Where the Sidewalks Meet a Time Before Water

Apr 25

Poet Rev. Dr. Harold J. Recinos and photographer Danny R. Peralta present excerpts from their Bronx-inspired books

Untitled (2 March 2019). Photo: Danny R. Peralta

Open Plaza concludes Poetry Month with excerpts from a collection of poetry and a book of photography, both inspired by life in the Bronx.

At the outset of 2022, the Open Plaza feature “After Dark/Nueva Luz” paired poems from After Dark (Wipf and Stock Publishers, 2021) by poet and cultural anthropologist Rev. Dr. Harold J. Recinos with photography from the Nueva Luz archives of En Foco, Inc. For Rev. Dr. Recinos’s latest poetry collection Where the Sidewalks Meet (Wipf and Stock Publishers, 2021), Open Plaza has paired excerpts with photographs from A Time Before Water (2019) by documentary photographer Danny R. Peralta, a 2019 En Foco Photography Fellow.

Philip Schultz, author of The God of Loneliness, praises Where the Sidewalks Meet as “a view of the inside of the other side of the America that’s seldom seen with such bravado and honesty in American poetry—an immigrant Black and Brown America ripped open by White rage and indifference. Recinos’s view of the role Christianity plays in all this is equally profound and original.”

This view is also captured in photographs taken by Peralta between October 2018 and April 2019. Born in New York City and of Dominican descent, he aims to use the camera as a tool to change negative perceptions about his community and as a way to connect people for the greater good. Peralta is former Executive Director of the Hunts Point Community Network at THE POINT Community Development Corporation, which is dedicated to youth development and the cultural and economic revitalization of the Hunts Point section of the South Bronx—the very place where Rev. Dr. Recinos’s love of poetry began.

Excerpts from Where the Sidewalks Meet are used by permission of Wipf and Stock Publishers, https://wipfandstock.com/.
Photographs from A Time Before Water are courtesy of Danny R. Peralta.

POET’S NOTE

Hunts Point is the home I carry with me. I was a shoe shine boy on Southern Blvd on a corner, near the Simpson Street subway station. I was Baptized at St. John's Chrysostom's Church on 167th St. and Hoe Ave.—las calles, familia, vida y El Bronx.

I think a poet’s work is essentially about not being in a hurry to imagine fresh ways to see, while convincing other people to pause for a few moments to observe the world with you. Where the Sidewalks Meet is, for me, graffiti on a public culture that, with imaginative language, aims to address the hope and the pulse of everyday life in overlooked places. I speak about the experience of the barrio, the word of marginality, a divided society, the silence of God, the status- shackled church, the politics of hate, and to lift up the voices of the unheard. This work is my prayer to remain faithful to the cause of crucified people.

—Rev. Dr. Harold J. Recinos, April 2022

PHOTOGRAPHER’S NOTE

Originally intended to be viewed while we wait, A Time Before Water was created while in constant motion. Restless and unsatisfied, I have spent the last 20+ years capturing images of the people and places that mean the most to me. Protecting and celebrating them is my main objective. Speaking loudly with their image is my other goal. Hopefully, this body of work can also offer empowerment during uncertain times.
—Danny R. Peralta, April 2022

Purgatory

we heard it said here
the crooked who have
lived in this country
reducing dark-skinned
humanity to ashes seem
to go straight. well, we
think time has never been
riper to say Dante’s seven
terraces of sin called pride,
envy, wrath, sloth, avarice,
gluttony, and lust made on
earth by imperial white might
dashed the hope of heaven
on earth and won a bitterly
warm purgatorial stay. you see,
we crossed the desert just last
week talking that God’s Mariachi
band is singing in purgatory America
hurry and plead your white depravities
for the mercy plan. what will happen
to the people who have defined the
stomping ground with the broken flesh
of Black humanity, asylum-seeking
Latinas with kids and dances around
the lynching trees? will white lunatics
purge their wicked souls and find the
stairs that lead to heaven’s door? we
floated across the Rio Grande talking
in soft Spanish. perhaps these Gringos
will not be pardoned after leaving the
smell of rotting bodies on earth and
breaking every message that came
from above. you see, nothing can be
kept hidden in purgative space where
our tear-stained brown checks and your
snowy white faces see each other. listen,
we can tell you in the broken English you
detest that evil here is out of reach, heaven
is nearly visible and it may be time for you
to ask how long until a pale-faced soul gets
paroled to the Nazarene’s gran fiesta? perhaps,
a fresh good book will push up out of the ground
and with so much time on our scabbed souls, we
will get a chance to read it and give the great
yonder another look.

