Gashes! Poems and pain from the halls of injustice. By Tezozomoc.

Gashes! Poems and pain from the halls of injustice. By Tezozomoc. ISBN: 978-1497473300 $13.95

“This is a joint publication of Floricanto and Berkeley Presses. These poems are powerfully abrupt, contentious, and real, emerging from a barrio genuineness. They express the universal agony of injustice and disappointment. They reveal a world that is cruelly unique and well-known in big city barrios: police brutality, poverty, hopelessness, and yearning for acceptance and equality. LatinoBooks.Net 

The most valuable poets are those who “speak truth to power”
because they are able to serve as the “theorists” of grassroots social
movements. Their aim is not to describe the nature of injustice but
to challenge oppressive regimes by celebrating the creativity and
inventiveness of the people in struggles. They are word warriors
whose work can help us remake a ravaged world where the value of
everything is set by market price and in doing so move toward the
many worlds comprised of freely associated beings who are grounded
in autonomous Indigenous spaces. This book of 35 poems by food
sovereignty activist and xicanx philosopher, Tezozomoc, opens with a
poem (“They Beat Us”) that ends with these lines:
America!
you keep beating me for being brown
for wanting democracy for competing
for asking you to accept me!

Tezozomoc is a Los Angeles Chicano Poet and 2009 Oscar Nominated Activist and has been published in the following journals:

The Silver Stork, silverstorkmagazine.weebly.com/, 2018.  Campanella, Nick. “The 2018 Winter Issue of Come and Go Literary Is Finally Here.” Come and Go Literary, 15 Dec. 2018.  The Blue Nib (https://thebluenib.com/, 2017).  The Coiled Serpent: Poets Arising from the Cultural Quakes and Shifts of Los Angeles Paperback (ISBN: 9781882688524, Northwestern University Press, 2016), Men’s Heartbreak Anthology (Karineh Mahdessian, 2014), CrazyQuilt (San Diego, CA), Rhino (Chicago, IL), Mind Matters Review (Silver Spring, MD), Left Curve (Oakland, CA), Next Phase (Parker, Co.), Minotaur Press (San Francisco, CA), San Fernando Poetry Journal (San Fernando CA), Caffeine, which prints 15,000 copies and is given away free, Orchard (Santa Cruz, CA), Poet's Sanctuary ( out of Washington), Black Buzzard Press (Virginia),Dance of the Iguana, The Americas Review, La Hoja, Louder Than Bombs, Orale!, Tight (Guerneville, CA), (Untitled) (Southgate California), and ChupaRosa Writer's '93.  In the above magazines I had a total of 36 poems published.  Tezozomoc is a Huffington Post blogger under http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tezozomoc where he blogs about activism and food issues.  Tezozomoc has a academic chapter in  Mexican-Origin Foods, Foodways, and Social Movements: A Decolonial Reader Edited by Devon G. Peña, Luz Calvo, Pancho McFarland, and Gabriel R. Valle ISBN: 978-1-68226-036-4, “Chapter 11

Fragmentary Food Flows: Autonomy in the “Un-signified” Food Deserts of the Real”.  Winner, 2018 ASFS (Association for the Study of Food and Society) Book Award, Edited Volume.

Tezozomoc has published essays in Urban Future Manifestos produced by the MAK Center (2010, ISBN 978-3-7757-2731-0).  Tezozomoc’s work also includes academic essays on Nahuatl indigenous languages please see the following: http://jan.ucc.nau.edu/~jar/TIL_7.html which was published as chapter in Teaching Indigenous Languages, 1997.  Tezozomoc is national and international regular guest speaker at conferences; Agrarian Trust (2016, Santa Fe), Green Festival, Braiding the Sacred,  Seed and Food Sovereignty, and international gathering of Voices of Maiz (2016).

I have consistently been a featured poet across Los Angeles since 1992.  I have read at the Black Gallery in South Central Los Angeles, The Reader's Edge Bookstore in Montrose, Eagle Rock Library, Sunland-Tujunga Branch Library, Iguana Cafe in North Hollywood, Midnight Special Bookstore in Santa Monica, Black and Latino Bookstore in Pasadena, The Living Planet-Long Beach CA, and also at the East Los Angeles Library.

I believe strongly in supporting other poets in the journey to find their voice.  I have chosen to run and support venues for readings, magazines like yourself that provide great support for poets, and organize workshops for poets to get together and workshop their poems.