THE ENVOY The official newsletter of the
Canada Cuba Literary Alliance I.S.S.N. – 1911‐0693
October, 2021 Issue 115 www.CanadaCubaLiteraryAlliance.org
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My copy arrived today. This has to be one of the most wonderful anthologies I am lucky to have a poem in. There are so many excellent poems. If anyone is interested in getting one of these for your home library, contact Richard Grove at hiddenbrookpress@gmail.com. --Bunny Iskov, Friends of the Ontario Poetry Society, September 8, 2021
Encomium
By John B. Lee
walking the trail there among bird-foot trefoil and cow-cress tall hawkweed and blue chicory goldenrod spearing out of stone and the staghorn sumac its red-velvet seed cone sharp to the sky with the dying drop-over of coneflowers drooping on stems in the time-bothered pull down of big-headed summer what I want of desire is buzzing weed to weed with an energetic message of bee’s wing and horsefly hunger with the active surrender of earth breaking open where roots muscle out at the wind-work and varmints dig holes in the dog-nosed scree and my wife draws my attention to the delicate toadflax through which I am scuffling ordinary dancer on a two-step journey through blue morning
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OCTOBER 2021 THE ENVOY115 EDITOR- Jorge Alberto Pérez Hernández – joyphccla@gmail.com
Night in Havana
By Wency Rosales
The city life in Havana was just the same, American Chevrolet polluting the University staircase with fumes, Coppelia with its endless lines, the flowers’ vendors flirting with the bees, women off shopping, the poets meeting, the Priest in the Cathedral praying: ‘Our Father, who art in heaven...’ The children flying a kite, Tai eating up a pizza on Obispo Street, John, drinking a mojito at La Bodeguita, Photo by Wency Wency posing for a picture at El Capitolio Manuel writing his book, others in the beach devouring the sun, or maybe the sun devouring them. The lovers in the 'male on' waiting the 9:00 pm cannon shot, (known as El Cañonazo de las 9.00) A taxi biker sweating out a noisy reguetón, The doves at Old Square looking for the last birdseed, The Monsieur de Paris, immobile as the Christ of Havana, A commercial ship caresses the oiled waters of the bay, the pelicans pulling up a fish from the surviving sea, and me, in the middle of doubt, missing your beautiful smile, and thinking about nothing but you.
Made in Cuba
By Wency Rosales
Everything is at peace and quiet in the capital of all the Cubans, My Havana will be my Havana now and always will be, There will be some changes, But my land will be my land, With buildings destroyed by the saltpetre of the beautiful and warm Caribbean Sea, We will have Havana Club, Cohiba cigars, the dancers of Tropicana, Mojitos, guaracha, Compay Segundo, El Guayabero,
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For curious tourists, this and much more, Quoting the National Poet ?- Tengo vamos a ver, lo que tenía que tener.-? The solitary star's Cuban flag, the shield with the beautiful Royal Palm An oak branch, one of a laurel tree, a butterfly lily flower, the Trogonidae birds, - Tengo vamos a ver-? My Cuba will be my Cuba, A leaf of tobacco, La Giraldilla, the Tinajones, A cart drawn by horses, a hatch, the Escambray, The Crosshill, a Viñales, and Almendares River. My homeland will be my homeland, and everything will be in the memory of a digital flash, sometimes too slow for the right picture, same as Cuban minutes pass, slow.
Name
By Manuel de Jesús Velázquez León
Without name or its benefit flushed smell of dawn above the savannah’s silence neither distinction nor its benefit greyness of a fallen tree grey local cataclysm without distinction or name the divine understanding the places that will come those that I imagine are to arrive is inevitable perpetual.
By Tuba Oya
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OCTOBER 2021 THE ENVOY115 EDITOR- Jorge Alberto Pérez Hernández – joyphccla@gmail.com
Después de leer tu mensaje
De Ruth Yennie Noguer Figueredo
A mi querido amigo Jorge Alberto
Viéndote a orillas del mar busco mi reflejo busco y escudriño tu corazón escuché una voz que susurró a mi oído, dame solo un toque de dulzura!!! eres el mismo de ayer hoy y siempre no eres solo un momento todo pasa y solo quedan los recuerdos los recuerdos se sustituyen por los mejores momentos vividos de ellos recuerda los más hermosos.... busca la paz y síguela pido sea tu luz dentro de mi corazón dame un toque de tu infinito amor.
