In the next few days, my new chap book will be on Kindle and Amazon.com

This wiil be my first effort at self publishing. I've never considered this option before, but this material probably would never be suited for traditional publishing in that poetry books and prose, and especially chap books are not generally picked up from unknown authors. But I thought these few works that had been previously published in various literary journals, books and online magazines were probably suited to this type of venture. There are 19 poems, stories and a few pieces of art I painted in all. Many of them were written for my husband, to provide him escape from his reality during his application for asylum in the U.S.

Here's a poem previously published in Moondance in the Celebrating Creative Women Edition, back in 2004. It is a beat poem about the Triqui Indians of Miguel Aleman, Mexico; which was once called Pueblo Doce. It is bleak place in the Sonora Desert that takes you back in time. I wrote a novel about a displaced Triqui family, and a Mexican American woman with ties to that family who was being stalked by a serial killer that begins with a family moving to Pueblo Doce after being run out of the Oaxacan mountains by Mexican soldiers. I'm now editing that book to send for publishing and this poem was the result of that:

Pueblo Doce (Beat poem)

Sip fast the nectar of the cactus
red fruit bursting with our life
burn back the glochids slowly
and suckle sweet juice of desert strife

Feet planted on adobe dust
sing to us in wailing cries
of Copala Triqui peoples
desert migrants, Mixtecan lives.

Sing to me from your metate
nopales, atole, tortilla blues
stepped down from Oaxacan valleys
to distant barrios in desert hues.

Sleep child in Pueblo Doce
weave forth from backstrap loom
the cloth of Indian peoples
symbolic visions the stars the moons.

My other work is going through traditional publishing efforts, but creating this was a fun project.