Here is where my sentences are choppy.
My thoughts are may be incomplete.
Here is where I tap into disparate and desperate images and ideas that serve as kindling in what becomes the fire in a poem.
Follow me. Come see what I find.
I am enthralled by all the writing workshops, and the sheer diversity of those who are leading them for Write About Now. Accessibility is increasingly important and WAN leads by example.
Please review the offerings and sign up for a class or a suite of classes – and mine too, if it intrigues you! Register through this link so I get credit for leading you into your own best new writing. Thanks, babes.
My hybrid opera, she wears bells, will be part of Guerilla Underground’s annual streaming festival this Spring 2022! The opera, as produced by Palo Alto Theater at Palo Alto Community College in San Antonio, Texas, features a student cast and crew, with support from the college’s professors and staff.
Support independent artists and Guerilla Underground as they offer a space and the generation of new work. Tickets for the whole series can be bundled or, individual tickets can be purchased at $15. For more information about the series or to buy tickets visit here.
I’m excited to open for Leticia Urieta as we celebrate her new book, Las Criaturas. Come here her new understandings of the monstrosity we hold within us, and how sometimes that is the only thing that saves us. RSVP for this event at https://buff.ly/3HFCRgw. Come through!
And buy her book at www.flowersongpress.com!
Come listen to some of the most up-and-coming, impressive Latinx writers out now. Follow them. Buy their books!
On Zoom. Register to attend here.
Password: pachanga.
Several of my pieces about my family’s experience coming here from Cuba are now in this immense anthology, What They Leave Behind, edited by Vanessa Ferreira.
OyeDrum nominated one of my poems, “Hot House Flower”, for the annual Best of the Net awards organized by Sundress Publications. Many thanks to Founder and Editor-In-Chief Amarantha Da Cruz, who helps to lead the wonderful OyeDrum coven. You can find the poem and two others they chose here.
I submitted the piece in response to their call for poems about and around sex. It ended up being part of a wonderful online issue I’m proud to have been included in.
I wrote the poem in a moment of honesty with myself. Prior to this piece it was easy to lay blame on another, or to think my heart was noble but those I gave it to less so. In the poem I am not only responsible but the instigator in what could become an ill-chosen relationship.
Visit OyeDrum to see the work they do and support them with your readership, through submitting your own work, and with a donation.
I’ll try to make this clear:
I’m lost.
I saw you weeks ago on the street
after years of not you were just far enough
from the bar’s entrance noncommittal
cordiality is the art of denial
from “Hot House Flower”
World class supporter of writers, and a playwright and poet herself, Tammy Gomez will be hosting a reading this Saturday virtually.
Join me. I’ll be reading. And if I am giving advice, watch out… I tend to make people feel like they need to change their lives. Just warning you.
Visit FB for the zoom link.
With thanks to Gerard Robledo, I will be reading with him and Vincent Cooper at San Antonio College on Thursday, September 23, 2021. Come through if you are able. This reading is live and in person! Plus, an open mic after.
I’ll also be in town for an extra day or two so if you didn’t get a chance to sit with me and a cup of coffee, let’s plan something!
This upcoming reading was a kind of coming out party for the three of us, after having been diligent in our quarantine forever now. But, alas, we are virtual. Come see us read! You will wish you’d at least have put on lipstick and wrapped a feather boa around your neck. Do it! See you there, my lovelies.
jo reyes-boitel 