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    Stony the Road
    Stony the Road
    Stony the Road
    Ebook265 pages1 hour

    Stony the Road

    By Harold J. Recinos

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    About this ebook

    Recinos' love for poetry dates back to being abandoned by Latino parents at age twelve to live on New York City streets. When he turned sixteen, he was taken into the family of a white Presbyterian minister and guided back to school. After finishing high school, Recinos attended undergraduate school in Ohio and graduate school in New York, where he befriended the Nuyorican poets Miguel Pinero and Pedro Pietri, who encouraged him to write and read poetry at the Nuyorican Poets Cafe. Stony the Road engages life outside of mainstream American society and picks its way through places of despair and marginality to the revelations of belonging that protest indifference and inequality. The collection raises questions and proposes responses to the crisis of understanding in economic and political life, as well as the cultural narrative that America welcomes strangers. The poems tap into the changing mood of American life and the obscured world of rejected human beings and communities by exploring lives worth telling.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherResource Publications
    Release dateFeb 26, 2019
    ISBN9781532674426
    Stony the Road
    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

      Stony the Road - Harold J. Recinos

      9781532674402.kindle.jpg

      Stony the Road

      Harold J. Recinos

      5436.png

      Stony 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

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