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[walls] issue 1.1

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Guest Editor: Angie Cruz

Featuring work from:

Daniel Alexander Jones.    Emily Raboteau.    Suheir Hammad.      Jimmy Santiago Baca.    Kathy Engel.    Medea Benjamin.    Norma Elia Cantu.     Amy Sara Carroll.    Emmy Perez.     Alex Rivera.    Marta Lucia.    Kathleen Neal Cleaver.    Dan Robinson.    Amanda Nowlin-O’banion.    Nomika Zion.     Nelly Rosario.   Paolo Piscitelli.    Ivelisse Rodriguez.    Aaron Vano.     Joseph Santandrea.     John Amen.    Sheila Maldonado.     Daniel Pena.    Marion Bethel.    Georgio Guy Tarraf.

 

::Match the quote with the vandal::

1. Suheir Hammad//poet
2. Marta Lucia//poet
3. Paolo Piscitelli//artist
4. Amy Sara Carroll//poet
5. Daniel Alexander Jones//playwright
6. Nomika Zion//activist
7. Kathy Engel//poet

1. I wonder, Where did I move? A friend explains to me the intricacies of false advertising, Here is the shape of the mitt, we’re somewhere to the thumb’s Left.  Directionally impaired, tone-deaf, I take cartography in like a fist. Stone-butch blues infuse the landscape with touching resistance. Industry, like a snow-bird, flexes its mobile muscles, while, individuals (hermetically sealed) orchestrate equally market-driven Jackie Brown heists of citizenship. I will grant you the once removed diehard few who stay put for museums’ erections. One for the auto, two for the Arab-American, three for the Motor City’s revitalization (Don’t mourn, organize).
2. …our culture is going to change no matter what even if we don’t want to admit that it will. Immigrants are shaping our world. Even if someone thinks “okay, we design our space, let someone else build it,” that idea can’t work because the design is one thing but it’s the single person’s hand on labor that is shaping and putting energy into that plan; there is an entropy in the building materials that is given by the hands of someone.
3. Inside copper bubbles bursting green
   resides my home made of plaster walls
   and lathe.  With syringes we can raise quick money by poking veins to raze
   bills mounting, demanding the green.
   Among family and friends rise new walls.

   We kill people beyond country walls
   too big to fall.  Their ghosts watch me raise
   my children, our hope, the mossy green

   as their songs raze walls dyed green.

4. There are spaces between walls.  What exists in the spaces between walls?  Birds. Grasses. Vermin. Secrets. Vagabonds. Hopes. Shadows. Old toys. Lost coins. Cowpaths. I live in the spaces between walls.  Mine is a liminal life, marked by a birth between secured borders of race, time and propriety. I learn, throughout my life, that what exists between walls is rarely seen, often feared, yet, sometimes sought.  I learn throughout my life that some who climb over walls and make their presence known are called adventurers. I learn throughout my life that some who break through walls are locked away and only celebrated when they are dead.  And so, my walk becomes public and clandestine at once.  I have scaled formidable boundaries and plunged myself into unknown places.  I have, too, learned the labyrinthine tunnels that undergird the known, and found ways to circumvent, bypass or escape.  Courage?  Cowardice? Both? Neither?  Mine has been a liminal life.
5. Even you, breasts that milk no more,
   even if gush and cluck could come, the drops would sour
   and curdle as I recall the zattar-haired mother
   from Lyd, ice packs pressed on tender
   spouts to make her crack, recording of a child’s call
   shot through crusted wall into her prison cell.
6. there are bodies here
   micro mosaic children
   a triptych exile against wall
   my dead are rescued
   a closing of crossings
   a scatter scatter vapor of earth
   a trance of metal
   where from herei am all tunnel
7. Not in my name and not for me did you go into this war. the bloodbath in Gaza is not in my name nor for my security. Houses destroyed, schools blown up, thousands of new refugees – they are not in my name or for my security. In Gaza, there is no time for funerals; the dead are put in refrigerators two by two in the mortuary for lack of room. The bodies of policemen and children are laid out and the eager journalists jump between the tactics of pro -Israel advocacy and “the pictures that speak for themselves”. Tell me, what is there to explain? What is there to explain?

Suheir Hammad::6::poem//ZEITOUN
Marta Lucia::3::poem//TRITINA IN GREEN
Paolo Piscitelli::2::interview//SHAPED BY THE HANDS OF SOMEONE
Amy Sara Carroll::1::poem//“WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN GLOBALIZATION AND NEOLIBERALISM?”
Daniel Alexander Jones::4::reply to wall challenge//NEWLY
Nomika Zion::7::article//WAR DIARY FROM SDEROT
Kathy Engel::5::poem//BREASTS AND INTERROGATION