Blog

The Midwest

I went to college in

the Midwest that had

never seen a Latinx

face, classmates laughed

whenever I let Spanish

fly like pigeons from my

mouth and starched shirt

pastors sighed when I

kneeled at the altar rail

to pray in my first and

mother tongue. the cops

threw me in jail simply

for looking too Puerto

Rican in their bigoted

little town and making

me out to be everything

they decided I had to be

save a student at a Lilly

white school. they did

not know I came from

a place where even the

little...

Playing

the sound of playful kids

attaches itself to the night

on the block. the gaiety in

the air is like the restless

hope of walks begun months

ago in places far away. they

deliciously touch our hearts

lifting hours of misfortune

and shield everyone awake

waiting for peace doves to

fly overhead.

h. j. Recinos

https://www.htiopenplaza.org/contributors/harold-recinos

Waiting

a girl alone sits on the

stoop caressed by the

gentle morning breeze.

the sun leaning over the

edge of the rooftop comes

to reunite the barrio with an

exquisite light. little by little

life happens on the sidewalks,

the shadows begin to breathe,

and hope arises from weeping

that has been with us since the

day the world went dark.

h. j. Recinos

For me life began unfolding on Home Street—the South Bronx. A tough place. My Puerto Rican mother and Guatemalan father came to the United States motivated by their desperate flight from a life of poverty and despair. Their story like that of so many Latinx families new to the United States was one of social exclusion and marginality. They remained strangers in America. Although welcomed as a source of cheap and exploitable labor, cultural acceptance and the so-called good life eluded them....