Chicano – Vickie Vértiz

What You See, What You Take With You, in UCLA’s Parrafo magazine

Along with many talented writers, the awesome Sesshu Foster among them, Vickie published a poem in Parrafo magazine’s Los Angeles issue. Read an excerpt from her poem below and click the link for the whole enchilada.

“What You See, What You Take With You”

AFTER MARISELA NORTE’S PHOTOGRAPHS OF LOS ANGELES

On the Broadway bus with Marisela, her French diamond lips
Composition notebooks and fancy uñas

A chola’s drawn-in dragon eyebrows warn us at the Walmart in Pico
In my skin, Jefitos      fade blue on my chest
Donuts and doctors and acrylic tips   tiendas y más tiendas
Open a n d c l o s e d              closing
Closer, chula
There’s something I’ve been meaning to tell you…

Visit the magazine to read the full poem.

Swallows Book Release Parties, Bay Area, June 7-9th

Come celebrate the official release of Swallows, my poetry collection just out from Finishing Line Press.

Friday, June 7th
ScholarMatch & McSweeney’s offices, 849 Valencia Street at 19th St., from 7-8 pm
Featuring Maya Chinchilla, Emilie Coulson, Kenji Liu, Aimee Suzara and special guests.

Saturday, June 8
At Aimee Suzara’s Finding the Bones book release
Eastwind Books, 2066 University Ave, Berkeley from 5-7 pm.

Sunday, June 9
At Arisa White’s A Penny Saved book release
Pegasus Books, 2349 Shattuck Avenue, Berkeley, from 7:30-9 pm.

The first book release party was on:
Saturday, May 18th from 12 pm- 3 pm at North Legg Lake, hosted by South El Monte Arts Posse, Aimee Suzara, Kenji Liu, and myself for poems about sassy family pets, lucky cereal bits and being broke in college, with cameos from flying girls.

I will also be reading in the San Francisco Bay Area on:

An Excerpt from the new collection, Swallows

Tocaya

There’s an i and an e at the end of my name
Mom and Dad did not pick the last vowels
But they did have the concept: breathing, baby, girl
Mom says the black nurse who spelled me
White teeth smacking peppermint gum
My name is a reference to Victoria
My other half who left Loveland Street before I did

Victoria, the older sister who never beat me with her left hand
While she curled her hair with her right
I didn’t tag along with her hoochie friends
To watch Purple Rain through our hair-sprayed bangs
Victoria peeked out from her crib at our teeny house and said, Chale girl,
I’ll catch you later. Coughed her baby lungs into dusty dried persimmons
So I could be the oldest sister to our two younger brothers
So I could beat them with one hand and sip
Strawberry milkshake with the other
She died from pneumonia at a general hospital so I could take
Our younger brother to watch Batman with Spanish subtitles
Drag him to Smiths-loving, pimple-skinned parties
I’m named after a ghost for whom our mother makes birthday cakes
Out of Styrofoam discs, lovingly smothered with real pink icing
Plastic ballerinas every one of her 38 birthdays
Neither of us got to be a chola, or a cha-cha, a new-waver
She left me thick glasses in fourth grade
A name for which to make up another life, every day
Don’t fuck it up…

To get your copy of “Tocaya,” order Swallows here.