Presence
By Katharine Beeman
for Gladys Navarro, dedicated to le Défilé l’amitié nuestroamericana The day the People come to town don’t call on me to be somewhere else the day the People come to town ancestors race in my pulse the day the People come to town forest streams in my blood the day the People come to town buildings no longer stand where pines and fields once stood the day the People come to town time ravels back to sacred ground the day the People come to town drums heartbeat a slow foot dance down Montreal’s Sainte-Catherine street marking, harking time come again phoenix feathered multi-continented meeting here the day the People come to town.
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No, don’t call on me to be somewhere else the day my People come to town. Le défile L’Amitié nuestroamericana, Montréal et les Premières Nations, was initiated by Gladys Navarro and James Cockcroft (CCLA member until his 2019 death) in conjunction with the Festival Présence Autochtone/First Peoples Festival in 2011. I have been honoured to carry the Wiphala, banner of the Andean peoples, co-flag of Bolivia, symbol of all Our America’s First Peoples, for several years.
Presencia
By Katharine Beeman
por Gladys Navarro, dedicado al Desfile l’amitié nuestroamericana, Montréal y las Naciones Primeras El día que llegue el Pueblo a la ciudad no me llamen para que esté en algún otro lugar el día que llegue el Pueblo a la ciudad correrán los ancestros en mi pulso el día que llegue el Pueblo a la ciudad el bosque fluirá en mi sangre el día que llegue el Pueblo a la ciudad los edificios no existirán más donde antes existieron los pinos y los campos el día que llegue el Pueblo a la ciudad el tiempo retornará a la tierra sagrada el día que llegue el Pueblo a la ciudad los tambores latirán con un baile de pies lentos por la calle Sainte-Catherine de Montreal marcando, escuchando el tiempo volver emplumado de Fénix multi-continentes reuniéndose aquí el día que llegue el Pueblo a la ciudad. No, no me llamen para que esté en algún otra lugar el día que llegue mi Pueblo a la ciudad. Le défile L’Amitié nuestroamericana, Montréal et les Premières Nations, fue puesto en marcha por Gladys Navarro y James Cockcroft (miembro de la ALCC hasta su muerte en 2019) en conjunción con el Festival Présence Autochtone/First Peoples Festival en 2011. Fue mi honor llevar la Wiphala, bandera de los pueblos andinos, co-bandera de Bolivia, símbolo de los Pueblos Originarios de toda Nuestra América, desde unas cuantas años.
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OCTOBER 2021 THE ENVOY115 EDITOR- Jorge Alberto Pérez Hernández – joyphccla@gmail.com
A Cold Cutting Stone
By Bruce Meyer for Milton Acorn
A cold cutting stone chipped in igneous and foreign to the island’s sandstone – turning it over in your hand you told us it contained a woman’s face – cheekbone carved for grip and stripping meat from a blood-warm kill, the nose aquiline, mouth drooping, the sadness, the eyes dark and still staring on and on into a gorged sea. The fog pronounced each breathing thing in its own smooth voice: myth, destiny, a pile of bones. Did she sing of a sadness that brought her strength? Or was the stone her alibi, aboriginal, abnormal, waiting for the arms-length of time to take her to those abysmal islands called memory, recollection, the living past? Tell me again the one about the hunger, wind in transgression against the world’s flesh, the aching bone split open by its own marrow, the rocks sharing no secrets except their soft red fury cut from the cracked sea backs of legends? I can’t believe you are dead. An elder, an ancestor carved her grief. The granite lives to pay the cost and like granite you offered up relief. One good story or we are lost.
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Under the harvest moon By Donna Allard
a sweetgrass ceremony was held harmony between life & the beyond he lit the sweetgrass in the small granite canoe headstone his love requested he reached down fingertips touching the earth tears mingled in safe journey
Donna Allard
Katrina after shock
By Donna Allard
New Orleans three yrs later saw the stained watermarks saw the ppl walking aimlessly at 4am... saw the police overwhelmed i saw...
