New Mexico Mercury

Luminous Women of New Mexico History: Dolores “Lola” Chavez de Armijo

The scant descriptions of Doña Dolores Elizabeth “Lola” Chávez de Armijo are so packed with action and activism that they read like a feminist poem cast on a landmark plaque. She was a leading librarian, gender discrimination nonsense-ender, anti-cronyism success story and, as if that wasn’t enough, she has a seven-part name flowing behind her like a cape...

As I walk through La Plaza Vieja

As I walk through la plaza vieja,
Albuquerque, New Mexico,
I remember all the plazas
I’ve seen in Mexico and Spain.
This time I stroll back
through the ephemeral light
of history bent by time,
and cross busy Lomas,
New York Avenue
as it was called back then.

It was a dirt road.  Buried
voices push up through earth,
pavement, and concrete.
The ghosts of homes
linger in the silent walls
of shops and restaurants
where tourists enjoy
a sense of the distant past.
On the back streets
you will still find old timers
who live and work here...

Friday Journey: Egypt

Margaret Randall explores this land of contemporary turmoil and ancient glory.

Insight New Mexico - David Correia

V.B. Price talks with scholar and author David Correia about his new book "Properties of Violence: Law and Land Grant Struggle in Northern New Mexico."

What’s Happened To Albuquerque?  Part 6: Selling ourselves short

Honestly rebranding an intellectual and artistic hub with a chip on its shoulder 300 years in the making.

Weekly Poetry: Wrung in the Wind

Wind waggles the small oriole,
plume-bulged, through the intersection,
and he crosses off to the side:

ragged wing, swoop black –

he nicks the street near the orange jeep,
leans in half-numb, I think,
with all this strew
and whistle. Sky sails to a blue roof...

Insight New Mexico - Hakim Bellamy

V.B. Price talks with Hakim Bellamy, Albuquerque's first Poet Laureate, about his experience in that role, the diversity and abundance of poets in New Mexico, and the power for poetry to change society and empower the youth.

Youth “Voces” on display this Friday

Every Monday through Friday for the month of June, from 9am to 4pm, a group of teenagers have devoted themselves to the art of being heard. These teen authors have bought into a 12 year-old program at the National Hispanic Cultural Center called Voces. This teen summer writing intensive was facilitated by the multimedia hip hop theater collaborative Urban Verbs, under the direction of Hakim Bellamy, Carlos Contreras and Colin Diles Hazelbaker. Throughout the month these young writers, with interest that vary from poetry to music to politics to comedy to short stories, were given the freedom and form to develop their innate writing talent. Guest presenters were brought in as experts on different styles of writing and performance, as well as visual art, choreography and communications/media training...

Domestic Spying

El Machete

Weekly Poetry: HOW MANY SHOTS NEED TO BE FIRED

out of the dark water
comes a gun.  a gun I did not see
but heard less then 15 feet away
from me.

and a story falls out of the mirror.
lands in broken shards of what really
happened.
and here is what the broken shards
and the dark water sing...

Colfax Ave, and Logan St..
Summer, curl your fingers around my hair.
let my hand sling around your waist.
past festivals and music played in Denver,
in Civic Center Park,
to the bus stop,

at Colfax and Logan.
the weather is perfect,
night upon all, waiting at the bus stop,
when a shot cries out, there amidst all,
a single shot fired...