y huellas de pies morenos Pies que reconocieron la suavidad de su tierra y la tierra los reconoció a ellos Ese rinconcito del mundo es donde vienen los ángeles a pintar los atardeceres, es donde las mañanas son calladas y las noches ruidosas con canciones que vienen del Sur y del Norte En su gente de pieles canela y arroz quedaron los trazos De historias pasadas, tapices de colores se fueron bordando en un sinfín de facciones

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Ese rinconcito del mundo Es una tierra que tiene la mezcla de dos tierras El sabor de dos estufas Un alma que naciรณ de la uniรณn de dos almas Es un canto a la diversidad, una oda a la vida San Antonio, es el rinconcito del que hablo No hay lugar mรกs alegre ni gente mรกs sencilla Un pueblo que se mueve y respira y baila envuelto en la magia De una eterna fiesta.

pRegina Moya

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Resurrection Song …we found at this place the rancheria of the Indians of the Payaya nation.

This is a very large nation and the country where they live is very fine.

I called this place San Antonio de Padua, because it was his day. In the language of the Indians it is called Yanaguana...

—From the diary of Father Damian Massanet from June 13, 1691 Imagine St. Anthony of Padua, the patron saint of lost things, had not died prematurely of ergotism under the branches of a walnut tree in 13th century Italy, but rather had lived to dance the fandango in the accordion-driven conjunto music of working class Mexicans along the wide riverbanks of the city named for his feast day, where today you can sit dipping fried quail into savory pecan butter and sip salted margaritas, watching the sun set over the Paseo del Rio. Imagine his encounter with the original stewards of this land.

What would he have given and what received in return?

According to Catholic legend, St. Anthony was possessed of the miracle of bilocation, of being in two places at once, simultaneously preaching in one Church and singing canticles in a monastery many miles away, so it’s not hard to picture him both in the Old World and the New, sharing in a meal of oblong prickly pears, gathered by Payaya Indians, rubbed in the sand

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to remove its spines, and mashed into a paste to fill the mouth with gratitude, for what blooms greenly, even in arid desert land.

Here’s a prayer for what those Payaya’s lost in their exchange with the Spaniards: their language, their land, their buffalo, their religion. The price of their souls could not have been worth the cost of the Holy Eucharist, and no Mission seems sufficient to salvage what was occupied, then discarded like flung seeds.

Thirty years after St. Anthony had been buried, his vault was apparently opened, revealing a body deteriorated to dust, except for his tongue, which remained intact and incorruptible.

It’s with that tongue, our tongue, the tongue of San Antonio that we can sing the Native peoples―and ourselves―back to life.

pRavi Shankar

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Mexican Era (1810-1836) o

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Esperanza Amongst the crackling gunfire, she was baptized Esperanza Carrying the weight of our family’s hope Under cover of night, they carried her in a basket and asked for a bendeción before crossing the border Following the same dry trail That led Madero to San Antonio to create his Plan of San Luis Potosi Her father said, “Freedom was born there and now it will live with us.”

pIrene Chavez

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Rio Medina Dedicated to the Herrera-Ruiz family. Some descendants still live nearby.

At dusk I wander along the Medina River Shadows of the Bald Cypress cast their spell Changing with the setting sun I sometimes feel the presence of spirits Perhaps ancient Indians who found respite here Ate pecans, wild onions and grapes Feasted on deer and wild turkey Perhaps it is a Spaniard Maybe a Mexican, a French explorer, a German Settler, a Texican All left an imprint on this land All can say, “I was here” We celebrate their bravery and sacrifice We celebrate the legacy we have been given Oh beautiful river and land of mine Tell me the story Tell me about Garza’s crossing Tell me about the battle of Medina fought downstream Tell me about Santa Anna crossing nearby to do his dreadful deed Tell me about the Herrera-Ruiz family They once owned this land Some are buried nearby One signed the Texas Declaration of Independence One the first Alcalde of San Antonio Made to identify and bury the Alamo dead A family who helped change the course of history Oh land and River I ponder my role What have I added to your story?

Have I made you better?

pJoyce Henefield Coleman

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Merged Mundos After a visit to the Institute of Texan Cultures, San Antonio.

Tower of the Americas in the background, a medley of global flags proudly salute the many faces of Tejas. Inside, the museum’s bedecked walls, artifacts, and relics keep Texas’ bygone days in place. Exhibits of work/play/fiesta reflect the diverse cultures of the Lone Star State. Aged tools, machines, uniforms, and battle-gear evidence a land of revolving leaders, shifting colors.

The parcelled land claimed through heirs, thievery, or bullet.

Yellowing newspaper tattoos a quilted wall, pedal-stitched by a faster needle. High-tech screens shuffle tales of rough living.

Barbed wire designed to expand corrals—animals skinned for feed or fancy. Cotton—seed of kings and poor alike—sown to warm warring bodies: forcing grafts along the way. Waterways and native flora bedeck a dome wall, an overhead screen zooms speeding images of wedded worlds, melding tongues. Aztec-princess gazes longingly in mid-hope from her fixed display. Elegant vaqueras proudly straddle their groomed caballos . . . reminiscent of Spanish mission days. Ageless ethnic flavors endure over centuries, rich harvests reproducing native seeds for undying recipes. Mexico’s heart still beating through its progeny—Tejanos contributing to all layers of Texan livelihood and its grand history. Native tribes’ threads firmly woven into the state’s vibrant cloth. Indigenous chins and jaws molding incoming generations: evidence the obvious links. The ancestors’ bones rising up in their voice, their heart, their might, their wondrous art.

pAnjela Villarreal Ratliff

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Honey Mesquite Dreams the People The summer drone of chicharras ripens my pods, sugary green like their thrumming bodies.

