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Originally posted November 8th, 2015
Excerpts from (After)life: Poems and Stories of the Dead
The title of this anthology, (After)life, indicates the broad range of cultural experiences and encounters with death, whether actual or imagined, that the stories and poems relate. Collectively, the pieces in this anthology pose the question: What does death mean? When does death occur now? Does death mean only endings for those left behind? If not, what are the ways in which we live on, after life? The stories and poems in (After)life explore or meditate on answers to these and other questions.
–Renée M. Schell, editor, Purple Passion Press
Poems
By Martín Espada
The story is
that whole families of fruitpickers
still crept between the furrows
of the field at dusk,
when for reasons of whiskey or whatever
the cropduster plane sprayed anyway,
floating a pesticide drizzle
over the pickers
who thrashed like dark birds in a glistening white net,
except for Federico,
a skinny boy who stood apart
in his own green row,
and, knowing the pilot
would not understand in Spanish
that he was the son of a whore,
instead jerked his arm
and thrust an obscene finger.
The pilot understood.
He circled the plane and sprayed again,
watching a fine gauze of poison
drift over the brown bodies
that cowered and scurried on the ground,
and aiming for Federico,
leaving the skin beneath his shirt
wet and blistered,
but still pumping his finger at the sky.
After Federico died,
rumors at the labor camp
told of tomatoes picked and smashed at night,
growers muttering of vandal children
or communists in camp,
first threatening to call Immigration,
then promising every Sunday off
if only the smashing of tomatoes would stop.
Still tomatoes were picked and squashed
in the dark,
and the old women in camp
said it was Federico,
laboring after sundown
to cool the burns on his arms,
flinging tomatoes
at the cropduster
that hummed like a mosquito
lost in his ear,
and kept his soul awake.
Martín Espada has published more than fifteen books as a poet, editor, essayist and translator. His forthcoming collection of poems is called, Vivas to Those Who Have Failed (2016). Other books of poems include The Trouble Ball (2011), The Republic of Poetry (2006), and Alabanza (2003). His honors include the Shelley Memorial Award and a Guggenheim Fellowship. Espada is a professor of English at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst.
By David Perez
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Let's hide under the cot in the basement
El sueño de Lorca
Por Alejandro Murguía
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Lorca's Dream
By Alejandro Murguía
and play the game where we pass a story
back and forth, stretching the plot so long
it seems to end more than once.
Let’s begin in a language we invent as we go
replacing walls with bricks
and burials with shovelfuls of dirt.
Let's stop comparing scars and start seeing
the naked branch he swings at us so clearly
our lash marks become red smirks in leg flesh.
Let's look at everything like it's never been seen,
like there is nothing that can't teach
the wisdom of the flattened spider
and the logic of childish murders
Let’s swim in the lake of last chances.
And every time our feet touch the bottom
know that our toes can't tell the difference
between skull and stone.
David Perez, a resident of San Jose, California, serves as the 2014-16 Poet Laureate of Santa Clara County. He is a repeat guest on the NPR storytelling series "Snap Judgment," a recipient of the Arts Council Silicon Valley Fellowship for Literary Art, and author of the poetry collection, Love in a Time of Robot Apocalypse, from Write Bloody Publishing. In 2012, he was voted "Best Author in the Bay" by the SF Bay Guardian.
El sueño de Lorca
Por Alejandro Murguía
Me cuentan que tu clavícula
es una estrella sobre Andalucía
que tus melancólicos metacarpianos
aún apríetan un terrón de Sevilla
que tus caderas jamas
han cesado de gozar
así en La Habana como en Nueva York
y que en las cuencas de tus ojos
han brotado jasmines
y cada petalo un poema
que tu quijada es la voz de todos
los sospechos, indocumentados,
insultados y fusilados
que la luna arrulla tus huesos Federico
frágiles como alas de colibrí
Así me lo contarón una noche plateada
las hormiguitas rojas
que duermen en tu cráneo
By Alejandro Murguía
They tell me that your clavicle
is a star over Andalucia
that your melancholic metacarpals
still clutch a clod of earth in Sevilla
that your hips have not ceased dancing
in Havana or in New York
that jasmines bloom in your eye sockets
and every petal a poem
that your jaw bone is the voice of all
the silenced ones, the undocumented ones
those insulted and executed
that the moon cradles your bones Federico
fragile as hummingbird wings
That’s what I was told one silvery night
by the hip red ants
that sleep in your cranium
Alejandro Murguía, the sixth San Francisco Poet Laureate and the first Latino to hold the post, is the author of This War Called Love (winner of the American Book Award), The Medicine of Memory: A Mexica Clan in California (University of Texas Press) and Stray Poems (City Lights Books). Murguía is a professor in Latina Latino Studies at San Francisco State University. In May 2014 the SF Weekly named him Best Local Author.