Untitled, *1 March 2019. Photo: Danny R. Peralta*

Hell

observe the road with flames
along its edges that crackle
with limbs while faces line the
way with agonized expressions.
have a look at the perverted users
of language, the money- grubbing
assholes of alternative reality,
the soiled orange lovers of cruelty,
murder, torture, petrified bullshit
and pimply wickedness. open your
eyes wide to take a good look at the
cunning slum lords, foul-mouthed
preachers, fetid politicians, racists
dogmatists and the parade of white
supremacist obstructors of truth now
genuinely at home. recall sitting on
a mound of maggots, how Maria said
hell is having tear gas tossed at you
by guards at the border, children ripped
from mothers’ arms, toddlers dropping
dead alone in cages in dark American
nights, white cops full of wickedness
squeezing life out of Black men, fitting
brown bodies with holes and cracking
jokes about it all to satisfy the malignant
stupidity of family, supporters and prized
Klan friends. take a deep breath to smell
the burning flesh and remember you were
told hell is Dixieland, the barrio, the toxic
fields, worksites, cities, churches, schools
and places devils run free on earth to sicken
blameless souls. hell may even be too kind
to you giving you an eternity to realize the
party is over and those who armed themselves
against injustice are dancing Salsa in heaven
with Tito Puente, Celia Cruz and all the other
good people in life you despised and shamelessly
bled or hung from trees.

*7 February 2019. Photo: Danny R. Peralta*

*15 December 2018. Photo: Danny R. Peralta*

Paradiso

it happened kicking cans down
a littered street, when heaven, it
seemed, made it to the slum. hope
passed over us like the wind and
the One drenching the block with
light shined for a time on the widows,
undocumented kids, single young
mothers, just-paroled teens, junkie
old men, aging street walkers, and
Tony the Spanish-speaking cop to
let them feel a brief moment of peace
and get a glimpse of God in the alley,
spray painting a message on Lefty’s
building that said, I the maker of all
things am always with you. the sacred
truths the people sing point the way to
paradise, where crushed Spics like me
whisper Spanglish prayers sounding like
lost lines of sublime verse Angels must
carry to heaven’s gate, where Christ waits
for us to stagger in. travelers on this stony road
wash themselves in the salty waters of Orchard
Beach, where beauty from battered bodies rises
and sandy children at play find ways to explain
paradise has a different address, no ticking clocks,
no white people demanding you speak English
and the world there together ends. on this earth
so full of people with little grace, the wretched
of the earth who perennially bear witness to stones
that speak declare today, In paradise we will
live without church bells ringing, mothers
howling above graves, people with souls
packed with pain, politicians robed with
doom, and cops beating and killing us in
their white history or worry about God not
willing to bend to hear us cursing the blood
that dripped from the Cross that never was
enough to save. yes, paradise will be found
easily by the brokenhearted and peace will
squeeze through the cracks of the bloody
organ after allowing us a brief peak at the
first and absolute reality some have flattered
with major and minor names.

Feeble God

I could see hackling dogs
in the alley trying to put
their mouths into the same
garbage can that stank of
last night’s bones. Angel
in the alley with them was
too poor any day of the week
and at night when he sat with
a bottle of Colt 45 wishing he
could live in the building that
knew him as a little boy. in another
life, Angel would hold a university
post, teaching students the world
of the poor, the dreams of Central
America’s campesinos, and the cries
of the Puerto Rican migration. likely,
he would talk to students about Indians
in the Americas with no childhood,
mothers asking bosses for permission
to bury their kids, soldiers in Guatemala
who shouted, Long live the Army, before
cutting out the tongues of young boys,
and gangs annihilating innocence on
bleeding village streets. Angel never
got that call, though he is an expert of
many things: the police, the prostitutes,
drunks, and junkies on Simpson Street.
I can tell you this with certainty, for Angel
was a friend who never stopped demanding
bread even the day he died on a park bench
in the little park on the avenue next to the
old telephone building.

Glass Jesus

*17 March 2019. Photo: Danny R. Peralta*

I visited a church with
carefully placed stained
glass images around the
sanctuary like precious
rocks full of color in a
dark place to catch your
eye. my eyes begged
for clarity when caught
by the image of a white
Jesus looking up in the
Garden of Gethsemane.
the thought occurred to
me this white brother on
the block would be loved
for making water turn into
divine-label wine, making
the IRS give back money
to the poor and converting
people who show up at the
church just hating everything
about their dark brothers and
sisters. that morning I could
not keep from thinking this
white Jesus does not reflect
the image at all in which my
dark kin and me were made.
he doesn’t know the middle
east, rope neckties, murder on
Central American streets damned
by his white supremacist friends
and the obscene blasphemy of the
segregated hours that come and
go each week while government
officials have the nerve to say teach
the good side of slavery, murder, and
rape. I wondered what the white Jesus
prayed for in the Garden, perhaps to
keep on making wrong sense in the
world with his white brand of old-time
religion.