My seedcases dry to raspy brown streaked with ruby, hue of sweet tunas thrust from the pads of prickly pear cacti.

My taproot plunges deep, seeks a pathway through limestone to hidden waters.

I taste cretaceous chalks, skeletal remains of coccoliths that swarmed the ancient seas when Sauroposeidon, earthquake-god lizard, waded the warm shallows, nibbled palms and flowering magnolias.

I, Mesquite, whisper these stories to you.

Long ago, I dreamt the People and pledged to reveal the fruits of my body, a feast praised by porcupine, dove, and deer.

And when the humans appeared, bands of nomads, hungry and clever, their spirits tough as my taproot, I sang to them:

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Mash my pods into meal for mush and flatbreads.

Use the amber gum that seeps from my flesh like blood as a healing balm and a glue to fasten arrow points to shafts whittled from chapote, lithe sister of silver skin and black plums.

Use my sharp thorns for needles.

Pound my fibers into cloth, wind them into cordage.

My pale leaves like feathers will offer you refreshing shade and murmur the story of this sacred place along the weave of a river bursting with fish.

Sing with me.

We will breathe into each other and I will welcome you home.

pMobi Warren

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Texas Republic (1836-1846) o

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Lines in the Sand I didn’t want to go to Texas but what are you going to do when you’re seventeen and your husband says we’re going.

Get packed.

So we headed for a place called San Marcos.

He was a good blacksmith, and hard worker.

He wanted land and opportunity.

Who was I to complain?

He wanted to provide what we lacked, which was virtually everything.

He drew the line in the sand.

I didn’t cross it.

We went to Texas.

When the Mexican army crossed the Rio Grande, I didn’t want to go to San Antonio, but renegades had breached our home in San Marcos, so we came to the house on Portero.

By that time I had a child clinging to my skirt, barely walking.

When the Mexican army approached San Antonio, Almaron said we were going to the Alamo.

I didn’t want to go to the mission, but he drew a line in the sand and I didn’t cross it.

When Santa Anna circled the mission Travis drew his own famous line.

If you want to leave, he said, cross over.

It’s now or never.

I begged Almaron to step across, but he would not.

What man could face the shame of leaving while others stayed to fight?

We women and children hid in the sacristy until the battle ended,

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until all were dead, the defenders of the Alamo.

Travis, Crockett, Bowie, Almaron, almost two hundred in all.

Almaron’s twelve-pound cannon was one of the last to fall.

I did what he told me to do.

I comported myself well when Santa Anna interviewed me, as he did all the women and non-combatants.

He gave each woman two dollars and a blanket and sent each out to spread the news of his victory.

When Santa Anna offered to adopt my child and take her to Mexico, I declined, but I took the two dollars and the blanket and Joe, Travis’ slave, and Angelina and started to Gonzales to tell Houston of the defeat and to deliver the Mexican general’s message.

That message was the reason for Houston’s retreat east.

In truth, I think Santa Anna was a better man than history later painted him.

He drew no line in sand for me.

He offered choices instead.

I chose to leave and a different Texian woman later entertained him, helped bring on his defeat.

I married four times more after the Texians won.

The first three I chose poorly, and soon left them.

I crossed the line often in the years that followed.

A woman has to feed her child after all.

What do lines matter anyway?

They are only sand and lines are made to cross.

Susanna Dickinson 1814-1883

pCarolyn Chatham

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Goat Man of San Antonio When great-uncle Frank come back from the Battle of Franklin and he couldn’t talk anymore, his mama bought him a hundred head of goats and talked somebody into letting him keep the grounds of the city cemetery down on East Commerce Street.

Eventually, he kept up the grounds at the Odd-Fellows Cemetery as well.

They didn’t have lawnmowers way back then.

It was the only thing he could do except drink and lay around the house and his mama just wouldn’t have that.

So he did it—every single morning, round up them goats before dawn, lead them with the Judas goat through the streets of town.

He’d spend the day among the goats and tombstones talking to the mocking birds, the stones, the vagrant ghosts, and to the goats in his mind’s own garbled language.

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He was alone with all his legions out there under the live oak and mesquite.

People didn’t pay him no mind.

After dark, he’d bring the goats back home.

When his mama died a Mexican woman moved in to help take care of him.

They had children but I don’t know whatever became of them.

They just all sorta turned into Mexicans, I guess.

Don’t know what became of the goats or just when and how great uncle Frank died.

Some nights I can hear the Judas’ bell and see him hobble down them streets, goats following him under the silver of a Texas moon.

This is a true story about a relative of mine who came home to San Antonio, horribly wounded at The Battle of Franklin during the American Civil War. Unable to work, he herded goats to and from some of San Antonio’s cemeteries.

pRobert McGowan

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Remember “remember, remember” the funeral march, thump-thump-thump of boots shined clean, green fresh-faced soldiers who squeeze the heart of Texas dryawakening to your own funeral hymn the beating thump-thump-thump of buglers and drums breaking the day’s baptism into the dawn of a red sun lines in the sand are blown to dust but the lines of the brave do not break, not as soldiers, no- boys, break themselves against your wall, waiting, waiting, for the thump-thump-thump of the wall-men falling “no mercy” the music had wailed “this is a bloodletting day, a throat-slitting day” thump- as soldier boys land in the square thump- as soldier boys break down the doors thump- as the soldier boy’s bayonet pierces last to fall is the chapel, hole-punched with bullets crouching over women and children whose fists (thump-thump-thump) pound on walls like tears hitting the floor, blue grief splashing over the rising sun they are spared

