Arnoldo García: California Poets Part 9, Four Poems

Arnoldo García

December 22nd, 2025

California Poets: Part IX

Arnoldo García

Four Poems

Soy del otro lado | I am from the other side

Soy del otro lado

del lado bravo

del lado tuyo

del lado izquierdo

donde tengo el nido

para tus abrazos

Soy del otro lado

donde los muros

son las sombras

que persiguen

a los policías

que defienden

a los tiranos del mercado

Y el sol está

a nuestro lado

el lado de la tierra

el lado de las lágrimas con sus sonrisas

el lado de la luna llena y vacía

el lado que es combustible para las estrellas

el lado donde somos íntegros

el lado que divide a las bestias

adomándolas con nuestra luz

el lado que nos abriga

contra la rabia del dinero

Soy de ese lado

con sus seis direcciones y sus siete espacios

donde los abrazos abren cielos y puertas

donde los llantos espantan a las fronteras

y las mujeres nos dan su espalda

para cargarnos y sobrevivir

Soy de ese lado donde nuestros desaparecidos

reaparecen

Soy del otro lado

del lado tuyo...

[Abril 2016]

| * |

I am from the other side

I am from the other side

from the side of the Río Bravo

from your side

from the left side

where I have a nest

for your arms

I am from the other side

where the walls

are shadows

that chase down

the police

that defend

the tyrants of the markets

And the sun is

on our side

on the side of the earth

on the side of sorrow with hope

on the side of the full and empty moon

on the side that is sustenance for the stars

on the side where we are whole

on the side that divides the beasts

taming them with our light

on the side that sustains us

against the rage of money

I am from that side

with its six directions and seven spaces

where our embraces open up skies and doors

where our cries threaten borders

and the women give us their backs

to carry us to survive

I am from the side where our disappeared

reappear

I am from the other side

from your side ...

[April 2016]

Unceded Body

(August 2021 | on Ohlone lands)

Human body: The body betrays life. I was never meant to die. Yet the clouds refused to levitate me. I am the dictatorship of nothingness. My tongue turns into mud, then dust, then whirlwinds that scatter my thoughts that swirl around the sun and vanish.

The body subjects prisms. I need your body to become myself. They’re in lies my longing. I have had enough of myself, my hands and her ten senses rest on your hips. My eyes are enough for blindness I have enough your skin and its swollen belly.

The body ingests gravity. Even in space I am collapsing, swallowed and spit out by black holes. Everywhere I go I become a servant of the sun and her spider webs.

The body revolts against the ocean. I drowned in my sea. I rain. I become whole mud I rage as I am forced under the yoke of waves. I swim on the raft of my bones,  hair is shredded sail at the mercy of your caress.

The body hurts tenderness. I float above my wounds. I can hear the electricity of fists in my right ear, humming a B natural note. the no has no horizons. I pierce my tongue to bleed words, tiny utopias, that congeal and mud.

The body defaces solitary confinement. My lungs has and suffocate space. The air turns on herself. Particles of light flutter in the dust. I disintegrate into a swarm of ants that carry me their backs. I am in the underground of hell.

The body incites the body. I carried the topographies of your colors, your voice, your turtle eyes, the scent of a horizon on your hips. I cling on the possibilities of your shadows. I’m a cocoon buried on your tongue. I feel myself, skin my senses on your body. I am the silent winter waiting for you.

The body disappears into another world. I’m walking just walk. I am being pelted by rain and clouds. I got here, pulling myself through a wall. I come back floating and dropping back into my room, tilting like a feather that sways back-and-forth and gently slides to the floor.

The body embraces Manuela. I become seed, soil, plant, water, wind, sun, a trenza, a braid of her hands, incantations, prayers, a scaffold with dust, whirlwind, a blues Bolero, a cup of black butter, coffee. I fall asleep in her lap, feeling the warm breath of her voice defending the angels that retreat to the fortress of her hair.

Migrant Sayings

1.

I was born in Africa,

Wandered, awoke in Aztlán

Fled Mesoamerica over several suns

The U.S. buried me

Worked me to death

till I was no longer Mexican

no longer speaking

in my quilts of warmth, tenderness, the shelter of my dreams.

My back hunched over

biometrically perfect

for stoop labor

planting seeds

sewing dresses

cleaning offices

washing dishes

nailing walls together into house, into homes

harvesting grapes, maize, or beans

California

Arkansas

Tennessee

Idaho

New York

or wherever

will keep me here to rot,

decompose

my molecules dispersed

into dust

Oh free trade that crushes

People, minces women, ages children

and makes Mexicans die at the border

Our future is being devoured

Seed by seed

Acre by acre

By cannibals claiming to be vegans

Our land

Refuses our dead

Our graves join the floating dumps

That no country accepts

We are toxic,

Our DNA = DDT

Migrant refuse

2.

I scribble for thirty seconds

And dream for five hundred years.

My voice will remain hidden

My dreams know no borders

Oblivious to barbed-wire

Or wireless communication

My voice vibrates in you.

3.

My words disperse on migrant paths

Migrants are just so much pollen

To cross fertilize

Make humanity bloom

To make spring safe again

The spring that cannot be stopped

4.

Winter storm:

I heard my dog

crying

so I let her in

to sleep

inside the house.

I cannot stand

any loneliness

self-solidarity

with tears

the dog cries

my lungs rip.

Come inside, the shack is warm…

5.

