Poetry by Angelica Guillen

Before our potluck at Lighting the Dark, Angelica Guillen, poet, local food justice advocate and community organizer, graced the evening with her poetry.  She read three of her poems titled germinate?, one and each, and clouds.

                                                         germinate? 
white hands direct
brown hands into tierra madre
teaching??? >>> mexican farmworkers >>> to farm?
to germinate life into earth
to use tek tools?          made in china tools?

teach farming?
to a people who before time was time
germinated and joyously harvested
a culture from earth’s deep and generous love? 
in public you, teacher-farmer,  say
“i work with the oaxacans”
“i work with the meXicans”
“i learn them to farm”

my thoughts                         ger << mi >> nate >> d

perhaps farmer-teachers
you should notice 
oaxacans   meXicanos   eternally  patient
>>> work with you
trying to indigenous-learn you
about SACRED mother earth

all the while YOU plunge man-made, un-organic seeds of commercialized ideas
into your-so-called farming farmer’s teacher’s heart  > > > > facade
knowing it is brown hands “learning” that facilitate the grants and profits
of your profit-less non-profit
germinate?         germinate?
TRY      to germinate truth into your identity as farmer-teachers 
we, farmworkers,  were farming long before you called it farming
long before you germinated a                           farming        in    dus   try 
AND MOTHER EARTH TO STARTED TO DIE


c angelica guillen, 2000

GERMINATE?
Note: I saw a photo of a local mexican woman holding in her arms a basket of vegetables she had harvested, beside her stood her teacher farmer who was teaching her to farm. La mujer meXicana was smiling sweet while her eyes were stone cold in defeat. When the teacher-farmer was asked about what she was doing, she responded that she was germinating future farmers. This poem is for the Mexican woman who was being “taught” how to farm. 

---

one and each
we are each other 
we reside  
in borderless cosmos 
how much love can we deny?
how much hate can we hide behind?
I move in careful steps toward you 
you move to make yourself invisible 


what am I talking about?
oh——- I was just thinking 
that as people
we subject our sameness
to a diagrammatically    open   unknown    ((((  space?)))
ONLY BECAUSE I THINK      I AM     I AM     AND    I  AM
yet I can not articulate you as nothing of any consequence


BUT I KNOW YOU ——- YOU KNOW ME
WE ARE THE DNA OF OUR  EARTH
SO SIMPLE           AS THAT             ARE  WE


                                          that WE make the trees laugh


c angelica guillen, 2016

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clouds 
shield her cuerpo 
from a skilled and laborious 
burning summer sun


with ancient tranquility and direction
her breast milk flows


the world silences itself
a brown woman 
with a wide hat 
work worn clothes
feeds her child 



c angelica guillen, 2016