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OCTOBER 2021 THE ENVOY115 EDITOR- Jorge Alberto Pérez Hernández – joyphccla@gmail.com
Prince of isles
By Donna Allard Prince Edward Island Canada
Dreamers of dreams come to this Isle of majestic blue searching for the reason, once knew, before the unveiling Local newspapers conceal Island secrets & local bookstores, old an' new, hold the answers, if you dare to view Isle of poets, writers an' the likes of you live on this clay, molded by the crafty ones who cast spells be evening light Princes, Princesses of paupers, Goddesses an' puppeteers thrive on the way of life... here Devouring all, unable to restore their souls settle on capturing yours ..."Beware of this Isle of majestic blue it’s captivating heartbeat murmurs of the death of... you..."
why do i
By Donna Allard
why tell you this story? to shed winter feathers to breathe in spring to let go of ghost puppets who play with my life at whim? why do you, with late eyes, stay as the unveiling approaches midlife here i stop for to caress this time would leave you melancholy and i enjoy your company too much t o play with your life at whim...
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The Glass Blower
By Laurence Hutchman
Beyond his shoulder horses run: he breathes flame into glass, moulds the air into clear forms, original as the first time I saw television where a sculptor modelled the animals of Genesis. Poised in the centre of the spellbound crowd he casts his material in a sleight of hand, his eyes are charged with cosmic gaiety as he exhales glass into musical form: fine tubes, soft angles and treble clefs. An animal tamer, he draws shapes out of the wilderness into the barely animal. In the glass-roofed coliseum, beyond the hushed crowd the equestrians ride roughly over the hard earth. With light flourishing gestures he inspires perfect rhythms as his lips blow glass into forms, precise as a French horn player’s notes. These are no blue souvenir lions, no frozen tiger-angelfish, but light, form and energy; his eyes flash as he breathes fire into glass. the horses in the coliseum running.
Previously published in Foreign National (Agawa Editions), Selected Poems, Guernica Editions), Swimming Toward the Sun: Collected Poems: 1968-2020 (Guernica Editions)
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OCTOBER 2021 THE ENVOY115 EDITOR- Jorge Alberto Pérez Hernández – joyphccla@gmail.com
Playing Hockey on Crang’s Pond
By Laurence Hutchman for Dale Ritch
We dreamed of playing at the Maple Leaf Gardens, waited for Hockey Night in Canada following The Plouffe Family, Don Messer’s Jubilee, and the chorus of the Esso commercial What a great, great feeling, what a wonderful sense of pure enjoyment and of confidence . . . At the end of the fifties the place to play hockey was at Crang’s Pond. We played with the Wolf brothers, Upton and Ritch, tightening skates on the frozen banks striding onto the ice, clearing the rink and choosing sides. Each game was different: the swerves, the dekes, glides, passing and shooting— to break through the defense bearing down on the goalie (the way I saw Béliveau or Mahovlich move), aiming for a corner by the boot post into the snow net. After the breathy exhaustion of the sudden death goal, we left our indecipherable signatures on the dark ice. We always tried to prolong the hockey season despite the water lapping the reedy pond’s edge. It was so warm I took off my coat and gloves and the ice split not far from us, getting softer, turning a little gold. Taking off our coats and gloves we played the game into the warm afternoon until the whole damned pond sagged and cracked beneath us. Previously published in That Sign of Perfection, (Black Moss Press) and Swimming Toward the Sun: Collected Poems: 1968-2020 (Guernica Editions)
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The Shell
By Laurence Hutchman
You look out at me from brown eyes like an orphan. On your skin were Japanese characters or Arabic script. Now I place you in my palm, shell, sea snail. I feel you smooth as porcelain. You are round, firm as a breast. I feel the curve of your upper ribs where you are flecked with sand pigment from the beaches where you have lain. When I turn you over you are the shape of a tiger fish. Yet, rubbing my fingers, as over braille, ribs become keys. I hear distant music when my father, long ago on a beach in Port Rush, lifted you to my ear to hear the sea gurgle and swim within your body. And now, I am shocked, deafened and blinded by the ego of my shell. There is no sea now. I’m addressing an absence: it is not you, only myself talking. This is your marble grave. As I look within, I see what form you might have taken. I feel your softer brown-moist body, like my own, inside this carapace of being. You are not there, only the structure of your form. I feel you in the currents, swimming among the gaudy flowers, the turbid underwater forest your species. I hear the music and taste the delicious brine, luminous, green transparent light falling from upper water—and I am loose and free as your cousin jellyfish, no longer aware of my shell, but moving through the sea so long ago. You are not Yorick’s skull in Hamlet’s hand. Now you are the creature within me. Previously published in Reading the Water (Black Moss Press), Swimming Toward the Sun: Collected Poems: 1968-2020 (Guernica Editions)
By Donna Allard
The Envoy 115
By Norge Gallardo
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OCTOBER 2021 THE ENVOY115 EDITOR- Jorge Alberto Pérez Hernández – joyphccla@gmail.com
A wise man was asked: Why are friends lost? He replied: If they get lost they weren't friends because friends are forever!
