And the May Narciso Martinez Cultural Arts Center Writers Forum was mind-altering, and June’s, start of Year Eight! should be the same, June 3rd, 7 p.m.

What a job Daniel Garcia and Brenda Nettles Riojas did with the Valley International Poetry Festival, which is already set for another year in late April 2009. They read Tuesday the the NMCACWF – sharp, per usual ….

… and as I sat with coffee, blueberry muffin, milk and cookie outdoors at the moody (my mood!) German Chocolate Shop in San Pedro, watching chickens cross back and forth the side road, I thought – though not before two trucks pulled in, one a Border Patrolman, the other two men from a truck with Arizona plates (figured”Wall” surveyors ) … all just doing their job ….

Sales Girls and Sales Women

Push and wind, up go the shutters,
Noisly, in Mexcian shops, with morning sun building.
Young women, maybe some junior high, and
Then then pour water on the sidewalks,
Then, sweep it away … wetting gutters ….

Hit a button and up go the shutters in malls.
The women, maybe some high school, in suits,
Ready to work the store, no brooms for them,
No straining with aluminum, no blouses and jeans,
No wishes for Friday’s romance ….

Eugene “Gene” Novogrodsky, Brownsville