Elvis Alves's Blog

Dreams

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1.are made of silver and gold in the belly of a whalemoving to land full speed ahead of the storm that
catches and devours it. 
2.One night a bird flew into my head then fell on the ground dead but not...

Primordial Orbits (Arrival)

We land on new shores. Night is in our heads.
The call to march will come but for nowwe hear nothing, even though noise surrounds us. 
We are swelling with the tide. Sweating a historythat refuses to leave us. 
Night and day beg us stay and grow. Becomestrong. Forge something into being, a conglomerateof selves wading through waves.

WordFest Anthology 2019
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Lunch Lady

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I imagine her strong. I imagine her weak. This lunchlady with Spanish rolling off her tongue like rivers. 
The radio in the kitchen stays on evangelists that call theirflock. Shepards going after lost sheep...

Control

She has fear in her eyes. Her son was diagnosed and recommended
medication by someone who is not a therapist or doctor. She asks foradvice. I apologize—say that the teacher (a colleague) who diagnosed
her son is wrong, outside of her league. I spew that white students who“act out” are labeled normal (they are kids being kids). But that black and
brown students are offered medication to control them. She knows this.It is the source of her fear. We talk about programs outside of school to help
her...

The Long History of Genocides

Touching land with toes is like
returning to a home you never left.It is like returning to a home you never
left because the leave taking was one ofnecessity. You were priced out of your
neighborhood. The newcomers feel thatit belongs to them. That it was always
theirs for the taking, was just waitingfor their arrival. Columbus and
his crew took land from the natives as ifit was always theirs for the taking, was just
waiting for their arrival. They plant flags,cast spells with a new language, and...

Choice

There is no heart here. If there is one, it beats irregularly.What wakes to the call of the day meets the same fate as he
who refuses to rouse from sleep, a dream or body holding inplace that whose fate lies somewhere else but draws close with
the passing of time. The heart that beats on its own, or becauseit is tugged, lends a paradigm that obstructs the truth its subject
begs to know. Yes, the heart can be a shallow pond. Or a river orocean that knows the depth of love.Plato's Caves

Saint Coltrane

Lost in the stars, any sound means life.Humanity pulls, as it grows, from the unknown.What title you give it wares away into oblivion.
Shine as wisdom’s incisive cut—know this aboveall else.
Music is a spaceship. It travels beyond the ears,and into the heart. Into the soul.
Dig there with might. Find what you may, there.Dance with the rhythm of life.
Out of life’s chaos, create rhythm and not order.This will help you move along—a path, a journey—
or something of the kind.
Pray to Saint Coltrane on...

The Search For Home

We escape to find space to
settle the mind. Where is
home away from home?
There, relief abounds and
sleep is not a stranger. In
this land, birds sing sweet
songs. The seasons are
long and mellow. Mother
Nature, too, can learn to
behave — somewhere far
from here.

Amsterdam Quarterly 

The Fire In My Brother

My brother tells me he does not see skin color. That he sees
credentials and (work) performance. He says this after I tell him
blacks are last to hired and first to fired. My brother runs after the taxicab with a baseball bat in hand. He is
on the Westside Hwy, near the Brooklyn Bridge Ext. A white man in the
taxicab (moments before) spits in his face. He had cut off the cab. The
white man is the passenger. Words are exchanged between him and my
brother. Then the spit happens. And my brother running...

Harriet Tubman

You could have freed a thousand more slaves if they knew
they were slaves. I ask my students what freedom means
to them?One said the ability to roam widely without the
supervision of his parents. Where would he go? Red Lobster.
You have Red Lobster money? Yells the smartest student in the class.There’s an eruption of laughter. Then silence. In the silence, I
think of black men in chain gangs on southern roads, supervised
by white men with guns. This was after slavery.What is freedom to the unfreed...