DDCPoetry

In grad school, I took a course in Detective Fiction in 2010.  One of the projects we could do at the end of the course was to create our own book proposal for a detective story, and I had one in mind for a long time. Let's go further back, back when I was studying about Asian-American History when I was an undergrad in 2003 I learned about the Watsonville Riots from Strangers from a Different Shore by Ronald Takaki .  From my memory, the title of the chapter about the Watsonville Riots, and the Filipino-American experience in American was called "A Dollar a Day, A Dime a Dance."  This is in reference to Filipino farm workers earning a dollar a day, and spending a dime to dance with someone at a dance hall. But what interested me most about this was this hysteria that Filipino men were dating, loving, and being with white women which was said to be the basis of the riots.  Also the idea that one man, Fermin Tehera, was killed in a farm house -- shot through the hear...

The Stafford Challenge is a commitment to write a poem a day for a year.  I haven't really written poems for a year, and seeing this challenge pop up on my Facebook feed made me wonder why I haven't so before.  I think I'm one of those type of writers who tells himself it's easier to wait for inspiration rather than be more active in the writing process: research, writing, revision as a way to say to myself "I'll write it when it's the best time."  Well, there's no time like now, right? In the past two years, I was able to do poem a day challenges that lasted for a month.  However, the way I wrote them was more improvisational journal entry: writing what I see that day, or what was happening, and since I did this type of writing for two challenges, I wanted to try something different. So a week before the start date, I decided to list a bunch of themes, ideas, undercurrents, to latch onto and guide me as I explored what I thought about them throug...

  Thank you to Vuong Vu and Tourane Poetry Press for publishing my collection This is a Love Poem, Listen   Buy a copy from me and be able to request things like: *Blank Copy - Unsullen typography *Signed Copy - My name next to my name *Doodled Copy - If I knew how to draw, I'd draw *Note Copy - One factoid on creative gibberish *Haiku Copy - A short quick poem // maybe my own, or Issa, // Basho, or Buson *Q/A Copy - Random question from my "Random Question Generator," and then a short answer. ---------- Praise of This is a Love Poem, Listen ---------- These poems are ocean glass at dawn. They call us to wade in, slowly. We soon realize the struggle of riptides, the complex relationship between a father and son, what love challenges when expecting fair conditions. The push and pull of memory, the turbulence of sexuality, the deep conversations in diaspora are intricately crafted in De la Cruz’ words. An old soul sings in this stunning first book. Arlene Biala Author of A...

  We start with exposition, "We were waiting for a train in the echoing underground. / I was thirteen. He was old, a family friend, a refugee from another century," Without knowing the context of the poem at first, I wondered why there was two of them on the train -- a young girl and a old family friend, until, "The Gestapo hammered at his front door with the order for his arrest" and now we're in a very specific time and a general area in Europe.  The  Gestapo is the secret police of Nazi Germany.  This brings to light some insight on the "refugee from another century" who "walked out the back door with nothing but his passport in his pocket." We return to the train station and the girl and the friend have a slight conversation: Just before our train thundered into the station, making it impossible to hear out of the blue, he said to me, memory is a paradise no one can expel you from. This morning, in another century, I woke up remembering....

  "This well-used little bag is just the right size / to carry a copy of the Psalms. It's plain-woven  / flowers and helicopter share the sky with bombs" The internal rhyme of "Psalms" and "bombs" really foreshadows the juxtaposition of reality and ideals.  The book bag being the holding prayers and from up above bombs. "falling like turnips--he who makes light of other / men will be killed by a turnip." The poem becomes a bit farcical here, but if someone dies because of their ideals, aren't they killed because of them?  If someone sees bombs as turnips, bombs are still bombs no matter the perceptions. "A bachelor. / I wear it across my shoulder--it's easier to be / a bachelor all my life than a widow for a day." To forgo any search of love because eventually you'll be a widow is a grim reality.  But again this is the reality versus the ideal.  It'd be great to fall in love, but reality, the speaker could die at any...