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the soldiers, so plastic perfect in uniform shining boots and shining eyes of boys, conscripted farmer boys, staring up at the sky from piles of thump-thump-thump 600 dead and thump-thump-thump your feeble heart beats blood rushing through your Texas veins before a soldier looks down and finishes the mission “no mercy” no one escapes the Alamo unscathed. oh, what an idol to remember. in an oak grove in a marsh in San Jacinto 18 minutes from Texan’s no-warning wake-up call of bullets down gizzards and Mexicans running scared you whisper, “remember, remember” they flee like you were fleeing just days ago deer spooked of a pale rider flushed from the memory of safety remembrance hanging like a shroud hours later, anything that moves is an enemy “remember!” one screams, “remember mercy!” but you do: “this is a bloodletting day, a throat-slitting day” and your heart beats only with the jump of the gun The prisoners are purple in grief and pain but your clenched teeth remind you— “remember, we keep prisoners” and your bloody tongue tastes like victory

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a decisive victory, no siege, no suffering, almost merciful, you imagine a saint could have said and when they ask what it was like, you say, “it was all so fast, I cannot remember� red with triumph, blue with justification white with wide, wide eyes. remember, remember the thump-thump-thump of the Texas heart.

pMaya Obregon

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San Antonio: Crossroads City (1846-1946) o

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Drought in San Antonio I am a gardener of time, I rake past days, she said as she lay on her last bed in 1986.

Four wars, the Wright brothers’ flight, a man walking the moon in my living room, but what matters now are flowers. Outside, her west wall glows thick gold with decades-old chrysanthemums.

Look, those are rain lilies, she said, at the end when rains finally came after the seven-year drought scorched red roses and honeysuckle climbing her fence, even zinnias along the walk.

Other blooms hid in the dark like lovely frogs until rain brought green stems lit with white stars.

Ida Mae Walker birthed her first girl in a tent in Oklahoma, then two daughters and two sons in the back room on Halliday Street off South Presa, the white wood house her husband built between jobs among men who wore blue shirts and heavy shoes, hats that left a round mark on their hair and white space at the top of their foreheads. Men who never said Cain’t and always had dirt in cracks in their hands, under their nails.

A woman who knew something about dry times, frying up eggplant, soaking beans, greasing pans for corn bread,

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Depression meals. A mother who sewed dresses from sacks for three beautiful black-haired daughters. Worried WW2 on her front porch swing, prayed for sons in Guam, one girl in Europe. A wife who survived a husband who died of throat cancer aged sixty, soon after he built his dream at Lake Placid. A house where the water rose up on the wall three feet during the flood of ‘46. This flood preceded the drought that consumed her tomatoes, okra and carpet grass while her home dried to dust, only pecan trees stood like sentinels at a fort.

This drought forced her brother to feed his cattle prickly pear cactus, cheap molasses.

It’s a miracle, she said, the early summer of ‘57 when I turned eleven, and the floods had returned that spring like a prodigal son. See, she said as she waved her arm across the field of stars along the greening river’s edge, the longer the drought, the more time rain lilies get to rest beneath the ground and multiply.

You best remember that, Grandma said.

pMariana Aitches

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El Paradiso de Texas My grandfather tells me; his grandfather told him this land was un paradiso, acres upon acres of verdant land, where bison roamed grasslands; where migratory birds flocked from faraway lands.

He says, mija, un paradiso.

Abuelo, I say, today, I see cattle, horses, mallards, a Pecan tree as old as limestone, then he says we had no borders, only the ones created by how far our feet could travel, borders created only by hunting grounds.

I tell him, geography tells me, the Rio Grande divides Texas; to the south lies Coahuila, Mexico, to the north interstate 35 stretches to Wichita Falls and beyond to Oklahoma.

Gods, the native people thought because they came from beyond the sea, where the sky and world end.

Gods, they were not, but men.

Men that galloped through Tejas With lances, swords, and muskets, corralling our people, Los Payayas, Los Aranamas, Los Sanas, to work their crops.

Men that bought goats, pigs, cattle, that razed the grasslands, that pushed the bison toward the gulf until they vanished. Men that taught our people about a god that suffered and died, just like us.

I know different. I am his granddaughter, the sky is not endless, Texas is vast, what we see is our land. We exist in this land, in this tradition, for now and ever.

pDario Beniquez

No, my grandfather says, there are no borders, only in our minds.

Centuries ago, sky men arrived, criaturas de dos cabezas, two-headed creatures, because they rode horses that made them seemed as one.

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Anthem for the God of Justice Our nation seems resolved to rush on in her wicked career, though the road be ditched with human blood, and paved with human skulls. Well, be it so. But, humble as we are, and unavailing as our voice may be, we wish to warn our fellow countrymen, that they may follow the course they have marked out for themselves, no barrier may be sufficient to obstruct them; they may accomplish all they desire; Mexico may fall before them; she may be conquered and subdued; her government may be annihilated—her name among the great sisterhood of nations blotted out...but so sure as there is a God of justice, we shall not go unpunished.

