BIO
Gabriel Paez is a 27-year-old bilingual education coordinator and teacher at a Chicago Public School on the West Side of the city. He began working at the school in West Humboldt Park in 2013, after majoring in Creative Writing and Political Science at Florida State University. His students are heavily impacted by dangerous levels of income inequality, racial segregation, and street violence that now characterize dozens of cities around this country. His students are all of immigrant backgrounds, many with undocumented families. He is also a delegate of the Chicago Teachers Union, and a member of the International Socialist Organization. Gabriel was raised in Spanish, English and Portuguese at home, and lived in Brazil for 6 years during his childhood. In 2017 he graduated from Dominican University with a Masters in Teaching, endorsed in Bilingual Education and ESL.
Quizás
En dos partes cortadas
Like a kiwi
With little black semillas
Que se salen
Hasta por mi nariz.
My two parts
On both ends of Division street
Sometimes share a vision
una canción I barely remember
Que canta mi bella abuela
Of mountainous
Colombian folklore
Where la llorona
Is only defeated
By the sternest
Catholic hand
And belt.
With the force of Cortez entering the continent
Like an alien plague
Como dejaron de cortés en las venas
De Latinoamérica
Que aun hoy
Sangra
Como un zancudo
Espichado.
El kiwi se pudre
Soft and warm in the sun
Poco a poco
The paleta man rings his assortment of bells
Dientecitos de plata, los ninos se rien
Y como les falta plata
A sus papas
Who construct with hard hands like clay
The bedrooms and bathrooms
The brick walls worth millions
Y como les duele pagar
La renta
La cuenta
El kiwi se pudre
Sweeter than it should be
Y los que se dan cuenta
Estan iguales
They robbed your papeles
Quando se robaron la frontera
Partida en dos
Como un huevo
Rota por la historia.
Now we have el parque
La tienda,
La Iglesia,
quizás.
La Tierra Tiembla
La tierra tiembla
Como un niño asustado
Que oye un disparo
Tambor inesperado,
Si me pongo a correr
podrá romperme la piernas.
La tierra tiembla
Una ola terrible
El sudor del miedo
Le moja la cama
Y llama
Como llama
A su mamá,
El canto
De un pájaro
Silvestre enjaulado
Le llama a su mamá
Y la tierra aun
Tiembla.