Arts Alive San Antonio

The poems we are publishing today were not part of the Ekphrastic Poetry Contest. They are a new addition to the ekphrastic poetry project 2022. They were written by three San Antonio poet laureates and the project coordinator Jim LaVilla-Havelin. Enjoy!

Carretta Wheel
By Octavio Quintanilla

(Inspired by Carretta Wheel from a Tejano Freighter, at the Witte Museum

I see our distance yoked
between two oxen,
and I hear your axle’s creaking
a song of origin.

You were there before
you arrived here,
there before the world
could be called history.

You were there
when our grandfathers
sowed the road
with the clatter and jangle
of our future, and here,

as we contemplate
your crossings,
as we listen
to the endless journey
of where we come from

FLYING IN OUTER SPACE
By Jim LaVilla-Havelin

 (Inspired by Dorothy Hood’s painting “Flying in Outer Space” at the San Antonio Museum of Art.)

                                             after, under, before
                                             the airplane wing,
               the world breaks up
               into the randomness of landscape
                                             as geometry
                                                            or
                                                            memory

                              my first flight
                            puddle-jumper
                              from Rochester to Syracuse
                              Mohawk Airlines
                              a high school student
                              on my way to a Quaker Conference
                              to speak against the war

                                             from, out of, down on
                                             are landforms collage –
               shapes and textures
               edges, roadways, sparkle of rivers
                                             or a passageway
                                                            into yesterday

                              on our flight from London to Harare
                              over the Sahara, sun coming up
                              a passenger had a heart attack
                              there was a doctor on board
                              we never heard
                              if he survived

             wing tilts, the earth in the window shifts
               all the pieces of a puzzle spilled out
                                             across the great table
                                                            of the sky.

PROCESSION
By Carmen Tafolla

(Inspired by the sculpture “The Procession” by Paul Moore, at the Briscoe Museum)

We come with our shivering dreams cocooned in stubborn fists
with the whisper of rebozos woven long ago and a moan of threadbare mantos
shielding our faces from the biting wind, the icy dawn, the stare of strangers

We trudge our tired feet paso a paso up unclimbed montanas
knowing the road will get rockier, the air dustier,
the sun hotter, the panting more breathless

We come bearing a cross, a saint, our hats, a hope
We come guided by an invisible star, inside our pulsing hearts
drawn by visions we have witnessed mutely, alone

Our song is silence, the beat of dusty and determined feet
upon this earth that will some morning hold our quiet bones
Our prayers are whispered without words, or walls, or church    or limits

The goal of this procession is procession
Here we come to process our lives, to profess our histories, the entirety of our longings
to reveal the sinewed scars and arteries of our existence

To bear witness with our ragged footsteps, joining forces in something
greater, larger, totally unseen, and powerful
And to transform You

Who suddenly, now or someday, will find your feet lifting from the land
from the routine of daily chores, to join our steps and follow    breathless.
You   too   now part   of this   scarred and holy   procession…

LUCID VAGARY
By Andrea “Vocab” Sanderson

(Inspired by “This Second Dreamer” by Wangechi Mutu, at Ruby City)

In a land far, far away where the speculative gaze of almond-shaped eyes kiss the invisible atmosphere with passion. We look towards the universe that has yet to be.
Behold, thick lips of curvy hipped humans that have always been. Civilizations were carved out of the clefts of their chins and brilliant diadems.
This poem is for the tiny pharaohs hiding behind skirt hems in the kitchen, as big mama makes soul food Sunday dinner for the family to feast on.
This poem is for the curious bronze-skin girls climbing trees in the backyard or playing dress up in granny’s closet because they see themselves 10 feet taller than what they really are.

You are a rising star, and your footprints will be found forevermore on every shore you dare to stand upon. Because Black people are in the future. We were cradled in ancient Mesopotamia. We lavishly thrived by the confluence of rivers, our children babbling brooks. The Nile and Euphrates a reservoir between our teeth. Our elders conjured to conga drums in the Congo; our griots fed the village history lessons in the text of melodious songs.
And so we grew through centuries and sound. Springing up like gray hairs in the scalps of every region.
With conquest we were carried willfully or unwillingly to new shores time and time again. Despite any form of genocide formed against us: we thrived, survived, remained alive and accounted for, even when census after census failed to document us.
We were there and we will continue to be like beads moving across the fine strings of an abacus.
Tonight, I raise a colony of tongues in my dreams. I lay my head on wood carved from my roots springing high. In nocturne, I summon my timeline to tilt over against my temples and support my coiling crown. An ethereal realm expands as I drift further into it. My limbs leaping and leaving my head behind. My mind enters the second dream of this night, a new cycle cracking a chrysalis and closing the door of oppression shut. Behind me a void diminishing, but up ahead I am preceded by light.