—Frederick Douglass, The War with Mexico: Jan 21, 1848 & we thrum our grandfathers’ corridos & we wait & we buy from the paletero after class & we sing bidi bidi bom bom even if we don’t speak spanish & we vote & we are not incorporated & we make our own parades & we recognize ourselves & we are not all the same & we frequent panaderías & we invent the word ‘washateria’ & we do not know if we are american & we know we are from here & we airbrush our names onto t-shirts & we suck our teeth in jest & we lick lucas from the palms of our primos & we let our grandmothers cure us with eggs & we lean & hip & slouch & we gather ourselves & we stand in the boots of our tíos & we try to believe in america & we know what they once said about us & we make piñatas of donald trump because we know what they say about us & we call our city by its spanish name & we correct our teachers when they mispronounce us & we refuse store bought

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tortillas & we don’t know anyone who brags about liking taco bell & we heal at the first ‘sana sana’ & we busy ourselves with living & we work & lurk & squat & we are so surrounded with ourselves we forget they are even talking about us & we gather our lives & we pulse & we return & we still live here pAriana Brown

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The First Jews of San Antonio Last to leave through Prussia’s Rosenthaler Gate, which once rationed entry by “pig tax” as a petty slap and demanded even bright-eyed Mendelssohn, the German Socrates, to pilgrimage alone, thirteen and not yet a heretic, though last to see this silly Romanesque triumph before young Berliners rubbished it block by block, the Jews of San Antonio voyaged in paddle-wheeled ships, still carrying the exiled Heine’s grief: You endure the fact I breathe, While your rages I must suffer. .......................

Now we’ve grown so close together, That I’ve started raging, too. while at their backs rose, mechanical and grinding, the Kaiserreich that shuttered ports and left them without the flooding after-pull of immigrants, aside from brothers, until & Bro. became a moniker for Jewish dry goods shops across the South and landing finally, beheld with strange delight the Rosenthaler’s columns with a Moorish touch, karst ruins crumbling on the plaza, beckoning them to fill the empty streets, themselves familiar with the aftermath of pogroms, whatever spark razed the Spanish colonial houses, and left them the task of quieting the aquifers that wept over the bleached-bone rocks. pCassandra Farrin

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“’La Posta del Palo Alto’ as San Antonio Poeta, 1935” (in celebration of Elena Zamora O’Shea’s El Mesquite) This land was Mexican once

Was Indian always

And is.

And will be again.

—Gloria Anzaldúa, “El Retorno” I was born Mizquitl decades after deep soil first cuddled my mother’s seed dropped on the edge of this land of springs and caves, not far from the stony rift where the coastal plains meet hill country— in what is now the Westside of this city.

I was born Mizquitl though I would soon hear my name mispronounced: Mesquite, to Spanish expeditions of colonization.

The Anglos that followed spelled my name in strange ways: mesquit, musquit, mezquit, muskeet— Were these just mistakes or did they plan to use my wood for their guns?

I no longer recall all the ways my human siblings called out to me, but many spoke without the respect due to my Nahuatl birth name that came with those from the south of our continent.

I was born Mizquitl—my roots go deep here—over 100 feet of Westside loam.

My years go back in scores now—more than 200 years.

Since before my birth, peoples have crisscrossed our city coming and going like the birds and butterflies though in recent decades, groups come through without the reasons of the seasons.

Nor do they gather anymore in the wisdom and spirit of the land sitting and talking beneath my branches.

There has been talk since the cusp of the millennium

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that scientists are discovering what my sister trees and some sister humans too, already knew: they say the seasons are getting feverish and the waters have been taken in by our own fickle ways and are leaving us dry.

Yet the women that pick open the pecans from my primas— for the big companies, they rest from their weariness in my shade as they walk home from work. They feed and heal their families with my comida & medicine.

They are going to rise up in resistance soon— Their weariness will turn to revolt and all of earth herself— we will all be the better for it.

I was born Mizquitl and I waited decades in the earth for the right conditions for my birth.

I am waiting now for the right conditions for our earth to give life to the hope of the women of San Antonio. pKamala Platt

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Modern Times (1947-2017) o

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Lily, Pad, and Pond The West End neighborhood was built outside the city limits in 1897. A few years later, a dam was built across Alazan Creek to create Woodlawn Lake. The park was deeded to the city in 1918. In the last decade, Woodlawn Lake Park became the site for a city celebration on July 4. However, the lake and its small pond across the street, gave generations of Westside children inexpensive entertainment all year long.

1.

To the casting pond across from Woodlawn Lake where my brothers trample the muddy edges, hoping to catch minnows and tadpoles between willow roots and skinny water reeds, I run breathless, looking for water lilies, floating among circles of green leaves.

One sticky morning after an August rain, I stretch my fingers to touch the ivory petals waving from the shallow waters. Coaxing the lily closer, both of us shiver from cold water.

With slippery fingers, I cup the blossom and pull, expecting an easy pop from the lily pads.

That green stem holds firm to its pond.

I tug harder, twist it, and yank, until my trembling fingers let go!

Back-splatting into mud, I learn survival from a water lily’s strong roots.

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2.

I chase my teenage boyfriends down the sloped grassy hills to the pond’s edge, still breathless, still looking for water lilies.

When I ask one boy or another to pull one up for me, the fold of his frown tells me I picked wrong again.

3.

I walk under familiar willow trees with a man who often fished with his father at the casting pond, looked for hopping frogs and swimming perch.

One day he proposes not only the lily, but also pad, and pond.

Here we stand together, twenty years later, watching our son build his aquatic biology project. Wearing rubber boots, he wades into the casting pond.

With a tin spade he gently spoons up three lily bulbs with their damp roots, carries them in a shallow pail. In our backyard he places them inside the glass aquarium where three water lilies float above minnows from San Pedro Springs.

I stroke the petals, my breathing steady and slow, mossy green water rippling like a pond in August.

pDiane Bertrand

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One Sunday Morning at Travis Park United Methodist Church

One great change in postwar (Civil War) Texas was the emergence of churches, probably the most important cultural and social force behind the Texas frontier.

