Poetry & Fiction

Ode to Rodney King

Oscar Grant
They shot and killed you.
They murdered you
for being African-American.
No justice for Black and Brown men
in Dr. King's America
where the Tea Partiers,
the Glenn Becks and
the Rush Limbaughs rule.

"Has anybody here seen my old friend, John?
Can you tell me where he's gone?
He's freed a lot of people but it seems
the good they die young
I just looked around and he's gone."

"Has anybody here seen my old friend, Oscar?
Can you tell me where he's gone?
He's freed a lot of people but it seems
the good they die young
I just looked around and he's gone."

Coraje
Anger today
Shame
Pura vergüenza
Tristeza
And in Solidarity con mi gente
en Oakland,
I join the Uprising
Maldiciendo the Oscar Grant Verdict.

Written on July 8, 2010
By Gloria L. Velásquez
San Luis Obispo, CA

Uprising

It’s getting harder for my Raza.
Costa Mesa mayor cracking down on illegals.
Minutemen Projects praising his work.
Migra Reform Bills boasting of a new Berlin Wall
“to protect or shoot them dead.”

It’s getting harder for my Raza.
Day laborers hunted down in Los Angeles.
Nine arrested in Orange outside a Home Depot
While Jim Gilchrest cries, “Alleluia, alleluia.”

It’s getting harder for my Raza.
Pete Wilson Politics Resurrected.
Border Battles Reinvented
“to protect or shoot them dead.”

It’s time for those Movimiento Days
y los Brown Berets,
Malcom X and Tijerina reunited,
Dolores Huerta y Emma Tenayuca

As we RISE UP,
RISE UP, RAZA.
RISE UP.

Written on March 8, 2006
Gloria L. Velásquez
San Luis Obispo, CalifAztlán

Song of Rosa

Rosa Parks
Eres mi madre.
You are my mother
hoeing sugarbeets all day long
in the fields of northern Colorado.

Rosa Parks
Eres mi abuela.
You are my grandmother
crossing the demon river with her children
refusing to learn the language of the colonizer.

Rosa Parks
Eres la mujer fronteriza
You are the border woman
enslaved in sweatshops and cantinas
to feed your hungry children.

Rosa Parks
Eres Zora Neale Hurston.
You are Zora Neale Hurston
unafraid and daring to cross
the street in the white part of town.

Rosa Parks
Eres Dolores Huerta.
You are Dolores Huerta
beaten and jailed for daring to take on
agri-business slave masters.

Rosa Parks
Eres los rostros de mis nietos.
You are the faces of my grandchildren
Xicano Black and Proud
in the crossroads of two cultures.

Rosa Parks
Today I bid you farewell
promising to honor your legacy,
to speak of your courage and strength
to our Black and Brown Warriors of Aztlan.

Written on October 25, 2005
Gloria L. Velásquez
Performed for Black History Month in 2006

Iraqi Vietnam

I read this poem for the first time at CSU in Ft. Collins, Co where we were debuting the PBS Doc, Soledados in Vietnam, which includes the song I wrote about my brother, “Son in Vietnam.”

More deaths in Iraq.
Another U.S. Marine dead.
And I think of Fini,
the young teenage boy who fled
Johnstown to serve his country,
during the pre-Xicano Movement days
when no one gave jobs to Mexicans,
the push-out rate in schools was the norm
for young Xicanos like Fini or Uncle Louie
and all those invisible Xicanos whose names
are now proudly etched on the Wall.

More deaths in Iraq.
Another mother mourns the loss of her son,
And I think of Francisca,
her soul torn apart by Vietnam,
no son to lean on those difficult years
when sickness took her husband,
then slowly erased her own mind,
leaving a Vietnam mother caged
while this senseless war is waged
by this senseless president who lobbies
for re-election while sending out daily
letters of condolences to all the shattered familias.

How many more deaths in Iraq I ask?
How many more tears will I shed for Fini,
for Mom
for the twelve U.S. Marines who died today
for their country tis of thee,
proud young soldiers whose names
will one day appear on another Wall.

Written on March 6, 2004
Gloria L. Velásquez
San Luis Obispo, California