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Saturday, November 22, 2014

WE ARE THE FLAMES

by Adrian Ernesto Cepeda



A demonstration to demand authorities find 43 missing college students, in Mexico City, this week. Mexico officially lists more than 22 thousand people as having gone missing since the start of the country's drug war in 2006, and the search for the missing students has turned up other, unrelated mass graves.



Hear us strike our match,
our voices glowing
over this capital—
our lower case demands
will only grow louder,
nuestras voces ponderosas
hear us from your palace,
so much fuel in our voices
your quiet fuels to inspire us—
our marching bellow.
The world welcomes
our fire united we, students
as sisters and brothers,
together— you will hear
our loudest uprising.
Somos la llama de Mexico.
Wrapped in our flags
colors of green, white
and red; spirit of águila’s—
We Are The Flames.
El cielo can feel us—
our spirits uniting?
Your silence
will never divide this city,
our country—
Presidente, you will
remember our names.


Adrian Ernesto Cepeda is an L.A. poet whose work appears in the new True Romance Poems collection, 1000 Tankas for Michael Brown, The Lake Poetry, Edgar Allen Poet Journal # 2, Fukushima Poetry Anthology, San Gabriel Valley Poetry Quarterly, Spilt Ink Poetry, Luna Luna Magazine’s Latino Poetry Project, Love Poetry Lovers, ZO Magazine, Oddball Magazine, The Rain, Party, & Disaster Society, Men's Heartbreak Anthology and in the soon to be released publications: Purrfect Poetry Anthology and Poetry in Motion’s collection Poems to Fuck To. He is currently enrolled in the MFA Graduate program at Antioch University in Los Angeles.