T.R. Fehrenbach In 1882, Col. James T. Thorton gave the lot on the corner of Navarro and Travis streets to the “Trustees of the Methodist Episcopal Church South at San Antonio� for the purpose of building Travis Park Methodist Church.

I walk slowly now among the pines in my yard, scattering bits of consecrated bread for the cardinals and scrub jays that lord over the feeders. While they feast on fresh crumbs, the sparrows will have a chance with the seed. I am fresh from communion, during which an unknown woman, a visitor staying at a hotel that neighbors our downtown church, wept at the railing.

I had just torn a piece of bread newly blessed and handed it to her saying: Feast on God’s love! and Larry beside me had held the goblet as she dipped her portion into the grape juice.

Then, she knelt at the railing behind us.

Lana had the pipes of our turquoise organ throbbing like an intimate god.

Unsure what I heard between the softer notes, I turned to see the woman shaking and sobbing just as Ricky, one of our ushers, knelt beside her as comfort. I pulled a tissue from my pocket, handed it to Ricky who handed it to her.

Her tears streamed into the silence

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that followed Lana’s last note. Slowly Ricky guided the woman back to her pew, sat with her. She quieted as we all prayed.

Lord knows the troubles in our hearts, how things bottle up when we look the other way, focus only on the narrow road.

During my highway drive this morning with communion bread and clean linens, I had snapped on public radio just in time to hear Story Corps. His voice was steady, this young gay man from another city, as he remembered a day when schoolmates knocked him to the sidewalk near his house, poured kerosene over his head and chest.

Their lighter jammed long enough for neighbors to intervene.

All that boy wanted while looking up through eyes stinging with kerosene was friendship. All I could feel as I listened was grief and relief that my gay son grew up safe within a church that loves all of who he is, where he says: This is where my spirit grew up.

I arrived at church still shaken: spilled the juice into open-mouthed goblets, placed unbroken loaves upon ceramic platters— the remains of which I tear now for the birds in my yard.

As I crumble this bread I savor the words that Pastor Monte led us in saying before our return to San Antonio streets: love is always the answer to hate. pCyra Dumitru

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Song for America V (Yo soy San Antonio) Poet of the city I became slumming along the railways kicking the flinty rocks down the sweltering tracks fired by Tonatiuh’s relentless rays I find you simmering in the dog days’ doggedness la canicula as ancianos still say Miles & piles of railroad ties south by southwest Where Abuelo staked his soul in dirt & sweat linking his progeny to the future so that I’d always be on my way somewhere Yanaguana—refreshing waters—to the Coahuiltecans Original Texans conceived in 1691 for Spain On the feast day of St. Anthony of Padua a.k.a. Fernando Martins de Bulhões my namesake mi tocayo venerated worldwide as the patron saint of all things lost for who can say what comes to find its place among your roots City of Franciscan missions & presidios Capistrano San José Concepción Espada San Antonio de Valero In their search for gold the Spaniards left a gilded litany of feeble saints & you— a jewel—among their embattled settlements We know by marks along the routes men made to risk their claim for fame or notoriety City of rebels Crockett Bowie Travis transplanted Texians Of Ricardo y Enrique Flores Magón Sons of anarchy provocateurs de la revolución Hijos de Mejico hijos del sol

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City of odd & antiquated foreignness noted a renowned Central Park architect Built upon native & mestizo blood your river treks a long slow stretch homeward to the Gulf of Mexico City of creeks mesquites scrub land flatland brambles & caliche roads Bordered by skin & bony barrios blue moons & red conjunto nights From St. Anthony de Padua where I was baptized into a church I abandoned for lack of a better faith & left the flock to find another fold To Catedral de San Fernando the fire of devotion burning in Abuela’s hopeful eyes The candle of fidelity unwavering to the end of her days certain that her trust would be redeemed Her right hand raised in beatific blessing bestowing her benevolence as she signed the cross over her children’s children & who now remembers the Alamo shrine to two clashing ideals owned by other impresarios with vested interests not our own controlled as a commodity the ghosts of fallen soldiers bartered for a token El Degßello echoing through the plaza as we dispassionately pass by This is where the roulette stops City where I post my posterity raise the flag of all my precedents The place partitioned from birth to be my lot This geographical genome at once sacred & profane I am you yo soy San Antonio

pFernando Esteban Flores

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“dates in the 210” #6 tank tops & Olmos Park / wings on Wurzbach / used bookstore after bookstore gelato on Huebner / shopping with la sobrina mamatita / panang curry on Blanco Target because Target / fro-yo on Culebra / gay burlesque show pho on West Ashby Place / Tegan & Sara at Sunset Station / raspas on Hildebrand not another poetry reading / brunch on Beauregard / Costco e-x-t-r-a-v-a-g-a-n-z-a soy lattes on Loop 1604 / Matisse exhibit at SAMA / macarons on Pearl Parkway swimming—wait—nah / muttar paneer on Fredericksburg / thrift stores galore vegetarian on Grayson / First Friday & a drink or three / slushes on Bandera dance dance revolution at the Bonham / gumbo on New Braunfels / Sunday funday burgers on West Cypress / joyriding whatever the weather / carrot cake on N Flores homebody realness / comida mexicana siempre en la casa / whatever isn’t soccer on tv

pJohn Fry

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A San Anto poem For Reals because we’ve spent 300 years celebrating The Wrong Things A Three-Part Grito Part 1 Saw Elvis performing at Mi Tierra on Saturday night. With his guitar and pachuco-swag, right there by the Pan Dulce, surrounded by mariachis, tourists. Les da competition. Tex-Mex, like the city. He glowed and flowed with the colored lights, his own sequined stage. I have a picture of him, he’s from the Westside.

