Coahuila bella y querida...y super progresista.

(English summary at the bottom.)

Me emociona la decisión reciente del estado de Coahuila, México de empezar a permitir que personas del mismo sexo y del sexo opuesto se registren sus relaciones con todos los derechos del matrimonio. Me acabe de informar de esta noticia interesantísimo aquí en El Diario de Coahuila y además dice que:

La figura del Pacto Civil de Solidaridad tiene validez en todo el país, en virtud de que está validado ante una Oficialía del Registro Civil, igual que un matrimonio.

O sea que en México ahora, además del D.F., se puede registrar bajo algo que se llama Pacto Civil de Solidaridad (PCS) y lo van a reconocer en todo el país. Además, uno no tiene que ser de Coahuila para que te registren allá. De hecho, la primera pareja de lesbianas tejanas se ha registrado su enlace civil. ¡Y en Ciudad Acuña en la mera línea! Se puede leer más de las dos mujeres "unidas en solidaridad" aquí (in English).

Y en La Jornada dice:

Erick Preston Steinmam, originario de Nueva York, Estados Unidos, y Joel Alberto Ríos Elizondo, oriundo de Monterrey, Nuevo León, formalizaron este martes una relación que comenzó hace seis años, al recurrir al pacto civil de solidaridad vigente en Coahuila desde el 13 de enero pasado.

¡La primera pareja fronteriza, interracial, queer de casarse en México! Lee todo el artículo aquí. Parece que son muchos que van a Coahuila ahora para casarse. La verdad, ya no quiero oír nadie que me diga que todos los mexicanos son muy conservadores, que no aceptan a los gays, que son muy machistas, que los anglosajones son más liberales, abiertos, etc. No es así de simple. Claro, hay mexicanos que son conservadores, que no nos aceptan y que son muy machistas, pero siempre me opondré a estas generalizaciones esencialistas.

Y parece ahora que en Chihuahua puede ser que hagan otra ley muy parecida:

De aprobarse el proyecto, según las declaraciones reproducidas por “El Heraldo de Saltillo”, en Chihuahua también se modificaría el Código Civil para permitir la unión legal entre personas del mismo o de distinto género que cohabiten en unión libre.

Lee todo el artículo aquí. Y ahora en inglés para los que todavía son monolingües:

So, it appears that in the Northern Mexican border state of Coahuila, couples of the same and opposite sex can now register their relationships without getting married. It is called a "Civil Pact of Solidarity." Amazing. Read the AP summary of the news here. Read about two Texas lesbianas getting hitched in the bordertown of Ciudad Acuña here.

Honestly, I don't want to hear any more people saying that, oh, Mexicans are so conservative or they're so macho or "Mexican culture" is not as liberal as "Anglo culture." When two lesbianas en Tejas from Midland go to Ciudad Acuña to get hitched, we need to throw all the old stereotypes out the window.

The world is a complicated, damaged and dangerous place. But occasionally, it's also surprising and beautiful.

Hecho en Tejas

A reading in honor of the new anthology, Hecho en Tejas,
a compilation of established and new Mexican American voices from Texas, edited by Dagoberto Gilb.

6:30pm - 8:30 pm, Thursday, March 1
Barnes and Noble bookstore 7626 Westheimer @ Voss. Admission is Free.

Participating authors: Dagoberto Gilb, Tony Diaz, Tammy Gomez, Cecilia Balli y más...

You can read the intro to the book on the Texas Observer website right here.

El amor en tiempos del Norte: Monterrey loves Tijuana

Pues no lo puse en mi blog antes, pero es tan suave la foto que la tuve que poner. Y aquí va el texto que la contextualiza:

Tal evento simboliza el proceso de enamoramiento entre dos entidades: Monterrey y la ciudad fronteriza de Tijuana. Ocho jóvenes creadores de ambas ciudades –todos exponentes del arte actual– explorarán a través de la literatura el discurso amoroso de necesidad emotiva: la búsqueda, la exacerbación, el sentido del amor en estos tiempos postmodernos. Celebrar el amor en tal contexto es tratar de explicar que la idealización de las grandes urbes o metrópolis, no solamente exportan una imagen de límite, miedo y muerte; sino formas donde el cortejo, las prácticas del noviazgo, la verbalización del enamoramiento, la manifestación del deseo, han cambiado por la evidente globalización, pero que no se ha desvinculado, siguen permaneciendo en el interés social: es ontológico.

El evento “Proserpina está enamorada. El amor en tiempos del Norte: Monterrey loves Tijuana” presentará la unión de tales entidades a través e la lectura poética, donde el contrato fraternal entre ciudades susciten la necesidad de estrechar lazos y traducir el amor en estos violentos tiempos del norte.

Para mayores informes, puedes consultar las páginas de Lorena Mancilla y de Pepe V. Sández que están allí en los links...

La dictadura de la felicidad

...los Estados Unidos, una sociedad comprometida hasta el tuétano con la dictadura de la felicidad...

...the United States, a society committed at its very marrow to the dictatorship of happiness...

de crg del 13 febrero 2007

My Love

Your skin glows like the mango, blossoms juicy as the daisy in the purest hope of spring.
My heart follows your ukulele voice and leaps like a human at the whisper of your name.
The evening floats in on a great dove wing.
I am comforted by your shoe that I carry into the twilight of floorbeams and hold next to my penis.
I am filled with hope that I may dry your tears of sperm.
As my ass falls from my underwear, it reminds me of your joy.
In the quiet, I listen for the last bark of the day.
My heated toe leaps to my gloves. I wait in the moonlight for your secret cellphone so that we may move as one, toe to toe, in search of the magnificient red and mystical heart of love.