Ay migrante

Si yo pudiera

La luna te comprara

Ay migrante

Si yo pudiera

Tu tierra dondequiera

Y la luna tuya sería

6.

a migrant farmworker's vacation

lasts as long as a rainstorm

as long as a winter

without trees to prune

or earth to leaven

then the vacation

ends with cold shacks

and hunger that laughs

at the hot breath of our cold days.

La revolucion emplumada

(Fragmento I)

my ancestors

have not yet

invented the wheel

they will never run over

innocent animals

possum

deer

buffalo

wolves

raccoon

birds

butterflies

insects

they will never pave over

aquifers

dam or divert water

never stop the flow

of rivers, creeks, streams, clouds, winds

to the cosmic ocean of the natural world

my ancestors

will never use

the wheel (although they had it)

the bomb

will never fiddle with DNA

will never fertilize in vitro anything

they will walk

where humans can walk

they will love

where humans can love

they will pray

where humans can pray

they will be human

where humans can be human

they will never be gabachos

that step on plants and other ancestors

recklessly

they will never

defecate or urinate

in the soul of the earth

in the water

Our revolution

has no martyrs

our martyrs

have no revolution.

we have no revolution

yet we have martyrs

young men and boys

who kill each other

because we have no revolution

because police shoot young black men in the back or in the front

The border brothers

make north and south

the north is nothing without the south

the south cannot exist without the north

yet young men and boys

kill each other

for lack of the four directions

the border brothers are both

north and south

North is a border

South of the border

North borders South

they are lost in their venganza

we are lost without a plumed revolution

Forgive me, Gaza. [excerpts]

Forgive me, distant wars, for bringing flowers home.—Wislawa Szymborska

Forgive me, Gaza, for watering my plants (as your children drink water when there is water from ordinance-contaminated puddles)

Forgive me, Gaza, for buying keffiyehs and vegan “Ceasefire Red” lipstick to send a % to you

Forgive me, Gaza, for walking home not fearing bombs (but fearing police & not so stray bullets)

Forgive me, Gaza, on Sundays all my family can travel to my home and eat food and enjoy the hours remaining before going back to work

Forgive me, Gaza, for only being able to write anti-war/anti-fascist poems, tagging walls and marching around and getting tired – just a bit—Down with Israel, Free Palestine, Stop the Genocide . . .

Forgive me, Gaza, for being able to lie down in a bed, sleep, dream (even though I wake up every night at 2:55 a.m. worried sick about you and my black and brown sons)

Forgive me, Gaza, everyone that votes seems to think that lesser of two genocidal evils will ward off wars and genocides.

Forgive me, Gaza, the bipartisan system works only for wars & racism (yes, the system gives benefits to its whites and citizens who can pass as citizens – the rest are at the end of the line, many spaces ahead of you, Gaza, shielded from the harm and the bombs that we pay for carelessly).

Forgive me, Gaza, for the politicians who are deaf to our cries and whose pockets are filled by all the AIPACs of the world. They only text me when they need money, claiming they’re on the verge of winning and losing and $100 million will make things better.

Forgive me, Gaza, the U.S. values American lives more than anyone else’s lives. An isreali sniper killed an American in the West Bank, calls the death of any American a tragedy and the tens of thousands of Palestinians maimed, killed and wounded by bombs and weapons supplied by the U.S. to Israel, policy.

Forgive me, Congo, for watching Israel’s genocidal slaughter of Palestinians on my I-phone.

Forgive me, Sudan, my people don’t even know where Mexico and Canada are located and believe there is a refugee invasion overrunning the southern border.

Forgive me, Ukraine, genocide is genocide but you are given special treatment, you have armies and missiles, tanks and air force, and Gaza has a people’s guerrilla militia

Forgive me, Gaza, for only having a voice, a song, (I used to have a land), a vote, two arms and legs to throw stones against the walls and dispossessed, really, of everything except you.

Forgive me, Gaza, I have to go to work (when I have it) to pay for senseless credit card bills, rent due, food, books and family to support who are struggling to stay alive without ending in prison or on the streets.

Forgive me, Gaza, I know I am not doing everything in my powerlessness.

Forgive me, Lebanon, for loving your daughter and not tending to your wounds.

Forgive me, Lebanon, wanting to learn Arabic to learn to read your poems when I already understand the poetics of your rage and the rumble of your words.

Forgive me Gaza, for I do not have enough tenderness to caress your wounds and obliterate the occupation with beauty.

Author Bio:

Arnoldo García is originally from the deep south of Texas. He lives in California’s San Francisco Bay Area and combines visual arts, music, spoken word and poetry to build community and uplift liberation-creativity. His work has been featured in online literary spaces and cultural and political gatherings, opening the international forum “Defending the Displaced: Border Justice and Migrant Rights,” convened by UC Berkeley’s The Othering and Belonging Institute. Arnoldo’s poetry is featured in the groundbreaking anthology “Painting the Streets: Oakland Uprising in a Time of Rebellion,” documenting Oakland’s anti-racist art & cultural explosion in the wake of the police murder of George Floyd; and in Gathering Together, We Decide : Archives of Dispossession, Resistance, and Memory in the Ndé Homelands. Arnoldo co-founded editorial Xingao, publishing Chicana, Xicana, Palestinian, Black, Asian and Indigenous poets, poets of color and from below. Xingao just published the new poetry & art broadside, La comuna. You can read Arnoldo’s poetry and art in the blogs La carpa del FEO: Fandango in East Oakland and Art of the Commune. Subscribe to their e-newsletter, the colibrí revolution. For more info, visit: https://www.arnoldogarcia.org