Arts Alive San Antonio

The poems we are publishing today were inspired by the Ruby City installation:
“Hub, 3rd Floor, Union Wharf, 23 Wenlock Road, London N1 7ST, UK” by Do Ho Suh

ADULT WINNERS

Pop-Pop’s Hallway
By Robert J. Cavazos

A purple haze outline forms
three access points to memory.
Sans the RAM of lived experience,
what’s sculpted crumples like fabric.

Memory only has some steel to it.
Once, I envisaged each transition
as sharp, vertical – brilliant, bright lines.
For each entry and exit, a translucent corridor.

This is how we maintain memory.
Thread it through an empty passageway-
a tall hallway where my grandfather had laughed
as my wife and I danced and he felt young again.

Genius Ioca
By Pablo Miguel Martinez

No shiplap walls, no posts or closets, only négligée’d frame,
see-all construct I call soul. Some boast they know
my diaphanous chambers, but oafishly mistake translucence
for weakness. Shameless! They excoriate. All because I am gauzy
and prefer the ethereal, a suggestion of haven. Easy to pin,
this filmy part of me. Every night they come, spewing unveiled threats,
armed with shears, jagged words, and spite. My sisters, glass frog
and immortal jellyfish, remind me: Our joy and salvation –
the phobics’ disgust and desire – puzzle the conventional.
Where does the sea end and integument begin?
Where does the truth begin and the great lie end? See for yourself –
I’ve nothing to hide. My life an exquisite exhibition, monumental.
Laud this not cathedral, mother’s lavendered breath, this not-pavilion.
Prize this pervious house of mine – sheer and plain and beautiful.

YOUTH WINNER

Hub, 3rd Floor, Union Wharf, 23 Wenlock Road, London N1 7ST, UK
By Aarav Gedala

Open holes, opened doors, open wounds, yet no salvation can pass through
And reality ceases not as the walls thin and the air breathes away
As people pass by and the sun rises and falls like the breath in my chest slipping away
And eventually the sun and the moon look the same through this purple lens
And as I watch death at my front door
I can’t escape to salvage what’s left of the world
And I can’t go back to when maybe I didn’t keep myself in this cage
And even after tracing every single crevice or this building
I still can’t find the will to hold on to that last breath
And as the air slips away from me
I can’t find the will to leave, the will to live
as the air slips away from me
I don’t bother making a step outside the third floor of the hub on 23 Wenlock Road
Because I no longer hold possession, I hold no more love, and what I cared for doesn’t care for me.