If you want to write your own computer generated love poem, go to: Love Poem Generator.

Resol

othertimes summerscape reverberations of reflected sunstroke. resol resol resol: repeat sun, resun resun resun.

keep us choking through la canícula entera. no taking photos on long walks, no walking. period. a shame, conscious of the shame of it, the lack of exact connection, the passing, the poem a day a poem of disconnection. habitual spaces, the mechanical mechanistic wandering in well-tracked senderos to an end siempre defined. si hubiera sabido antes. the necessity of taking poems of nothing, of nothing sparked by gray skies. believing in the potential of the nothing, perhaps.

renothing renada remakes renegades remark regret and remembering. reject renoise. rechaza reruido. el resol cala.

Write for a dying

También yo. And thanks. Stating it clearly sin pelos en la lengua. Find myself rereading lines from el valle and not giving up yet on words. Despite. Resol is really a response.

Adúltero

—Me gustaría dedicarme también a aprender otro idioma además del español bien bien, pero no puedo decidir cuál.
—Sería como poniéndole los cuernos al español...

Outside In

Martín Ramírez...thought to have migrated from Mexico around 1915, not 1925, to work on the railroads being built in Northern California, where he was hospitalized in the early 1930s and shortly thereafter found to have schizophrenia. He lived out his years in DeWitt State Hospital in Auburn, near Sacramento.

Retrospective exhibition in NYC. Read full Times article here.

Recovering

Saw part of this film last night. Gonna watch the rest as soon as possible. Very profound meditation on one family's struggle with the Catholic church. Brings up a lot of emotions. Specially for recovering post-catholics.

Watch Hand of God in its entirety online here at the PBS Frontline website.

You still in that rocking chair?

Gliding by, behind the overpass embankment, to the right, that same ancient gentleman, as always, sits, imagine, blue knee highs, high top boots, long scraggly beard, layers and layers of clothing and rags and protection, an icon listening to his discman, his walkman, never been close enough, to tell, think of stopping of sitting and a discussion, would we be able, think, glide by.

Back from tall pine trees dotted with no undergrowth on bayou plain, no limbs emerge at their lower reaches, as if tiny pines expanded exponentially to reach the sky, dark sky of northerly obscurity, swaying gently as the march revels in its production in its necessary ending underneath, how many years to make an absence, how many eyes averted to unmake a space, the redness of the struggle, the anthem of a victory dreamed upon by gray haired elders talking of war in Iran, take off your damn hat, don't talk right now, it's holy, our bodies said, our lips softly mouthing movement, out of breath, the pine needles make poetry on the dirt, dust, dead grass of a winter forgotten before it arrived, how can heat emerge this smoothly, zydeco rhythm, raise up and stand, ghosts of pasttime, was it, glasses, beards, some lost weight, some gained, their walking, laughing hugs, you still in that rocking chair, impassioned faces, words full of weight and import, testing testing one two three, old Spanish style arches and crumbling corrugated aluminum tire shops, a long way to go, yes, massive, miniscule rhythms of suits on Saturdays, pulling children behind for catfish and grits, kente cloth and puffed up black winter jackets, young men bent knees jeans crinkle, your jeans puffed up tucked in tall high heel blackboots, when you bend you lean, ghosts of pasttime, was it, glide by.

Back in HTX

Had been in EPT and Juárez and Las Cruces and Presidio and Marfa and Ojinaga and Ruidosa. Now back in chair in cubicle.

Slow down on Hopper Street. Or Nogalitos Springfield Lawson Dereloc right. Make puddles roll. Cars lost in ditches. Photos couldn't capture the how. Fireworks for sale up and down endless rocking rivers of steel built up into cliffsides trailers and shacks you sleep their day and night. Buildings and Monterrey lost in fog we wandered. Thought there might be a way out. Obsession. Like you said on the phone, keep it. Miles of farm roads become forests become pseudo subdivision become wood. How it molds so carelessly how it sags and turns food for termites home for bees cockroaches. A four story construction made of plywood concrete scraps railing a balcony at the top above the mechanic shop at the front all of it threatens to slide into a ditch deeper than my body flowing faster than we drive. Up above a dream world above the trees and improbable longings. Children on new fresh from the package bikes in that brief window before they too will be on that junkpile over there already sinking. Omaigod. Bulky feathered browned bunches long legs thick necks heads poke out of the cyclone fence. Stop the car. Heads rock and sway to whistling as the entire family gathers. Emu females emit eggs then the males over them while the females go on fucking. Males collecting eggs warm. Horses by tree houses by bright blue metal fencing. Run down wood house behind a two story brick wall fit for San Pedro Garza García arcos y ladrillos pedazos de alambre puestos entre los arcos para que no entren los ladrones. Call your City Council trash like waves of deliberation. Is this isolated enough? Stopped because of the pine, no a pond, dark and slimy back in the new woods. Discount. Abandoned. Nowhere to go but down down down into the rain and fog and moisture and slime and rot. A lost wood. Don't step in to lift it up. Floodwaters rise as a New Year dawns. The cracks on the side of the asphalt as slippage. The open wood door has metal grates orange glass the floor inside slopes down then on the other side of that doorway surges violently up. Thought a scream came from inside, just you with green leaves fourteen points on each one a node tiny air roots shooting out crying for nourishment. Ripped out to make home.