From Town Hall Seattle: On Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday, as part of a nationwide series of readings celebrating American ideals of freedom and equality, 14 writers read excerpts from their own work and the writings of other American thinkers concerned with freedom of speech, such as MLK, himself, Susan B. Anthony, Frederick Douglass, Thomas Paine, Angela Y. Davis, James Welch, Susan Sontag, Malcolm X, Cesar Chavez and Adrienne Rich.
Claudia Castro Luna is at 27:40
Emerald City Blues
Sky favors no one grey upon grey or ocean blue
Lovers and homeless wake up under it wet with dew
The model city we imagine and how to renew
Night after night old man his curtains drew
Then in one day his house razed and cat at the window too
Sky favors no one grey upon grey or royal blue
All over where there was a structure now there’s two
With fallen buildings, memories of who we are wither and slew
The fair city we dream of, or the one we misconstrue
Corner barber poets keep faith, comb newspapers through
New trends motivate, then again, crows weep a déjà vu
Sky favors no one grey upon grey or summer blue
Change leads to change till the day when we ask, we are who?
And what of our hearts to unlock the impact of each adieu?
The city we imagine, and the one we are, can be true
In future’s rearview mirror, we knew what we knew
Those who lose are many, those who win are few
Sky favors no one grey upon grey or blissful blue
The city we aspire to be, or the one we may rue
Read at El Centro de la Raza, on Dia de los Muertos, November 2nd 2015, to commemorate the death of 12 year old Santos Rodriguez.
Think of Santos
— In memory of Santos Rodriguez
Since not anger, not prayers, nor protests
The clock can stop and prevent the bullet
Fired by a half man and his coward hand
And no brotherly love nor mother’s tears
Life into his lifeless body may inject
We who live yet must Santo’s life recall
His narrow shoulders, the milk of his teeth
Remember his tomorrows in each day
In children smiling on their way to school
Cherish and protect the things he didn’t get
When you say his name he lives inside you
Inside me live his truth, his hopes, his dread
So as the moon calls tides from her distant perch
So may one day soon Santos and Justice merge.
To learn more about Santos Rodriguez go to: http://cipotabajolaluna.blogspot.com
Read on KUOW, September 4th, 2015
To listen: http://kuow.org/post/meet-seattles-first-civic-poet-claudia-castro-luna
Seattle is a house
Perched
on the comings and goings
of water and wind
ripple of fish
feather of crow
early morning ferry yawn
Seattle I say
and invoke a man and a place
the two inseparable
not proportional
not parallel
but as language
is to poem
and salt to sea
I watch bridges, bicyclists, boats
summer blankets tendered
on public lawns
I watch fiery sunsets
tango and sway over jagged peaks
and autumn trees bursting gold
up and down hilly streets
Nevertheless before
I postcard and gloss
and more sunsets
and more trees
find their way into my lines
I must confess
the house’s foundation
is in places brittle
and many rooms dark
for windows lack
Plenty have I been
on the receiving end
of rehearsed indifference
heard enough shallow
arguments on who belongs here
to wake up scooping
ocean water with a spoon
we are all here
that need to be
The city is concrete and steel
plus the sum of its people
everyday we destroy
our house
then race to remake it
those narrow windows
block future’s view
mute voices
that need to be heard
muffle the sound
of the fallen tree limb
heavy with ripe plums
Everyday we tread
over Chief Sealth’s legacy
his prophetic words,
“At night when the streets
… will be silent and you think
them deserted,
they will throng
with the returning hosts
that once filled them
and still love this beautiful land.”
We are not alone
save for his people
we are all immigrants here
waiter, teacher,
artist, worker nurse
we belong
all of us belong
Seattle is a house
we all need to afford.