La Palabra Poetry Reading

 Sunday February 26, 2012 starting at 2:00 pm


La Palabra Poetry

Hosted by Luivette Resto

(Open mic before featured poets)

Featuring:

Rebecca Gonzales: Cultivated by the sun and moon peeking past the shoes dangling from the phone lines, Rebecca Gonzales was raised "one block East of El Pino". Rebecca collects the energy of the streets with the passion of poetry and sweetness of her son's laughter to find positivity and optimism for the future. As a mother she is humbled, as a poet she is obedient, and as a woman she is unapologetic.

Rachelle Cruz: Rachelle is from Hayward, California. Her chapbook, Self-Portrait as Rumor and Blood, is forthcoming from Dancing Girl Press. Her work has appeared in Muzzle Magazine, Splinter Generation, KCET's Departures Series, Inlandia: A literary Journey, among others. She hosts "The Blood-Jet Writing Hour" radio show on Blog Talk Radio. An emerging Voices Fellow, a Kundiman Fellow and a VONA writer, she lives and writes in Riverside, California.


Serving Oysters to M.F.K Fisher
Rachelle Cruz

“All the Filipino servants, pretty little men-dolls as mercurial as monkeys, and as lewd.” -M.F.K Fisher, American food writer, 1924, The First Oyster

We slide past the wooden crates stained with salt, crowding the service entrance.
We pry open the question of lids: slippers of oysters waiting for a tongue to kiss.
We freeze our hands scrubbing their algaed coats, pristine from the thickness of our bristles.
We mimic the Pacific's sharp bite and overtake, salt shaking free from our hands.
We shuck and snap with our pointed knives, unlock, twist the collection of God's gnarled doors.
We cut the muscle under the shell, inhale the liquor we can't drink.
We serve gloved young women waltzing, oyster in one hand, the other on wide shoulders.
We remember our first oysters grown on the ghosts of coconuts, slithered in by submerged ropes.
We remember the quickburn of rum to chase these heartbeats of ocean, brining our bodies, cruel.

Ma-dusa.... (excerpt)
Rebecca Gonzalez

...she calls to the suns
to "count their blessings", when you wipe her brow,
of the sweat dripping in the heat of her meditation.
they are "big headed"
and unruly...
Palms positioned to the small of her back to feel the birthing process
you want to touch a time when eternity happens from the
thick of her thighs
unruly
this is heaven un-realized
"big headed"
she stomps!
you can feel her coming in the midst of others who crawl
they are "big headed"
handed
with "unruly hair"
thoughts;
are punctuated by her orgasm.



Avenue 50 Studio, Inc.
a 501(c)(3) non-profit art gallery
131 North Avenue 50
Highland Park, CA 90042
323-258-1435

http://www.avenue50studio.com/



Avenue 50 Studio is supported in part by the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors through the Los Angeles County Arts Commission; the California Community Foundation; the Department of Cultural Affairs; the California Council for the Humanities; and The James Irvine Foundation