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    After Eden
    After Eden
    After Eden
    Ebook225 pages1 hour

    After Eden

    By Harold J. Recinos

    ()

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    About this ebook

    Recinos discovered a love for poetry living on the streets after being abandoned by immigrant Latino parents. At age sixteen, a White Presbyterian minister made him a part of his family and guided him back to school. Recinos finished high school, attended undergraduate school in Ohio and later graduate school in New York, where he befriended the Nuyorican poet the late Miguel Pinero who encouraged him to write and read poetry at the Nuyorican poets cafe. After Eden registers life at the edges of American society in ways that are both personal and universal in human experience. In this collection, poems address issues of police brutality, gun violence, immigrants' rights, the blighted urban landscape, death, hunger, religious violence, drug addiction, pluralism, spirituality, family life, political corruption, cultural cruelty, struggles for justice, and the pulse of everyday life in overlooked places. The metaphor in the title is reflected in poems that record the sounds of kindness and cruelty, sorrows and joys, greed and generosity, inequality and powerlessness, good and evil, death and life in the context of struggles to live meaningfully awake--consciously--in society.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherResource Publications
    Release dateAug 2, 2018
    ISBN9781532654640
    After Eden
    Author

    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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      Book preview

      After Eden - Harold J. Recinos

      9781532654626.kindle.jpg

      After Eden

      Harold J. Recinos

      5415.png

      After Eden

      Copyright ©

      2018

      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.

      8

      th 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: 978-1-5326-5462-6

      hardcover isbn: 978-1-5326-5463-3

      ebook isbn: 978-1-5326-5464-0

      Manufactured in the U.S.A.

      09/17/15

      Table of Contents

      Title Page

      The Crossing

      Shithole

      Color

      Rudy

      Lost Name

      The Apartment

      The Border

      The Scent

      The Storm

      The Sting

      The Garden

      The Painter

      Devotion

      The Substitute

      War Drums

      Waiting

      Bricks

      The Shore

      Resurrection

      Spanish Harlem

      Ivory Tower

      The Protest

      Factory Work

      The Raid

      The Spot

      Latino Heritage Month

      Prayer

      Look Here

      The Decay

      Imagine

      American Dream

      Faith

      Rise

      The Talk

      Fifth Avenue

      Daily Bread

      American Shore

      Stony the Road

      Ancient Shore

      Good Night

      Paradise

      The Maid

      The Stranger

      Missed

      The Room

      The Reach

      Morning Light

      Mi Barrio

      The North Side

      Sutherland

      Weep

      Enough Practice

      The Meditation

      Homeless

      The Kitchen

      Nevertheless

      Hit

      The Dark

      Old Streets

      Innocence

      Passing

      The Martyrs

      Affection

      Advent

      Letter to the White House

      Love

      The Garden

      The Bus Ride

      The Beach Day

      Thanksgiving

      The Migrant

      Faces

      Politics

      Simple

      Needle Park

      The Balm. . .

      Things

      Thin Walls

      The Library

      The Giver

      Wordless

      The Postman

      Departed

      Bridwell Library

      The Gift

      Saint Christopher

      The Park

      Witness

      A New Song

      The Season

      The Café

      Iron Cage

      The Stone

      War

      Work

      Bethlehem

      The Miracle

      Cathedral Steps

      Not Far

      Exile

      The School

      Tax Reform

      Homeless

      Unto Us. . .

      Departure

      The Box

      Redemption

      The Infant

      Waiting

      The Rescue

      New Year

      The Bus

      The Sad Years

      Come

      The Priest

      Manna

      Snapshot

      Thought

      Martin

      Holy Spirit

      High Ground

      Dawn

      Passage

      No Safe Haven

      Get Out!

      The Border

      El Salvador

      Paradise

      Holy

      The Word

      Hold My Hand

      Dark Space

      Politics

      Romero

      March for Our Lives

      Cone

      The Crossing

      after crossing the border

      our village kin anointed

      with blood, the earth behind

      us kissed a last time, with

      fingers on brown hands

      pointing north like the surest

      way to Eden, the quiet birds

      in curious stare, in a darkened

      universe that makes us tremble

      before coming light, our ears

      are tuned to lying words like

      arrows in wait. we crawl the

      final distance into the North

      the bodies of those who did

      not make it still cooling in

      the desert night in shallow

      graves, our tears swallowed

      up by the curved darkness

      of a strange new world, the

      piteous wails of children in

      tow with scraped knees, and

      the fatigue felt from dragging

      lingering fears. once we are on

      the other side, we will pray

      for God to make small the

      loathing tongues and violent

      acts that leave us without a

      drop of life and distant yet

      from Eden.

      Shithole

      these are not pious times

      with politicians reflecting

      in the company of grace, or

      a president detached from

      the sinful impulses of hate.

      the dispatches report daily

      the lunacy of Trump who

      with his faithful band tramples

      on the weak, Black, Yellow,

      Red and Brown. in this time of

      sorrow Angels on Pennsylvania

      Avenue pass the White House in

      flight calling on memory, decency,

      reason and faith to strip the perfect

      emptiness from the man who panders

      to White Supremacists and reduces

      whole nations to the vulgar slang of

      his intolerant tongue. in these times

      loathing keeps its shape, spreads it

      messages by the seconds, pounces

      on its victims, and unflinchingly says

      this makes the nation great! these are

      not pious times, so let us begin to carry

      America in fractured pieces to her well

      dug and brand named grave.

      Color

      do you remember that first

      day the roosters crowed in

      the next-door apartment to

      step out of the dark, inhaling

      the smell of peeled oranges on

      the carts heading to Southern

      Boulevard with old men, the

      intoxicating odors of a season

      that had us lean into the day not

      thinking of the reeking streets. do

      you remember climbing on top

      of it to gallop past the procession

      of church goers dressed up like

      it mattered to heaven, the pigeons

      taking flight from us, the invisible

      rushing down the street with us past

      the old Cathedral where nothing ever

      happened. do you remember losing

      yourself in the little things of the

      block, smiling at grandmothers with

      shopping carts, the lost look on the

      pale faces of Roman collared priests

      trying to figure out how to name the

      things they really love. dear brother,

      I adore the way yesterday hands me the

      splendor of such things, how that time

      never yelled at us for speaking Spanish,

      or having sweet brown skin. I have the

      pleasure of such days with you inside

      of me, which lets me laugh in a world

      too often dressed for mourning.

      Rudy

      I learned to walk the streets carrying pieces of the moon

      in my pocket to light the dark, lumbering along the avenue

      thinking about the Lord without a single piece of the promised land

      priests talked about in mass and grandmothers whispered was closer

      than my brother. I passed the troubled church bells not far from the lily shops

      on Jerome Avenue and the windy spot where you dear brother lifted your eyes

      to the Cathedral that forgot your name long before you sighed a last

      good-bye. I learned to walk along disbelieving good news, aware the

      filthy streets were closer to me than the sweetly silent Lord. I walked the

      very block where you were delivered to the arms of death, stood quietly on

      your exit stain beneath the stars, and said your name however foolish the

      sound for the ears of the One who too expired before his time at your very

      age in a place called Golgotha.

      Lost Name

      you have been here long

      enough to lose your name,

      wonder about the looks of

      of the world escaped, the

      last dirt road walked in the

      shoes you wore across the

      border, and the long night

      of saying farewell. you have

      been here long enough to say

      the fortune-tellers at the little

      church know too little about

      your world of laments, the

      loss of a mother to a soldier’s

      gun, your sister skinned by

      his bayonet, and his death

      dealing shots responsible for

      making orphans with dirty

      cartridges that everyone

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