Celebrate Poetry Month

To help celebrate Poetry Month, I invite you all to post a favorite poem, or talk about a favorite poet, or share how you celebrate poetry month in the comments section below. Here are some ways to add a little poetry to your day.

Ways to Celebrate 

1. Poem in Your Pocket: Find a poem you love, make copies and carry it with you. Share with co-workers, family and friends. 
2. Read a book of poetry: "Poetry is a response to the daily necessity of getting the world right."
3. Memorize a poem
4. Put poetry in an unexpected place, like abandoned art.
5. Take a poem out to lunch: read a poem at lunch with a friend. 
6. Write a poem! Express yourself with words, found phrases, imagery, or what inspires you! Put it on paper and give it some power! 

I'll start. My favorite go-to poets are Pablo Neruda, Sherman Alexi, Gary Snyder, and the late, sassy Maggie Estep. I love discovering voices that I haven't heard of before. I enjoy the revolutionary spoken word that this political climate has sparked.

I have a new favorite poet, Anita Endrezze. Anita Endrezze is from Native American (Yaqui) and European heritage and is a writer, poet and artist. This is a snippet of what she says about her poem The Wall.

"I asked myself, what should the Wall be made of? Since I'm a poet, I work with imagery and symbols. The Wall itself is a symbol...A wall of
taco trucks, a wall of solar panels...what could be freer than sunshine and renewable energy as opposed to millions of dollars to build a wall?"

I love her bold political theorizing and the way she blends her culture and vision with the current controversial climate happening today. The imagery and layers of her message speaks to the very heart of the border culture and how a wall could compromise the existing eco-system and way of life. This poem makes me want to know more about this contemporary, multi-cultural poet. You can learn more at her website: Anitaendrezze.weebly.com

The Wall 
  by Anita Endrezze 2017

Build a wall of saguaros,
butterflies, and bones
of those who perished
in the desert. A wall of worn shoes,
dry water bottles, poinsettias.
Construct it of gilded or crazy house
mirrors so some can see their true faces.
Build a wall of revolving doors
or revolutionary abuelas.
Make it as high as the sun, strong as tequila.
Boulders of sugar skulls. Adobe or ghosts.
A Lego wall or bubble wrap. A wall of hands
holding hands, hair braided from one woman
to another, one country to another.
A wall made of Berlin. A wall made for tunneling.
A beautiful wall of taco trucks.
A wall of silent stars and migratory songs.
This wall of solar panels and holy light,
panels of compressed cheetos,
topped not by barbed wire but sprouting
avocado seeds, those Aztec testicles.
A wall to keep Us in and Them out.
It will have faces and heartbeats.
Dreams will be terrorists. The Wall will divide
towns, homes, mountains,
the sky that airplanes fly through
with their potential illegals.
Our wallets will be on life support
to pay for it. Let it be built
of guacamole so we can have a bigly block party.
Mortar it with xocoatl, chocolate. Build it from coyote howls
and wild horses drumming across the plains of Texas,
from the memories
of hummingbird warriors and healers.
Stack it thick as blood, which has mingled
for centuries, la vida. Dig the foundation deep.
Create a 2,000 mile altar, lit with votive candles
for those who have crossed over
defending freedom under spangled stars
and drape it with rebozos,
and sweet grass.
Make it from two way windows:
the wind will interrogate us,
the rivers will judge us, for they know how to separate
and divide to become whole.
Pink Floyd will inaugurate it.
Ex-Presidente Fox will give it the middle finger salute.
Wiley Coyote will run headlong into it,
and survive long after history forgets us.
Bees will find sand-scoured holes and fill it
with honey. Heroin will cover it in blood.
But it will be a beautiful wall. A huge wall.
Remember to put a rose-strewn doorway in Nogales
where my grandmother crossed over,
pistols on her hips. Make it a gallery of graffiti art,
a refuge for tumbleweeds,
a border of stories we already know by heart.