A Promised Poem
By Tai and Jorge
Mr. Old Man Crab came tippy-toed to the back door today. Tapping gently at the bottom of the old wooden door he called. " Jorge come and read me a poem. Read me a poem." he demanded with a gravely old voice, sand caught in his throat. “Come on in, my dear old crabby friend I would be happy to read you a poem but the fact is you are my poem with your wondrous pincers and your pointed toes that scamper you hither and yon. I’ve known you for how many years? It has been a very long time since you moved into my back yard under my fig tree. You are looking totally different since I saw you last. What about your beautiful cinnamon pincers? They have turned blue since I saw you last.” “That is what happens when you become an old man crab like me,” said Mr. Old Man Crab as he cleared his throat. “My soft red pincers get old and blue like every old crab. You are looking a bit grey in the hair yourself, my dear friend.”
The Envoy 115
By Jorge Alberto
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“You look more serious than usual with your crabby expression of want with your grey beady eyes fixed steady like little flickering candles on top of your sandy head. Your eyes look very sad these days. I remember the old days when you were spinning foam without stopping. You used to be marching like a soldier, always on guard. Jorge squatted down to be as close to his dear old crabby friend as possible. “What has happened??? You have turned into an old crabby crab. Go to your lair in the back corner of my yard. Slumber there and dream but don’t worry, my dear crabby friend. I will come later to read you a poem.” Mr. Old Man Crab slowly tippy toed off to the shady spot under the pigeon coop to while away the afternoon and wait for Jorge’s promised poem.
By Héctor Silva
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By Raydel Castellanos
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OCTOBER 2021 THE ENVOY115 EDITOR- Jorge Alberto Pérez Hernández – joyphccla@gmail.com
Bruce Meyer A salutation is gesture of sincere utterance that either says hello or offers a goodbye. The sign off defines a relationship. ‘Yours sincerely,’ is business-like, professional, cold, and objective. It offers no warmth. It leaves one with the feeling that what has come before was merely a transaction, a letter to the electric company stating payment is enclosed. ‘Yours truly,’ is even trickier. It suggests there is some faithful bond between the writer and the recipient, a lasting attachment of devotion that cannot be broken by goodbye, a kind à bientôt, until next time. The word truly carries the subtle suggestion that everything else that passed between two people was a lie, and that may have been the case. Relationships are deceptive. People get hurt because they read meanings into things rather than from things. Jane’s Dear John letter to me was signed with a curt ‘Yours sincerely.’ I have the feeling she really wanted to say ‘Yours truly’ because she had been lying to me about how she really felt. If there is a truly or truthful version of how she perceived us I will never know now that we have broken up. I wish her the best, but I wish I had some modicum of clarity. I’d feel better with a bit of clarity. I am not sure what I did to hurt Jane. Even if I had, she would never have said because truly isn’t ‘Yours with clarity.’ People never tell you how you’ve hurt them. Was it something I said? Something I did? I still don’t know. I don’t blame her for not wanting to reveal the truth to me. If someone is wounded, they rarely show where their vulnerable point was. Jane knew I was leaving for three months overseas to work on my thesis. In the end, I stayed longer. The work was important to me. I wanted my doctorate. Jane thought education was pointless. Maybe that was the problem between us. I stayed longer because there was nothing at home for me to hurry back to. And with a broken heart, I could be just as miserable while I was doing something constructive far away as I would at home…… Bruce Meyer is the author of 67 books of poetry, short stories, flash fiction, and literary nonfiction. His most recent collections of short stories are Down in the Ground (Guernica Editions, 2020) and The Hours: Stories from a Pandemic (Ace of Swords, 2021). His stories have won or been shortlisted for numerous international prizes. He lives in Barrie, Ontario. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruce_Meyer
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Lover Beware
By Merle Amodeo
Take my word for it we're falling in love. I can tell by the dryness in my throat and the dampness in your eyes. So here's the caveat: I don't want to be loved madly again. Mad men can't be trusted. Love me casually, the way you long for a quarter pounder. Relish me, onion me if you like, but don't forsake all others. Man cannot live on burgers alone. Love me warmly, the way you cherish a lively terrier. Take me for walks if you wish, pet me and brush me, but don't chain me up. I'll always need to run with the pack. Love me the way you adore your favourite song. Listen in ecstasy, but don't learn to play me. I vanish when pinned down. In return, I promise a love that treasures your voice that always manages to sing off key, your laughter, even when it slips into hysteria, and your crooked smile that warms me to my toes.
