for many years, i took uc irvine for granted in the way one takes one's hometown for granted. i've been here more or less since i was 22 years old. i'm 50 now. i lived on campus through two degrees, swam at the arc, walked in the hills, went to events, raised a child here, made my teaching career here, made my friendships here, and adapted to the changes–some good, some bad.
that's over now.
because lately, i've been feeling like teaching is something that the university could take from me at any moment. it started with the pitiful response to students who experienced the worst the pandemic had to offer; but the feeling spiked this last year when things got all military on the uci campus.
whatever happens next, i will never take for granted where i am. and i will never teach again without holding close in my mind the image of young uci students–nearly all women and many wearing hijabs–shouting, screaming into a bullhorn until they are hoarse:
"while you're learning, children burning!"
over 80% of the work we publish is by first generation college students who are also female. so often, too often, we receive submissions about the extraordinary difficulties of having a body marked for violence. art and writing about sickness, sexual assault, disability, discrimination, double-consciousness, fear, loss of life–all the longing to express oneself in the blackout, in the blinding light, in the intimate violence of the day to day.
some highlights from this issue:
the baby growing inside of her pulls, twists, has teeth. the father bites too.
he steers you from the path of patriarchal violence. sets you straight line after line, enjambed, internal, rhymed or not: dangerous living is loving first.
her sister is a baby. she documents the loss. in pictures, in pain, she bears witness; she teaches you to open your eyes.
they have a body of thorns; their body sprouts roots.
she peeks out from a mustard plant, a masked girl, then runs across a path of stars.
they are punching the air; they are feeling themselves; they already know they don't need to ask; they are walking away into the future. are you?
stay young stay focused stay brilliant stay beautiful. hide your bloodied feet. cover the shame of your rape. starve yourself to death.
youwontlistenyouwontlistenyouwontlistenYOUWONTLISTEN
many are asking, what now? what now is that we need to listen. let's linger; let's listen; here's me doing my version of that:
poet and uci student cassandra flores has published in our last three issues. she writes in spanish, in english, and in the resulting vernacular that empowers a whole generation of college-going women to confront the violent legacy of machismo and carve new pathways for expression. if poetry is what june jordan defines as "taking control of the language of your life" then cassandra's poetry shows how much is required in the effort.
"in the ashes" wonders if it is too late. if it's all already over. the poem concludes "the way i'm living / is killing me," but who makes the "way"?
i see cassandra's poetry, not just the devastating "in the ashes" or the reclaiming "Motherland" where her mother's stories are made flesh in "colored birds" and "Catholic dress" or the reclaiming of a mother's love and hope and commitment to her daughter's liberation in "Soy Hija de Rosa: A Collection of Unsent Letters" which culminates in the beautiful image of mother and daughter making up the bed at her daughter's dorm, but the poetry of cassandra herself as a powerful form of witness bearing to the generational facts of patriarchal violence. and not just the facts of boyfriends and fathers who hit and rape girlfriends, daughters and mothers, but the facts of the government mandated institutions that benefit from it:
The state would eat her to the bone
Lick her every drop
And hang up her right foot
like a shoe
whose laces are twice knotted through
on
the wire
between streets and state lines
in cassandra's poetry, everything about education is cast against the stark backdrop of lived experience. in this way, her work is also an indictment of any person in higher education who fails to understand her. spanish, english, poetry, SCREAMING: if you don't understand it, if you can't hear it, maybe it's because you don't speak the language in the first place or you're just tuned out.
i think the university as a liberatory promise is real (until they destroy it with bombs or fill it with liars). i think that promise is currently being threatened in a way that prompts me to teach what i teach and to publish work that gives educators a rare window into their students' lives. i vote for june jordan: "good poems can interdict a suicide, rescue a love affair, and build a revolution in which speaking and listening to somebody becomes the first and last purpose to every social encounter." i've always seen the humanities as having a single function: to bring a student's poetry out of them. to help them sing.
it is hard to sing in conditions dominated by fear.
"you cannot write lies and write good poetry." june jordan again. and i think i am courageous enough to say this much: at this stage, all that is left to us as educators is resistance; all that's left to us is poetry.
i dedicate this issue to everyone engaged in the effort to express all that our bodies carry; to everyone fighting for those who are being silenced, harmed, killed; and to all who are picked out for a beating, dragged out of a meeting, SCREAMING: you are the image of our liberation.
the body tells the story; may we never look away.
Rachael Collins
Editor-In-Chief
