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| Diana Anhalt at about age 14 (the dark-haired girl in the back) on an outing to Xochimilco with her family while living in Mexico |
My computer is up and running. The deadline for this month will be extended until the 20th, since the challenge wasn't posted on the first.
Migration and immigration are in the news a lot these days. Boats over-filled with migrants tipping into the Mediterranean Sea. A "caravan" of migrants from Honduras walking through Mexico toward the Rio Grande. Sanctuary Cities. Etcetera, etcetera. What I don't hear as much about on the news here in the Midwestern US is the number of North Americans who are ex-pats, living abroad. If you chat with the people sitting in El Jardin in front of the parish church in San Miguel de Allende, GTO, Mexico, you may be surprised at how many of them are retirees from Canada and the US. In London, Paris, Barcelona, Florence and many other towns and cities around the globe, you can find people who have moved there from North America.
Why do people move from the country of their birth? Some people just find another culture or climate more congenial, but many are driven by violence or poverty to find a new place to live. Some are exiles; others are refugees fleeing persecution.
Diana Anhalt's family left their home in New York City when she was a child, and moved to Mexico for reasons that were mysterious to her. Her prose book,
There is always a
moment in childhood when the door opens and lets your future in.” Graham Greene
Mexico,
mother of lopsided logic, defensive
driving, the shrug,
arrived on my doorstep when I was eight
and entered,
trumpets blasting, rolling her R’s.
She flashed a finger, danced a zapateo down my spine.
She had clouds in her pocket, mint
on her breath, thunder in her bosom
and a tongue to fold around words
like huitzilopochtli. For me,
she dressed in fuchsia, wore
jacarandas in her hair. Let me
wrap
you in my silk- fringed rebozo she crooned, you will be mine.
She blew on the dice, tossed them
once and taught me to jaywalk
through life under the eye of her
blood-giddy sun.
So I cast off the Bronx like yesterday’s vows, forgot the words
To Girl Scout songs, fear of dark
places under the El,
but kept my ice skates, my accent,
the scars on my knees.
She filled my ears with marimbas
and gossip, sang me her tunes
until I called her my own: Let me home in the marrow of your bones,
porque
nunca hay retorno.
There is no return.
~ Diana Anhalt
On Not Speaking Spanish
I was never introduced. No
one said Meet Mexico.
Shake her hand. And if they had? Mexico couldn’t
have heard me over the
tumult: fire crackers, car horns,
mariachis, or the assault of
airport Spanish ¿bienvenido
amexiconiñaquequieredeclarar?
My only Spanish? No hablo español ––No way to ask:
What am I doing here? (My
parents wouldn’t say.) Words
for my questions dissolved
beneath my tongue like Jello, died
in my mouth: When do we get
to go home? What happened
to the snow? Why doesn’t it
smell like the Bronx?–– blackboard
chalk, mackerel, bubble gum,
moth balls.
I combed the streets near my
house––Goldsmeeth, Deekins,
Shackespiari–– for something that spoke to me in English.
In Polanco Park, el parque
del reloj, (for its clock, that never
worked), Mexican grass, dogs,
even trees, went mute when
I arrived. Rocks were
impenetrable. But the Sanborncito
across
the street displayed American
comics up front.
If I bought an ice cream
cone, licked it slowly, I could read,
savor the antics of “Nancy and Sluggo,” “Little Lulu,” “Archie
and Jughead.” They spoke my language. But “Wonder Woman,”
Amazon warrior princess––invincible, cunning, all-powerful
was my favorite. Her real name? Diana, just like mine.
~ Diana Anhalt
Because There Is No Return is available at https://squareup.com/store/passager/item/memorias-a-translation-by-diana-anhalt.
Border Crossing by Amy Schmitz (available at https://nfsps.com/publications.html, is another excellent poetry with many poems about living in a different culture. The author served in the Peace Corp in Africa. This book won the Stevens Poetry Manuscript Competition of the National Federation of State Poetry Societies for 2018.