Babel

in your America, the politics of hate
works the halls of government with
dangerous tribalism, fueled by white
lies told by the minute that build walls
to stop the advance of inclusive equality
and every dream worthy of this place
called a nation. in your America, the
nightly news rushes into living rooms
to say another young Black man was
killed by an authority paid to protect
him, Brown children were arrested for
crossing the border by agents that never
appeared in their innocent dreams and
the world we are crushed in is distant
from everything about you save the old
white loathing responsible for the theft
of ancient lands, the slaughter of men,
women and children of every first nation
and the systematic lynching of Black
humanity enslaved for many American
centuries by plantation owners whose
portraits hang in the finest government
offices. in your America, I visited a
pretty white church where a sweet old
woman read scripture from the Hebrew
prophet Amos cherished by our martyred
Martin the words that said, hate evil, love
good; maintain justice in the courts. I
could not help turning my head to the left
to whisper into the ear of my suspect citizen
son the words of the writer who told the
truth on the mountain top, America has been
white too long to listen!

Woke Flesh

we have words for the world of lies
that have made dark-skinned bodies
bleed since the first dishonest years
when preachers said Indians have
nearly disappeared like their white
God desired for their brazen grand
theft. we have words for the world
of lies that for centuries enslaved
Black bodies with the evil that still
suffocates life out of them at traffic
stops, in a squad car, an innocent run
down public streets, in police jails,
on children’s playgrounds or when
hands are raised in the air. we have
words for the lies that try to cover
up the truth about a young unarmed
Brown boy who was riddled with police
bullets in an alley, why an innocent Latino
man was suffocated in a park by evil
done to him by cops, and why a gay
Latina teen was shot by badged men
in Denver. we who dare to speak protest
the ignorance, the violence and shameless
racist justification of wrong. we who dare
to march will not walk lightly on the
killing streets, fear your riot squads,
take the blame for all things the filthy
rich have done to the fuming white
middle-class and working-class poor
or stop being your dark-faced impossible
to deflect justice demanding sidewalk
menace.

Golgotha

I bet you didn’t know we walked
across the desert saying prayers
that are hundreds of years old in
Spanish. each one of us carried a
piece of the mystery you look for
in your segregated hour that finds
a way to keep us absent on land that
called us home. we were raised across
the border you see reading the Holy
Book with stories of the losers in the
world who talked to God and Angels with
ruffled feathers. I bet you didn’t know
we learned to sit between light and shade
on the way to aging cities and nourished
ourselves with spiked cactus on warm
sand. we have not lived comfortably for
more weeks than can be recalled and no
one among us believes in mirages though
after stumbling across the border our days
are occupied by the theological mistake that
light is not good and God in your penal colony
in love with tribalism, ignorance and racial
hate only speaks English.

AOC

that Puerto Rican woman
elected to Congress, with
her razor-sharp brilliance,
love for justice and gift for
riding storms, knows life on
these shores will never be
silenced by the blind hatred
of white supremacist fools
who just love to push equality,
justice and freedom apart in
the name of ruin and wicked
lynch- craving souls.

*2 December 2018. Photo: Danny R. Peralta*

Dream

dream like you found
lost Eden with a wide
open door. never look
back to the barren earth
you crossed that holds
the ashes of those you
love. never forget life
finds ways to holler march
on. dream with your arms
stretched wide enough to
hug our big old earth.

Where the Sidewalks Meet (Wipf and Stock Publishers, 2021) by Harold J. Recinos

A Time Before Water (2019) by Danny R. Peralta

Rev. Dr. Harold J. Recinos is a professor of church and society at the Perkins School of Theology at Southern Methodist University. A cultural anthropologist, he specializes in work and ethnographic writing dealing with undocumented Central American migrants and the Salvadoran diaspora. He has published numerous articles, chapters in collections, and written major works in theology and culture, including ten collections of poetry. His newest collections of poetry are No Room (Wipf & Stock, 2020), Wading in the River (Wipf & Stock, 2021), and Where the Sidewalks Meet (Wipf and Stock Publishers, 2021). Rev. Dr. Recinos’s poetry has been featured in Anglican Theological Review, Weavings, Sojourners, Anabaptist Witness, The Arts, Afro-Hispanic Review, and Perspective, among others.

Embed from Getty Images

Danny R. Peralta was born in The Bronx in 1978 and raised in the Inwood section of upper Manhattan. After earning a BSA in Social Studies Education from New York University, he began his work as a youth educator and community developer. While searching to expand upon his love for art and storytelling, he formally began attending black-and-white photography workshops at ICP @ THE POINT in the South Bronx and was awarded the first ever Jocelyn Benzakin Fellowship for documentary photography. He went on to earn an MFA from the International Center of Photography (ICP-Bard). With his camera focused on immediate family and community, he completed projects like Ma (winner of a 2007 BRIO Award), LOVE LIVES (a call for trauma relief in Hunts Point), and ‘Bout that Life (featured in BX200’s Bronx Now exhibit). In 2008, he returned to THE POINT CDC as Director of Arts and Education, and in 2015 became Executive Managing Director. He co-founded Peasant Podium Music in 2009, curating live musical showcases and visual art experiences for local and international artists, and was a 2019 En Foco Photography Fellow. Peralta currently lives in the Pelham Parkway section of The Bronx with his wife and two sons, who inspire his every endeavor.

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