This River Here: Poems of San Antonio
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About this ebook
Carmen Tafolla
Carmen Tafolla is a poet, speaker, professor emeritus, State Poet Laureate of Texas, and author of more than thirty books, including Fiesta Babies, What Can You Do with a Paleta?, and What Can You Do with a Rebozo? (all available from Random House). Tafolla has received many awards, including the Americas Award, five International Latino Book Awards, and the Charlotte Zolotow Award. She travels to many places across the world, but always comes back to San Antonio, to a home filled with books and surrounded by trees, butterflies, and raccoons. Visit her website at carmentafolla.net.
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Reviews for This River Here
2 ratings1 review
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5This River Here: Poems of San Antonio, Carmen TafollaWings Press978-1-60940-399-7$16.95, 92 pgsWell. I am stunned. If you've never been to San Antonio then please come on down. But if you can't pay a visit then you should definitely pick up a copy of This River Here: Poems of San Antonio by San Antonio's first Poet Laureate Carmen Tafolla. The hot, drowsy afternoons; the cool green river; the melody of Tex-Mex in your ears; the savory fire of Tex-Mex on your tongue; the magic of the curanderos in the very air. It's all here, in this book, this herencia, including an offering of photographs to get lost in. We are rich here in this old river city, busily blurring the lines.My favorites (I had a wonderfully terrible time trying to choose only two):"Fragile Flames"Altares viejos of my path-warmed houseolder than our prayerslight as sacred sunraysrich as scarred and ancient woodyour votive one-day candles lastwell beyond twilight, stubborn miracleson this inherited dark wool sarapewith stained and balding fringestill tipping stripes of life'smost painful, hopeful colorstiny lights make loans of faithto midnight's darkest stormsMy peoplelean on a chancelive on a hopepray in a fragile flickerof stolen candlelightHoly places around us everywheretiny hallway tables with a handtorn branchof esperanza-yellow bloom and seedsdressertops with tin milagro wingsbackyard carefully historied pile of stoneseach one a prayer a bead of sweatprotecting red-dressed, star-cloaked Virgina now-unsainted Christophernervous on the dashboardwith the cross flying above him,the doilied corner shelf with picturesof those lost six months or sixty years agostill with usThese resilient rocks of lifepath prayerswet-mortared of the past and presentalways bow to possible milagros living in the futureTheir flowers - living, dead, or artificial - faithfultestifying silently to our beliefthat fragile flamessoft-speak the powerof things too realtoo strong too deepto be simplyseen"San Anto's Mezcla Mágica"What it means to co-exist,to bloom together,is that the lines grow fuzzy,optical illusions with two different facesappearing at different timesthere is not a street that marksa neighborhood others have notcrossed intoeaten, loved, lived in, tasted in a different wayEven in Alamo Heights,tamales end up on the "Old Texas" families'Thanksgiving tables, while "Graciela's" sellsdesigner suits in sarape colorsEven on Nogalitos Streetthe Chinese tamarind seed is the top-selling snackat the Mexican food counter,Indian curry gets scooped upin comal-warmed pita breadVietnamese eggrolls brim out oftoasty tortillas made fromGerman-milled white flourAt the corner of French and Fredericksburg RoadMartínez Barbacoa pairs steaming barbacoawith ice-cold, carbonated Big Red,imports El Milagro tortillas from Austinand Virgin of Guadalupe wooden bracelets from Mexico,stacks avocados just lusciously ripe enoughbut not too soft, in front of the lusciously Olympian Aztecsposed on a calendar that only distantly layersechoed rhythms of the Aztec CalendarAfter barbacoa and corn tortillas for breakfastwe want "something different" for lunchand pair black-smoked Jamaican Jerk Bar-B-Qwith chile-roasted cornSo nighttime at Sam's Burger Joint we are not surprisedwhen in the Music Hall out backa tall, blonde Chicana named Patricia Vonne(née Rodriguez and freshly back from concert tour of Europe)rattles the cage of the stage andsings a blend smooth as honeyto the harmony of a rock electric guitarcountry fiddleand Spanish castanetsCarmen Tafolla is the author of more than 20 books. She has received numerous awards, among them the Art of Peace Award; the Charlotte Zolotow Award; the Americas Award, presented at the Library of Congress; two ALA Notable Books; and two international Latino Book Awards. She is currently Writer-in-Residence for Children's, Youth & Transformative Literature at the University of Texas/San Antonio. In 2012, Ms. Tafolla was named the first Poet Laureate of the City of San Antonio.
Book preview
This River Here - Carmen Tafolla
1846.
I.
Listen to the voices in this breeze, your ancestors, the trees the river that remembers …
This River Here
This river here
is full of me and mine.
This river here
is full of you and yours.
Right here
(or maybe a little farther down)
my great-grandmother washed the dirt
out of her family’s clothes,
soaking them, scrubbing them,
bringing them up
clean.
Right here
(or maybe a little farther down)
Washing clothes on San Pedro Creek, ca. 1900. Photographer unknown.
Reverend M.F. Tafolla, baptising parishioners in the river, c. 1933.
my grampa washed the sins
out of his congregation’s souls,
baptizing them, scrubbing them,
bringing them up
clean.
Right here
(or maybe a little farther down)
my great-great grandma froze with fear
as she glimpsed,
between the lean, dark trees,
a lean, dark Indian peering at her.
She ran home screaming, "¡Ay, los Indios!
Aí vienen los I-i-indios!!"
as he threw pebbles at her,
laughing.
Till one day she got mad
and stayed
and threw pebbles
right back at him!
After they got married,
they built their house right here
(or maybe a little farther down.)
Right here,
my father gathered
mesquite beans and wild berries
working with a passion
during the Depression.
His eager sweat poured off
and mixed so easily
with the water of this river here.
Right here,
my mother cried in silence,
so far from her home,
sitting with her one brown suitcase,
a traveled trunk packed full with blessings,
and rolling tears of loneliness and longing
which mixed (again so easily)
with the currents of this river here.
Right here we’d pour out picnics,
and childhood’s blood from dirty scrapes on dirty knees,
and every generation’s first-hand stories
of the weeping lady La Llorona
haunting the river every night,
crying Ayyy, mis hi-i-i-ijos!
—
(It happened right here!)
The fear dripped off our skin
and the blood dripped off our scrapes
and they mixed with the river water,
right here.
Right here,
the stories and the stillness
of those gone before us
haunt us still,
now grown, our scrapes in different places,
the voices of those now dead
quieter,
but not too far away …
Right here we were married,
you and I,
and the music filled the air,
danced in,
dipped in,
mixed in
with the river water
… dirt and sins,
fear and anger,
sweat and tears,
love and music,
blood.
And memories …
It was right here!
And right here we stand,
washing clean our memories,
baptizing our hearts,
gathering past and present,
dancing to the flow
we find
right here
or maybe —
a little