The November Challenge:
The challenge for November, as you have undoubtedly figured
out, is to submit a poem regarding immigration, migration, exile – or any
other reason a person, family, or group of people leave their homeland to live in a
different country and/or culture. Migration is a large factor in history – the Normans
in Europe, and the Mongols in Asia are two examples of peoples who spread out
as conqueror. European nations set out to colonize and control Africa and Asia
(providing government employment for the younger sons of the upper classes). Spanish
and English left Europe and contested for land in the Americas. Since our early
human ancestors spread though and out of Africa, I don’t think there has ever
been a time when migration wasn’t taking place. Today is no exception.
Your poem may be free verse or formal. If you use a form,
please identify the form when you submit your poem.
Title your poem unless it is a form that does not use
titles. Single-space and don’t use lines that are overly long (because the blog
format doesn’t accommodate long lines). Read previous poems on the blog to see
what line lengths can be accommodated.
You may submit a published poem if you retain copyright, but please include publication data. This
applies to poems published in books, journals, newspapers, or on the Internet.
The deadline is November 20. Poems
submitted after the deadline will not be considered. There is no charge to
enter, so there are no monetary rewards; however winners are published on this
blog. Please don’t stray too far from “family-friendly” language (some children
read this blog). No simultaneous submissions, please. You should know by the
end of the month whether or not your poem will be published on this blog.
Decision of the judge or judges is final.
The poet retains copyright on each poem. If a previously
unpublished poem wins and is published elsewhere later, please give credit to
this blog. I do not register copyright with the US copyright office, but by US
law, the copyright belongs to the writer unless the writer assigns it to
someone else.
If the same poet wins three months in a row (which has not
happened thus far), he or she will be asked not to submit the following two
months.
How to Submit Your Poem:
Send one poem only to wildamorris[at]ameritech[dot]net (substitute the @ sign for “at” and a . for “dot”). Put “November Poetry Challenge Submission” in the subject line of your email. Include a brief bio that can be printed with your poem if you are a winner this month. Please put your name and bio UNDER the poem in your email.
Send one poem only to wildamorris[at]ameritech[dot]net (substitute the @ sign for “at” and a . for “dot”). Put “November Poetry Challenge Submission” in the subject line of your email. Include a brief bio that can be printed with your poem if you are a winner this month. Please put your name and bio UNDER the poem in your email.
Submission of a poem gives permission for the poem to be
posted on the blog if it is a winner, so be sure that you put your name
(exactly as you would like it to appear if you do win) at the end of the poem.
Poems may be pasted into an email or sent as an attachment
(no pdf files, please). Please do not
indent the poem or center it on the page. It helps if you submit the poem in the format used on the blog
(Title and poem left-justified; title in bold (not all in capital letters);
your name at the bottom of the poem). Also, please do not use multiple spaces
instead of commas in the middle of lines. I have no problem with poets using
that technique (I sometimes do it myself). However I have difficulty getting
the blog to accept and maintain extra spaces.
Poems shorter than 40 lines are generally preferred but
longer poems will be considered.
Bio: Taken
to Mexico as a child, Diana Anhalt lived south of the border for 60 years
before moving to Atlanta, Georgia, in 2010 to be closer to family. In addition
to her book about the expats from the US who migrated to Mexico during the
McCarthy era and because there is no
return, from which the poems above are taken, she has published two other
poetry manuscripts, Second Skin
(Future Cycle Press) and Lives of Straw
(Finishing Line Press, 2014). She has received numerous awards, including the
Premio Rosenberg, and recognition from Goodreads, Passager, The Writers Place,
Common Ground, Litchfield Review, and the Embassy International's Dancing
Poetry Contest. Her poetry has appeared in many journals including The Atlanta Review and Nimrod. You can find her amazon.com author page at https://www.amazon.com/Diana-Anhalt/e/B001K7SYGO.
© Wilda Morris