a return
i have much to update but not sure where to begin… this past weekend i returned to Long Beach for the Orange County Zine Fest. it was a return of sorts, as the very first big public reading i ever did was at USC in LA as part of the Flor y Canto Festival in 2010. i flew into the LBC airport, stayed with a friend’s cousin in LB, and took the train into LA. i read with so many Latinx writers, and learned quickly who was genuinely nice and who was catty. i won’t name catty poets names but one of them is director of a fancy MFA program. however, one i will name that was generous to a young unknown poet such as i was - Juan Felipe Herrera. absolutely kind and sincere.
i was coming off a year where i had slept on my friend’s couch for more than a month, worked inside a Walgreen’s Photo Lab, and barely could scrap together the $$ for a flight to LA. not much has changed in those 12 years. i was terribly nervous, but was surrounded by a former classmate from my MFA and a dear professor from that same program. my best friend had come with me, and we wandered around the USC campus, and ended up inside their student union, where a band was about to play. we found a table, sat down, and waited. a few minutes later, a singer stepped on stage and stunned us. they were just LA locals playing a gig back then. a few years later they would win a grammy for best latin rock album.
it was La Santa Cecilia, who would go onto play at the Hollywood Bowl, among other big venues.
so i returned to Long Beach this weekend, twelve years older and quite a bit more jaded. one of my friends whom i met at that same Flor y Canto Festival all those years ago, picked me. she now runs a bookstore cooperative and lives in the OC. i was on a panel for the Zine Fest, to talk about a zine i put together during the beginning of the pandemic, and we reminisced over our first project: an anthology called Pariahs, which was born out of rejection from a conference after our panel had originally been accepted. Pariahs was a compilation of work that include talented poets and writers whose work have since won prizes & acclaim.
we ate and drank all weekend, walked along the beach, smoked cigars, and gossiped. i slept on their air mattress, bought a few books from frantz fanon that i didn’t have, and traveled with a single backpack.
i have my first trip to Italy coming up in a few weeks, and again, i’ll be going with just a backpack and a notebook. i don’t know who i will find there, but i look forward to the possibility.