Also known as El Hueso, the Bone. You should know this.

Part 2 Keep walking through Mi Tierra towards the back, and you’ll find the mural, onde ‘sta Willie Velasquez, Voting Rights Pioneer, also from the Westside. His last meal was at Mi Tierra. Two thousand people showed up at his funeral, from a Presidential candidate to the Brown Berets who saluted him.

Most people don’t know who Willie Velasquez was, they vote for the Spurs.

Part 3 They say that St. Anthony is the saint who women pray to when they want a good husband, something hard to find in San Anto, where there are so few good men, they say. You believe that?

I know two very good men, identical twins born to a single mother on September 16th. One is a Congressman, the other became the Mayor.

For Reals.

Rosie is the real Mayor of San Antonio.

pBárbara Renaud González

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La Verdad Olvidada Llevas la verdad en tu rebozo, trenzada entre telas de cemento y concreto, luces neón, ríos de recuerdos Me atrapas en tu entramado, me enrollas en tus hilos, me llevas a donde tu soledad Y me demuestras que no cargas con un bulto de huesos; cadáveres de tu cultura Llevas contigo la vida, semillas de tus sembradíos, que dan luz al retoño tejido en tus paredes Torpe fui al buscar tu libertad en sueños dorados, como las tantas moscas quemadas en el farol, con el tiempo me he dado cuenta que la verdad no es elegante, la verdad es ordinaria La verdad está en los hechos, En el sufrimiento En el hambre En la tos que busca escupir el polvo En la sangre que se derrama en la batallas que surgen tras la incertidumbre En el esfuerzo con que tu gente contesta a los ataques y la arrogancia de ellos que buscan secuestrar tu virtud La verdad está en las pinceladas de tus murales, en los colores que obsequian énfasis a la voz del pueblo, a la voz del artista que con su inquietud reclama su derecho universal La verdad está en el sendero que se dibuja tras los actos que hilan los nombres de tus héroes; …César Chávez, tierra entre sus dedos, marchas por el derecho del campesino, defensor de su pueblo Mexicano

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Emma Tenayuca, ‘La Pasionaria’, demostradora de que el ser humano no es un engranaje rodando al favor del sueño ajeno Anastasio ‘Tache’ Torres, compilador de las voces que en cada ladrillo de los murales han grabado la historia Los Cinco, establecedores de MAYO; José Ángel Gutiérrez, Willie Velásquez, Mario Compeán, Ignacio Pérez, Juan Patlán. Fundadores de la Raza Unida, guerreros de los derechos civiles…

Y los tantos más, cuyo himno es la aguja que perfora el cielo Anáhuac, y teje el sol, sol de bronce, en cada amanecer Ciudad de San Antonio, eres tú el rebozo, tus calles son un almacén de hazañas, eres testimonio de tu gente, eres su evidencia Me tomas en tu entramado, me enrollas en tus hilos, me llevas a donde tu soledad Y me demuestras que la verdad La verdad no la has olvidado. pSeres Jaime Magaña

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San Antonio Son I followed a man to San Antonio All the way from the North East because he smelled of mesquite wood fires, cinnamon dipped bunuelos, and mountain laurel in the spring He opened his mouth on a bar stool in New York City and pictures spilled out of a childhood spent under pecan trees, idling on suburban front porches talking to German grandparents and best friends born of Mexican immigrants and abandoned breweries with stone walls that held secrets and a long flowing river that winds down and around and straight through I’d never been to Texas but the moment his fingertips touched the small of my back and he leaned in soft and kissed me I knew I was always meant to go Our first day in San Antonio he killed a rattlesnake with one blow of a limestone rock and told me he was raised on Lone Star downed on hidden dirt roads in Cementville There was a soundtrack by Steve Earle and Augie Meyers, Townes van Zandt, and, later, some miraculous girls in comas who played in the land of tacos Not the crunchy sort of my youth, bought empty and stale in the yellow box from the Red & White, always half broken But corn or flour made full and soft and warm with love by hand at Maria’s or Daniel’s (RIP) on the south side We fooled around in the rooftop swimming pool at the Saint Anthony (where his mother worked after she lost her first husband in the war) and for our wedding, I wore a dress I bought on a day trip to Nuevo Laredo, hand stitched with cotton flowers the color of the sky when it scatters

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Our newlywed feet danced barefoot, just out of town, on the old wooden floors at Anhalt worn smooth from years of sliding to Eastern European accordion tunes My Florida-bred mother sat at a long plywood picnic table and drank unsweetened iced tea and tasted real Texas barbeque for the first time and liked it but she didn’t fall in love like me I fell in love with smoked brisket, black and scorched with third-degree bark and al pastor (onion and cilantro and pineapple) and the beak of the rooster two serranos hot I fell in love with ringtail cats squinting down from oak tree limbs pocked with lichen and ball moss I fell in love with verdant, flooded basins that grow up and all around and stone bridges that cross beneath the water rather than over I fell in love with 9-pin bowling, Frito pie, and fiestas and downy ducklings cupped in hand at the rodeo I fell in love with bright pink bougainvillea and dusky desert willow and crape myrtle that shoots from the ground like a bouquet of Roman candles on 4th of July I fell in love with the traditions and generosity of the deep city south and the coyotes and bobcats of the juniper-choked northern border I fell in love with Victorian castles on shaded streets and bubblegum colored cottages east of the tracks I fell in love with nightjars that search the street lights and the freetails that follow close behind

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I fell in love with new friends and hat-tipping strangers and basketball (aghast!) and highways carpeted in color when the rain comes I fell in love with red O’Neil Ford brick and words by Cisneros and Nye I fell in love with turtle ponds in art museum parks and libraries built from mansions I fell in love with a culture that fosters diversity and history and never forgets but doesn’t let what’s past spoil the future I fell in love with a city that grew bigger and better, yet–somehow– stayed small and the same I fell in love with Texas men, the best sort, maternal and gracious and kind and the women who give birth to them and do more than mother Strong and confident and unafraid to stand up for what’s right I fell in love with a boy from Terrell Heights who turned into a man who saw the world and still wanted to come home again (What does that say about a place when its runaways return?)

