OCHO #15 Guest Edited by Francisco Aragon

Compliments of Mipoesias magazine, I received OCHO #15, guest edited by Francisco Aragon in the mail today. I knew I’d be out and about driving my daughter around this evening so I made a date with myself (hot) and stuck the book in my bag for later. I dropped her off at 7 and , with 2 hours to kill, decided the coffee shop would be my romantic getaway with my copy of OCHO tonight. I’m sitting here at the table getting annoyed at the girl with the cackling laugh in the adjoining room and the waitress who thinks it’s okay to run the little vacuum while customers are in the room (no doubt she has a REAL date and wants to get done early), and did I mention the baby that is meowing?

But as I start to read the book it all seems to dissipate into the air. The background noises, dishes clanging, people talking...it all disappears as I delve deeper into the works of some really good poets.

Some have names I've never heard of. Like Xochiquetzal Candelaria, whose outstanding poem Esta Palabra blew me away. She writes:

At night, the pepper sweet oil
Triggering sweat glands filling

Thousands of tiny tubs in the hollows
Of my neck, how the wave of its one

Brown syllable grows like debt
Spans weeks, then years

Before it breaks
& slides back to blue.

I looked through the window of the café at the snow on the ground outside. The bench that just months ago was covered with leaves, and months before that held a place for young couples sitting in the warm sun. Then I turned back to the book, as if looking into another window. A window quite the contrast from what’s outside right now. One full of color and warmth. Full human struggle, love, relationships.

Then there's Octavio R. Gonzalez, who I have heard of. He's actually a friend on Facebook that I don't really know and haven't read before. After reading his poem Blacksister I definitely know I'll be searching for more of his work. He starts the poem with a quote from Sylvia Plath then he writes:

The dark funnel,
time, sucks away

your face, blacksister.
Silhouetted, telephoned, she

suffers my bellow
with calm, psychological

palms upraised to God;
erects a place of family,

encircling her
sums and son;

blacksister I
am crying ever some.

It was poems like this that were strung throughout the entire issue, that kept me reading. Kept me peeking though these windows into private lives. Like a voyeur hiding in the bushes I couldn't stop quietly watching and waiting for the next scenario. Francisco Aragon did a fabulous job choosing the poems and poets for this issue.

And, as if time and space eluded me I find myself back home sitting in my studio posting a blog. When I finish this I'm going to read it again. It was that good.