Short Story
The Old Haunt
By Richie Narvaez
With horror, Grace realized that she was dead, and that she was now a ghost, and that she would be doomed to haunt the dark, dank, dusty halls of Chuffnuttington Manor for all eternity. What would become of her darling children? What of her dear husband, who had not the least idea of how to order dinner?
“Dearest maman, you are mistaken,” said her suddenly-appearing twin children, Catarina and Carl. “It is we who have passed on to become phantoms and not you.” They perched on tricycles before her, extremely pale and
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“How awful,” said Grace.
extremely calm, just as eerie in death as in life, for they had since infancy a penchant for talking in burps. “Do not fear,” they chimed in unison. “We are ever so happy. We play all the day, and our laughter shall fill your dreams.”
But then suddenly bursting into the room was her husband, Barley, seaweed covering his drenched tuxedo. “Darling, darling,” he uttered. “How silly you are. It is not you who are the haunting spirit, but I. And before I ascend to the light, I'd like you to take note of a few things, such as how to work the boiler, and that I squandered your family's fortune on Internet gambling.”
“Oh, Barley!” said Grace.
“Nonsense!” came a voice, hinting of evil and too much apricot brandy. It was the voice of Barley’s father, Lord Chuffnuttington. He floated into the room in his cape and patent leather mandals. “I am the true ghost who haunts Chuffnuttington Manor! All the guests have been tricked into coming here by my missive from the Other Side—you know, Connecticut.”
Just then, the guests filed into the parlor, slowly, ponderously. The young couple who needed only some trauma to reaffirm their love for one another, the comely-yet-duplicitous real estate agent, and the diminutive psychic who was less a psychic and more just a very sensitive Virgo. All of them claimed to be the true ghost. “FOOLS!” came the snarling voice with a geographically-unplaceable accent, of Carla Van Carla, the maid / chef / groundskeeper / mechanic / masseuse. “I've reached back from the Darkness to haunt you all for your sins!”
“But then who made the hors d'oeuvres?” said Grace.
“The canapés were to die for,” noted Barley.
“This cannot be!” pronounced Lord Chuffnuttington. “We can't all be ghosts.”
“Wait! I know!” said the diminutive and asexual psychic, who was less a psychic and more just a very sensitive Virgo. “It's the house!”
Just then the doors creaked, an ancient clock chimed, and a microwave dinged, like a forewarning of malevolence.
“The house is a ghost! The house is a ghost!” burped the twins in tandem.
“That explains the horrible wifi,” said the male half of the young couple.
“There is an old Indian burial ground below the library,” said the comely-yet-duplicitous real estate agent. “But with its lovely view of the gardens and some curtains, it could be turned into a casino room.”
All of a sudden, the faithful old Rottweiler, who had a predilection for stealing and then chewing Barley's private lingerie collection, appeared in the doorway and deeply barked: “Ridiculous bipeds! Hear me, Rugtug Catkiller, for that is my true name among my kind. I passed into the Great Nap, but I have brought you here to hear my plea from the Eternal Yard of Light.”
“Shoo, Peaches, you demon hellhound,” said Barley, who disliked the dog and who, like all the others, had not understood a word it had said.
Then, in the abnormal stillness that followed, they realized that they were all alive, that none of them was a ghost, apparition, or poltergeist, and that they were, in point of fact, merely bored, high on Ritalin, needing to potty, married, senile, emotionally stunted, manic depressive, plagued by dreams of Cthulhu, Libertarian, on steroids, in need of a paint job, and/or in gay denial, respectively.
Things seemed to go well after that, until Grace suggested a round of charades. The others quickly overpowered her, cooked her, and ate her like livestock. The twins particularly enjoyed her shins. “Maman” is a tasty “maman,” they said, eructating in harmony.
At midnight, their bellies filled, their mouths greasy, they sat round the cavernous library with its cavernous fireplace, and a cavernous bowl of popcorn, and, realizing after all that there was indeed nothing else to do, began a ripping game of charades.
“First word,” said the ventriloquist's dummy, which had arrived alone and which had heretofore been silent. “One syllable.”
Richie Narvaez has had work published in Murdaland, Long Island Noir, and Hit List: The Best of Latino Mystery. His ebook Roachkiller and Other Stories won the 2013 Spinetingler Award for Best Anthology/Short Story Collection.