I fell in love with our combined image blinking up at me, cradled in striped flannel and hospital sheets, new and wonderful and alive and Texan, bonafide From the moment I first said hello and kissed him, I knew that wherever I go to and from and whoever I become, I’ll always be the mother of a San Antonio son and I’ll always love the city that gave him to me

pBurgin Streetman

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Paleta-Man San Antonio has its own superhero!

His uniform—a pair of jeans, a plaid shirt, and a Spurs hat His vehicle—well, he's got two One, a customized multi-cycle, lowered, with some sweet rims The other, he pushes around himself, propelling it with the two hardest working legs in the business and you'll know he's coming because of his clarion call—drring drring He's…

The Knight of Nogalitos The Warrior of Guadalupe The Champion of César Chávez The Conqueror of Culebra He's the Savior of Summer here to bring relief to the tired, the hungry, the thirsty, the weary citizens of San Anto, ready to melt under an August sun Paleta-Man! Watching your little brothers and sisters at the playground?

He's there!

Playing pick-up basketball with your boys on the blacktop?

He's there!

Hanging with your boo, holding hands in the gazebo?

He's there!

Getting out of the Algebra class you had re-take in summer school?

Man, he's there for you, too!

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You don't call Paleta-Man with a signal in the sky He rounds the corner and comes toward you when you least expect him and most need him You exchange universal hand signals, head bobs, and if you can handle it, a whistle Paleta-Man makes magic appear from his box with a no-look reach into its depths giving you what your heart desires He's got lemon, lime, coconut, and chocolate two types of strawberry and horchata, pineapple, banana, amaretto, pecan, piña colada, vanilla and raisin, arroz con leche, mango, melón y sandía, tamarindo, cookies and cream, and pepino—that's dill-pickle-flavored, too (eeooh, who likes that?)

Something for everyone, satisfying your palette from the pushcart He brings you joy and only asks for a dollar He’s trying to support his family so buy one for your cousin, too and your summer crush and the guy who's been sitting on the bench all day, asking for change, because everyone deserves the delightful refreshment of a paleta!

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Sabes que, take a twenty out and play Oprah in your barrio: You get one, and you get one, and you get one, and you get one everybody gets a paleta!

So give it up for Paleta-Man, the baddest, coolest superhero, we've got Oye Paleta-Man! Dame dos de cookies and cream, por favor!

pEduardo Vega

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Contibutors Mariana Aitches is a native of Southside San Antonio. A retired professor, she is the author of Fishing for Light (2009), winner of Wings Press Whitebird Chapbook competition, and Ours is a Flower (2010). She is completing a memoir of her childhood in the Victoria Courts, an early government housing project.

Dario Beniquez is a poet and Industrial engineer. He has been published in Rio Grande Review, Poetry on the Move, Red Palm, Kuikatl, and in the San Antonio Express-News. He dedicates his time to writing and visiting poetry venues around San Antonio.

Diane Bertrand’s poetry rides on city buses in April as part of VIA's Poetry on the Move Program, and celebrates special dates in multiple Texas Poetry Calendars. San Antonio, her hometown, takes center stage in her published bilingual picture books and novels for teens. Bertrand is Writer-in-Residence at St. Mary’s University where she teaches composition and creative writing.

Ariana Brown is an Afromexicana poet from San Antonio, Texas, with a BA in African Diaspora Studies and Mexican American Studies. She is the recipient of two Academy of American Poets prizes, a 2014 national collegiate slam champion, and is pursuing her MFA in Poetry at the University of Pennsylvania.

Jacinto Jesús Cardona is a San Antonio poet and the author of Pan Dulce, a poetry collection. He is a La Voz de San Antonio Spoken Word Champion and currently teaches English at Incarnate Word High School.

Carolyn Chatham is a San Antonio poet, retired social worker, college instructor, grandmother, amateur horticulturist, and grandmother. Her poems have appeared in Voices de la Luna, South and West, Di-verse-city Anthology 2017, and The Enigmatist.

Irene Chavez is an activist, entrepreneur, playwright and small business advocate.

A graduate of St. Mary’s University, Chavez interned for the United Farm Workers AFL-CIO working throughout California as a public action organizer.

Last year, her play Las Cochinas Christmas was featured in the Teatro Salon at the Guadalupe Cultural Arts Theater.

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Aaron Deutsch received his MFA with distinction from Texas State University.

His work appears in a handful of journals, including Night Train, and Willows Wept Review. He splits his time teaching at the Defense Language InstituteEnglish Language Center and writing. He is currently working on his first fulllength collection of poetry.

Cyra Dumitru is a lifelong poet and certified poetry therapist who has lived in San Antonio for 35 years. During the 1980s she served as a Poet-in-the-Schools with the San Antonio Independent School District. She has also worked with the Writers in Communities program at Gemini Ink, and at the San Antonio Museum of Art (SAMA), and has taught writing for 16 years at St. Mary's University. She has three book-length collections of poems. Her poems have often traveled on San Antonio city buses as part of VIA's Poetry on the Move Program.

