This week's Poet of the People is Richard Garcia. Richard Garcia is one of the stalwarts of poetry in the low country of South Carolina. I knew of him long before I knew him. He is a wonderful advocate and mentor for other poets as well as a wonderful award winning poet in his own right.. I encourage you to buy his books and attend any of his readings in your area - he will not disappoint.
~Al Black
Richard Garcia's poetry books include The Other Odyssey, Dream Horse Press, 2014, The Chair, BOA 2015, and Porridge, Press 53, 2016. He has received a Pushcart Prize, and been in Best American Poetry.
Then
A knock on the front door,
but no one is knocking.
My mother is upstairs again
threatening to jump out the window.
And there is my best friend Tito.
The swish-swish of metal roller-skates.
Father Harris from All Saints Episcopal Church
crosses the street holding my book
with two hands as if it were heavy.
He wants an inscription, something clever,
for his future granddaughter—should I tell him
that my book has not been written yet,
that he is dead now, and I am dead now,
that my mother's house
and All Saints Episcopal Church have taken wing
like two swans made of smoke,
swans that I might have imagined?
But that was now and this is then.
Tito says, Let's go back to Buena Vista Park,
let's go cardboard-sliding down the musical sand dunes.
•
American Gothic
My grandfather was the captain of a tall ship that sailed around the horn bearing rum and whiskey and always, just for me, a barrel of rock hard candy from the isle of Madagascar. My grandfather told me stories that made me dream of pirates, nice pirates that never hurt anyone. My grandfather waved goodbye to my grandmother as his ship sailed away with the tide. My grandmother and I waited for the sails of Grandfather's ship to reappear on the horizon. Tell me again, Grandma, What was the name of Grandpa's ship. It was called, she reminded me, The Constellation of Falsehoods. OK, I lied. I never knew my grandfather or my grandmother but I recall their picture on the wall. They appeared to be sad farmers. He was holding a pitchfork. She looked like she had just swallowed a large sour ball.
•
Message from Garcia
My brother was the rain.
He was also the sun.
My brother was a sun shower.
We used to sleep in the flames
of the gas fireplace when it was turned on.
but, since my brother was the rain,
the fire never harmed us.
My brother sang to make the moon come out.
He read to me from the pages of sand dunes.
Sad stories, always, sad stories.
Back in the olden days, television
was not invented yet.
We would cut a hole in a box and stare at it.
My brother was the first Mexican-American
basketball star. San Francisco
News Call-Bulletin—Headline:
message from Garcia:
He breaks the record for points in a game.
Next game, double, triple guards on Garcia.
Me, I was an expert at dying.
I would clutch my chest and slowly spin
to the sidewalk. I would lie there
for a long time, twitching spasmodically.
The players from the other teams
complained about my brother.
That Mexican, they said,
he slips through us like rain.
•
Freedom
You are sitting up in bed reading a detective novel. Your eyes are open but you are asleep thinking you are awake. In this novel you are at Roosevelt Middle School with your girlfriend at your first sock hop. You have never been to a sock hop, and don't know how to do the bop, the dance the white kids are doing. So you do the steps taught to you by your Black friend, Felton, although at that time he was a Negro. The dance he taught you was called the Texas Hop. Soon all the white kids in the gym are dancing the Texas Hop. But your mind is flowing backwards. It's the case you are working on: The Case of the Missing Tar Baby and the Pillsbury Doughboy. Where they stolen, lynched, or did they run away together? The Tar Baby and the Pillsbury Doughboy have escaped from a chain gang. They have built a raft and are drifting down the Mississippi river toward freedom.
•
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