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OCTOBER 2021 THE ENVOY115 EDITOR- Jorge Alberto Pérez Hernández – joyphccla@gmail.com
TEMPTATION
By Miriam Estrella Vera Delgado
That mischievous brightness In your eyes, Tells me you’ve never been Of innocent creation; An invitation to play Forbidden games Is always there in you… As a temptation.
Search
By Miguel Angel Olivé Iglesias
In writers block. Ed Woods Words from the start. Elana Wolff All night I sought for words. Their charm to prompt me, their shapes to grant me passage into fresh realms of poetry. All night, my wife asleep beside me the repose of the righteous next door my stepdaughter and my one-year-old step-granddaughter gently breathe the sleep of the innocent on the other side of the city my daughter, too, dreams of castles, heroes, fairytales and rests, a smile on her lips, peaceful sighs. Angels watch over them lighting up stars beneath their eyelids
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to bless our home our lives. All night I searched for words. Re-reading these lines I think I found the right ones the best ones.
By Liomara Angulo
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OCTOBER 2021 THE ENVOY115 EDITOR- Jorge Alberto Pérez Hernández – joyphccla@gmail.com
Raydel Castellanos García, 47 años, vive en el reparto Pastorita de la provincia de Matanzas, Cuba, es camarógrafo y fotógrafo, comenzó en el año 2006 en un curso de fotografía digital que impartió la UNEAC, después comenzó a trabajar en el turismo como fotógrafo integral hasta la actualidad.
By Raydel Castellanos
By Raydel Castellanos The Envoy 115
By Raydel Castellanos
By Marisol González Page 19
Basta
De Jorge Alberto Pérez Hernández
Hay un mundo sin mente Sin rostro Sin brío Un mundo inmóvil Sin fin Que no se deshace Pero no despierta Un mundo enfermo y doliente Contagiado, mórbido Un mundo que está Narcotizado en una inmovilidad Que aniquila quimeras… ¿Y quién soy yo para destruirlo?
By Richard M. Grove
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OCTOBER 2021 THE ENVOY115 EDITOR- Jorge Alberto Pérez Hernández – joyphccla@gmail.com
MASTHEAD – Jorge Alberto Pérez Hernández, CCLA ambassador as editor – Miguel Ángel Olivé Iglesias, Cuban president as assistant editor – Adonay Pérez Luengo, Cuban vp as reviewing editor – Lisa Makarchuk, Canadian vp as reviewing editor – Miriam Estrella Vera Delgado, CCLA Cuban poet laureate as reviewing editor
Editor: joyph@nauta.cu joyphccla@gmail.com jorgealbertoph@infomed.sld.cu
CANADA CUBA LITERARY ALLIANCE FROM THE EDITOR: IN OUR UPCOMING ISSUES, WE WOULD LIKE SUBMISSIONS FROM EVERY CCLA MEMBER SO THAT WE ARE NURTURED BY YOU! IF YOU HAVE BOOKS COMING OUT, A POETRY EVENT, JUST LET US KNOW!
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