Cassandra Farrin is a poet, adoptive parent, and editor of nonfiction books on the history of religion. Her writing has appeared in Cirque, The Wild Word, Plath Poetry Project, Sweet Tree Review, the Ploughshares blog, and elsewhere.

Fernando Esteban Flores is a native son of Tejas, a graduate of the University of Texas in Austin, and has taught writing at various San Antonio secondary schools. He has multiple publications including three books of poetry. He was one of Gemini Ink’s 2014-15 mentees for poetry.

Sofia Fortuno is a student at the International School of the Americas. She expresses herself through writing and public speaking, and hopes to spark change in her community.

John Fry is the author of the chapbook silt will swirl. His poems have been published in West Branch, Colorado Review, and Tupelo Quarterly, among others. A graduate of Texas State University's MFA program, he edits poetry for Newfound Journal and currently lives in the Texas Hill Country.

Lisha Adela GarcĂ­a has an MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts and currently resides in Texas with her beloved four-legged children. Her book, Blood Rivers, was published by Blue Light Press of San Francisco. She is widely

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published in journals including Boston Review, Crab Orchard Review, Border Senses and Mom Egg Review.

Joyce Henefield Coleman was born in Fort Clark, Texas. She spent her early years in Alice, Texas before moving to San Antonio as a teenager. A graduate from Harlandale High School and Our Lady of the Lake University, Coleman has spent more than 65 years as a resident of San Antonio, living 45 of those years along the Medina River. Her family has resided in the Bexar-Atascosa area since 1876, when they immigrated from Germany.

Lucas Jacob’s poems and prose have appeared in journals including Southwest Review, Barrow Street, Western Humanities Review, Hopkins Review, and Birmingham Poetry Review. He resided in Texas from 2008 to 2016, and assists in organizing the Poetry at Round Top Festival, an annual conference held near San Antonio.

Seres Jaime Magaña was born in Guadalajara, Jalisco, Mexico. He has published in several anthologies including Acentos Review, and Bad Hombres and Nasty Women. He is an Open Mic host and editor of Rabbit on the Moon Anthology.

Pablo Miguel Martínez’s collection, Brazos, Carry Me, received the 2013 PEN Southwest Book Award for Poetry. His chapbook, Cuent@, was published in 2016. His work has been supported by the Artist Foundation of San Antonio, the National Association for Latino Arts and Culture, and the Alfredo Cisneros Del Moral Foundation.

Robert McGowan is a fifth generation Texan from San Antonio whose ancestors came to Texas from the United States and from Nova Scotia, Canada in 1846. He graduated from McCollum High School before joining the Army.

Regina Moya is a Mexican writer and illustrator who has published three novels.

When she migrated to San Antonio in 2003 she became immersed in children's literature and book illustration. In 2010, she began working with Gemini Ink’s Writers in Communities program where she taught writing and painting to battered women, incarcerated teens and detained migrant children. Moya currently resides in downtown San Antonio with her husband and three children.

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Maya Obregon has been published in several literary journals and anthologies, including The Mad Scientist Journal, NILVX, Unrequited, and Les Cabinet des Polythéistes. When not writing or reading, she explores nature across Texas.

Kamala Platt, PhD, teaches creative writing and literature online through Arizona State University’s School of Humanities, Arts and Cultural Studies. She is the author of On the Line (Wings Press, 2010), and Weedslovers (Finishing Line Press, 2014). She lives in the Westside of San Antonio.

Anjela Villarreal Ratliff is a retired Elementary school teacher. Her poems have appeared in various publications, including The Crafty Poet II: A Portable Workshop, Pilgrimage, Australian Latino Press, Boundless, Bearing the Mask: Southwestern Persona Poems, and forthcoming in Women in the Southwest: From History to the Frontline.

Bárbara Renaud González is a published writer. She was born in Tejas, and educated at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. She has lived in San Anto for over 20 years because San Anto is a city of stories that haunt, rattle, and dance.

Pushcart-prize winning poet Ravi Shankar is author/editor of over a dozen books, including Language for a New Century: Contemporary Poetry from Asia, the Middle East & Beyond (W.W. Norton & Co). His work has appeared in The New York Times, The Paris Review, and on NPR, the BBC and PBS. A San Antonio transplant, Linda Simone's poems have appeared in Laurie Ann Guerrero's Love Poems to San Antonio project, in VIA's Poetry on the Move, and in a program at The McNay Museum. Her most recent chapbook is Archeology.

She's currently working on a poetry collection about border-crossings.

Burgin Streetman is a writer and works for Trinity University Press. She hails from the American South, but arrived in San Antonio more than a decade ago via New York City.

Jon Tribble is the author of three collections of poems: Natural State (Glass Lyre Press, 2016); And There Is Many a Good Thing (Salmon Poetry, 2017); and God of the Kitchen (Glass Lyre Press, 2018). He is the managing editor of Crab Orchard Review.

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Although originally from the Rio Grande Valley, Eduardo Vega has lived in San Antonio for more than twenty years. Most recently, he had a poem published on VIA buses and is the current Banzai Haiku Champion. He is a proud member of the award-winning San Antonio Puro Slam Team.

Mobi Warren leads poetry walks in San Antonio natural areas. Her poems have been published in several journals and anthologies. She is co-founder of the environmental writers group Stone in the Stream/Roca en el Rio and co-organizer of the annual poetry reading, Words for Birds, at Mitchell Lake Audubon Center.

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