Donna J. Snyder

Donna Snyder, founder of the Tumblewords Project, has published her work in such journals as Puerto Del Sol and Sin Fronteras, among others across the western US. She has presented hundreds of creative writing workshops as an artist in the schools in the El Paso/Las Cruces region, various local literary festivals, and as a Tumblewords Poet. She has been a featured artist in such performance events and venues as the Taos Poetry Circus, the Border Book Festival, El Paso Museum of Art’s Museo-Literati reading series, the Branigan Library Authors Series, Umbilicus Mundi, the South Broadway Cultural Center in Albuquerque, the Out on a Limb series at the Santa Fe Actor’s Theater, and the Texas Kick-Ass Poets tour. Her work as an artist, cultural and political organizer, and grassroots lawyer has been featured in articles in the El Paso Times, Bridge Review, Albuquerque Journal, Stanton Street, Alamogordo Daily News, and the Las Cruces Sun.  She has worked 22 years as an advocate for immigrants, farm workers, garment workers, indigenous people, and people with mental and physical disabilities. In 2002 she won the Emma Tenayuca prize for her human rights work.

Cinnamon tea

Sweet oatmeal and cinnamon tea

wait for me each morning when I wake

no matter what snarls curled around our throats the night before

Or maybe agua de melón and toast sit there

next to the napkins from Guatamala

Faded temptations to smile

To rub my finger across your inner wrist

and sit awhile

When I get older

and all I know now gone forever from my grasp

I will tell the young ones who care to hear

I knew love and love knew me

Its name was oatmeal

toast

and cinnamon tea

Eve expelled from the Garden by an angel

written from Susan Klahr’s series of paintings

Eve anguished as she walks into the world

deprived of Eden

deprived of the understanding and support of Adam

deprived of intimacy with her God

and all for the desire for knowledge

Eve unaware that all anguish is transitory

Eve unaware that God & Adam were the intimates

to the exclusion of her and her kind

Eve unaware that the wisdom of the world

brought the gift of light, sweet light

Behind her, angelic vengeance

Behind her the weakness of Man and his fate

Behind her the dark verdancy of oblivion

But before her, before her (if she only knew)

wisdom gained from the flesh of fruit would lead her

to the benevolent caress

the delight of dance

the healing power of flesh moving to the sound of drums

Chilling Effect

I want to write

About being silenced & scrutinized

& at risk, but do it like Darwin’s daughter.

In my dreams, jeweled words wrangle sense & image.

Sun-shot thought champions dissent, but anything I say can and will be

used against me.

Grackles become witches, conjure brilliance and cajole

brutes along the way, their black bird reflections winged

pools of evanescent jet.

The path ahead is made of rubies

each stone a drop of my own blood. Oxygen molecules glow

like gems in each live hemoglobin racing through veins of sky.

Where is the vigor of astringency, the vinegar homilies

to warn of Cassandra’s oblivion?

Where are the bereaved

clad in weeds of aubergine and black?

In the garden there is a skein of broken limbs,

bound for burial. Avert your eyes and pray for solace, the sweet

bitterness of grapefruit marmalade that wrenches

a tongue from slumber.

from Amy M. Lam Wai Man’s “Bodysite: Bodyscapes

sun/moon

in chinese calligraphy

together they make brilliant

bright

or enlightened

the two together light the way to the next place

shapes shift in the brilliance

the boundary between you and me blurs

each of us bright as stars in our several identities

ink washes over us under the moonlight

the center of gravity moves between us

never in a straight line

my body is made up of so much water

you swim like an eel to the water’s edge

resurface and find me waiting

my body is painted by the play of light

dark then light

then dark

then light

there is no center here

deep in my belly

there’s a place there waiting

I paint my body and give up control

dark then light

then dark

then light

we approach the edge without thinking “how is it?”

or “how should it be?”

there is movement of text upon cloud dragon paper

“it is not distress

it is distance, mere distance”

this is not Chinese

neither in content

nor in execution