Each month, the San Francisco Public Library Web site features
selected poems reflecting the theme of War and Peace on Our Streets.
To submit a poem or for more information about the project, see our News Release.
Past Featured Poets | September Web Poems | October Web Poems |
November/December Web Poems |
January Web Poems | February Web Poems
February Featured Poet: Leticia Hernandez
Leticia Hernández-Linares was conceived in El Salvador, born in Hollywood, and lives in San Francisco. She has performed her music and teatro infused poetry throughout the country and in El Salvador. Her writing has appeared in literary journals such as Frontiers and Puerto Del Sol,
and in anthologies including Cantos Al Sexto Sol and This Bridge We Call Home. Her first chapbook of poetry, Razor Edges of my Tongue is available from Calaca Press. For over eleven years, she has worked with youth, teaching writing and art classes; and, currently she is Education Director for the Jamestown
Community Center in the Mission District of San Francisco. An armed and dangerous fugitive from her Ph.D. candidacy, she has taught literature and writing classes at UPENN and San Francisco State.
Recommended Books by Leticia Hernandez:
- Remedios: Stories of Earth and Iron from the History of Puertorriqueñas by Aurora Levins Morales.
This study traces the legacy of colonialism and how it ties women from all over the globe together--a poetic history of struggle, women's work, and natural medicine.
- Upside Down by Eduardo Galeano
Any work by Galeano is a roller coaster ride through beautifully crafted stories and critically analyzed history. I read the first chapter of the first book of Memory of Fire, and I immediately put the book down and wrote a poem. This latest work, and everything else--inspiring and liberating.
- Nervous Conditions by Tsitsi Dangarembga
This story about how the educational system can serve as the instrument of colonialism--and yet, simultaneously, as a source of liberation, saved me when I was in the depths of paper writing and home sickness in college.
- Xochitl and the Flowers by Jorge Argueta
One of the first children's books about Salvadoran children's experiences in the United States. Loosely based on the story of a Salvadoran family in the Mission and written by local Salvi poet Jorge Argueta. This books makes my parents cry and feeds my soul. Another important press, Childrens Book Press, publishes all the stories we didn't read as children.
- Ceremony by Leslie Marmon Silko
This is healing for all of us.
- Two Installationsby Shirin Neshat
Neshat is a fierce artist. She tackles gender in Muslim fundamentalist culture in Iran. Stunning visuals and a strong creative and analytical voice.
February Featured Poem by Leticia Hernandez
DOS EQUIS
X is for xochitl
wilting burnt orange petals stand at attention
guarding graves in Tapachula, Mexico
guiding the way for disappeared migrants
who buried penniless in unmarked coffins
are on their way back to get their names
X fills in the blank of disappeared letters,
of the son who went to join his mother
daughter who went to work for her brother
on buses stretching down the road
through Guatemala
to reach the other border
Dos equis etched on lonely wood slabs
that no one claims and no one visits
Here lies so and so
Salvadoran, Guatemalan
Two sticks, a cross
and lonely newspapers announce
“Crosses abound in Chiapas”
a situation of wood and death
out of control
burials marking a less glamorous border
between Guatemala and Mexico
X is greater than
number of Central Americans disappeared in civil wars
this new war is an old one
spoils at the end of the conflict are a spot in the promised land
but before you pass, you have to dance with ghosts
wade through reluctant rivers
evade
shapeshifters who come as mara salvatrucha
hiding under jungle foilage
hungry train tracks hunting for limbs
coyotes overseers who will buy sell trade you
policias holding
open palms waiting for payment
Lucía Elizabeth Contreras
found her brother
in a picture she identified his cadaver
recognized the patterns of his shirt
but she doesn't know the woman
whose body parts are milagros on a Tapachula church altar
a brown copper color stamped and plated by locomotion
the tracks took her legs as she fell from the train car
alive but in pieces her body escaped mass graves where bodies hope
wait for someone to please bring them a name
Don't know where they’re from
like the tamal stands that line the border
of Macarthur Park, Los Angeles.
letters on blue and white awnings
tamales de El Salvador
tamales de Guatemala
but only way to tell them apart are the letters
flags look all the same
men on the corners hold invisible cards
between thumb and index finger
promise freedom a job identification
a chance at a piece of this great nation
at the fingertips of an empty hand
But first
you have to get here
no one agrees on the numbers
25, 000 over many years
80,000 just in one
numbers above rising temperature
A cousin in a cantina beckons me
to sit and listen to stories dancing off
drunken restless tongues
and hours later
labels peel off drops of bottle sweat
we swallow tears in gulps of liquid bread
dos equis two x
or maybe its Pilsner, Pacifica
without the label you can't really tell
So I sign this epigraph in as many letters as I can
y sin nombre
without my name
I traded it for the dead lady’s memories and pink rosary
that burst and spilled beads over the edges of my hands
you know you really don’t need that she says
and we danced
she smiled the whole time, asked me where was I from
are you from never never land she laughed
never a land of the living
crowded by dehydrated spirits still gasping
for breath and looking for a name tag
I lick my lips
I’m thirsty for an alphabet without the letters o t m or x
and i'm trying to barter my words
to buy train tickets home
for the dead
