Stony the Road
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Harold J. Recinos
Harold Recinos is a poet with ten previous collections, and he is also Professor of Church and Society at the Perkins School of Theology at Southern Methodist University, a cultural anthropologist by training. His poetry has been featured in Anglican Theological Review, Weavings, Anabaptist Witness, and Afro-Hispanic Review, among others. Since the early-1980s, Recinos has worked with and defended the civil and human rights of Salvadoran refugees in the US and in marginal communities in El Salvador.
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Stony the Road - Harold J. Recinos
Stony the Road
Harold J. Recinos
5436.pngStony the Road
Copyright © 2019 Harold J. Recinos. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical publications or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Write: Permissions, Wipf and Stock Publishers, 199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3, Eugene, OR 97401.
Resource Publications
An Imprint of Wipf and Stock Publishers
199
W.
8
th Ave., Suite
3
Eugene, OR
97401
www.wipfandstock.com
paperback isbn: 978-1-5326-7440-2
hardcover isbn: 978-1-5326-7441-9
ebook isbn: 978-1-5326-7442-6
Manufactured in the U.S.A.
April 4, 2019
Table of Contents
Title Page
The Foreigner
We Shall Overcome
Wake the Dead
Blasphemy
Nieto
Tompkins Square
Steal Away
Dead Friends
Holy Word
White Masks
Wreckage
The Radio
God Bless America
Mountain Top
Heavenly
Enchanted
La Bodega
The Crucified
The Cross
God
Home
The Trump Crusade
The Stone
Migrant Woman
Genesis
Signs
Minutiae
Long Road
Storage
State of the Union
I.C.E.
Morning
My Foster Mother
Grand Child
Come Sunday
The Knock
The Odor
The Scraps
Morning
Another
The Fire Hydrant
The City
Refugee
Welcome
Shots Fired
Friday
The Stone
Simple
Tell Me
El Norte
The Mission
Good Friday
The Visit
Sunday
The Chalice
The Dream
The Lunch Hour
Impenitent
Carry Us
The Closing
The Take Over
The Knock
Lock Up
Look
Graduation
Animals
Santa Fe Shooting
Another Weeping
The Speaking Tree
The Cure
The Subway Ride
A Clear Day
New World
The Table
The Wreckage
Waiting
The Wait
The Veteran
Simple Matters
Loisaida
Criminalized
Awake
Thorns
Mother Tongue
The Age to Come
Lost Boys
Flowers
Shorty
Jailed
We, the People
The Neighbors
The Party
The Last Days
The Hospital
Taking in the Light
The Border
In My Skin
Kin
Betrayal
Bread
The Candle
The Line
No Road
The March
Grace
The Toddlers
Heavenly
Hell
The Water
They Cross the Border
Lies
Night
Harmony
Word
Wickedness
Bus Stop
The Island
The Stroll
Cage
Earthly Dust
Posterity
Alphabet City
Rain
Last Breath
Dreamer
Rehab
Faile Street
Esther
Kneel
The Nightmare
Deported
Apartment
Labor Day
The Forgotten
Public School
The Clocks
The Fire
The Judge
Sophia
Heresy
Lord
Sacrilege
The Caravan
The Nationalist
American Pie
Pragmatism
The Sale
The Foreigner
you departed for a city
in another country to a
place you heard of once
beneath the low hanging
branches of a tree. you are
in the caravan of brown faces,
among the mothers with infants,
the youth undoing shackles, the
broken elders hardly able to walk
and the disabled children never
mentioned in American news who
get pushed across the Spanish speaking
borders in old wheelchairs. in the
evening around holes with dancing
flames, the strangers with whom you
walk discuss the hounds barking at the
border, the soldiers in confused wait, the
High-priests so expert at looking the other
way and the English only people who never
imagine the dreams of Christ. we shall
wait in the darkness you left behind hoping
to touch your hand someday, we will pray
in the old village church to the obscure
heaven that one day will make a way for
us, and the candles in front of the blessed
Mother will be kept burning until we are
certain you have crossed the river, safe.
on that day we promise to tell your story
like a sweet biblical tale.
We Shall Overcome
we shall with courageous faith
stand in the public squares to
face despisers with gargantuan
displays of love. where the wind
blows, we shall march to overcome
the boundaries, the pain, the fear,
the inequalities of these splintering
years. we shall overcome with the
simplicity of tenderness and God’s
sublime tears. after all the waiting,
we shall overcome in countless ways
the penetration of nails into our dark
skin, the ignorant mockery of the
Spirit above and the butchery of
Christ’s injured love. we shall overcome
the spit in the face, the rubbish they
say and the theologies of hate also
easily preached. we shall overcome
with the colored Christ who came
to give his life for us. soon, and very
soon, we shall overcome with the truth
that hung on a tree.
Wake the Dead
listen to the drums beating
out the sounds of the centuries
beseeching, the tune of snapping
chains, the squealing of tyrants
removed by the nameless, the
revolution that moved into a
White House built by African
slaves, these blood-soaked days
on the impatient earth hosting the
reckless bully with a vacuous brain
who relentlessly throws shit at life.
hear the poor he puts in cages, the
huddled masses to the gale tossed,
the children from across the border
crying about freedom in loathing
disrepair, the black lives stomped
by nationalist cops, confederate
marches full of ignorant white hate,
and America face down in a shameful
shallow grave. what became of liberty,
justice and equality on these American
tongues? What future is prepared now
in the name of Anglo-Saxon superior
myths? what will become of our sons
and daughters when greedy old men
and women are done disemboweling
the people they call filthy illegals and
spics?
Blasphemy
I saw you last night in a
tear still talking of things
you love, no less certain
of the world turning ever
so slowly in the direction
of God, recollecting out
loud the humblest times
at a kitchen table sharing
hard bread and talking of old
women in the big church who
pray on its steps with disfigured
hands reaching out to heaven. I
saw you in the tiny drop of water
shared, in your whispered words
telling a truth from someplace
else you say can stop arguments
in the world and you the whole
time promised to take me to this
space even before I renounced
my blasphemy or bothered to
kneel in the dark.
Nieto
on nights like this I bet you
think it’s easy to lasso the
stars, drag them behind you
like a kite in the sky and in
deep hours laugh beneath
them until bells ring inside
our limbs. tonight, we will
drink the air with your first
year breath, smile beside you
with clear brows, confess a
world of milk and honey and
feel warm from this June day
for the rest of life. on nights
like this we will sit for hours
with wide-mouthed flowers
sharing perfumed smiles, with
dreams hanging from our eyes,
stories in two languages gushing
from our lips and you Oliver
will know the ancient songs
with certainty flowing in your
saintly blood!
Tompkins Square
when the moon rises
above the rooftops I
find time to play with
shadows that make me
think about meeting you
nearly every day on the
same bench in Tompkins
Square park. we talked
of abandoned tenements,
vagabond cats singing into
the early morning dark, new
immigrants squatting in the
empty buildings, the Ukrainians
at tables on first Avenue eating
beet borscht, the hundreds of
hustlers on New York’s