May 29, 2008 4:00p CYO Alt. Sentencing Program San Jose
Jun 27, 2008 8:00p MACLA San Jose
Jul 23-25, 2008 8:00p Sf International Poetry Festival San Francisco
Sep 17, 2008 8:00p Palabra Pura Chicago
mah•cic (mah-SEEK') [Nahuatl] adj.,
"whole or complete"
The first solo collection of poems from a 10-year veteran of the Chicano spoken word collective The Taco Shop Poets.
Order Mahcic Here
Mahcic is also available at the following stores and galleries:
San Francisco: City Lights, Modern Times
Los Angeles: Imix Books, Tropico de Nopal
San Diego: Voz Alta
Austin: Resistencia Bookstore
and many others...just ask for it!
ISBN# 0-9717035-4-X
Praise For mahcic
“mahcic gets you open on Riley’s music. A poet who writes like a master DJ: scratching metaphor, mixing cultures and re-mixing themes until he infiltrates your consciousness and makes you recall the gloss before the glitter while warning you about the wind before the storm.â€
–WILLIE PERDOMO, WHERE A NICKEL COSTS A DIME
Tomás Riley’s poems are the necessary documents we must carry to insure the safe crossing, the guide by the hand, the finger to the lip, poetry becomes a paint by numbers game of language, truth and funk. His gaze takes us across streets as he crosses himself at the corner of 24th and la Misión, more like the intersection of revolución and eternidad. This first collection of poems takes pen to pavement, so do listen closely to the familiar street beating like a thousand sacred hearts tattooed forever.
–MARISELA NORTE, norteWORD
What you hear in Tomás’s poems is the vernacular of the streets transformed into cool, lean imagery that flits through the urban landscape with the swiftness of a hummingbird. We see choppers hovering over streets and empty lots of the Mission, hear the sirens of patrol cars, smell the simmering arroz and ripe mangos, food to bad-rappin’ brothers with backpacks full of empty dreams and sad young girls with rainbows on their wet lashes. It is a skillful dance Tomás performs to connect the mundane, the harsh and the ordinary with its lost ancestral source and to express that blood legacy with gentle, human clarity.
–GENNY LIM, CHILD OF WAR
"Musical, surprising, and riveting."
–ISHLE YI PARK, THE TEMPERATURE OF THIS WATER
One of the most exciting new voices to emerge in Chicano poetry that I've heard for a long time.
-ALEJANDRO MURGUIA, THIS WAR CALLED LOVE
"Scored as recombinant beats in the endless remixings of a social body, Riley's poetry does double duty as funky urban baroque and as a creative summation of various translingual, post-hip-hop, and spoken-word aesthetics."
–URAYOAN NOEL, RAIN TAXI REVIEW OF BOOKS
"They don't make the kind of dictionary you're going to need to read Riley's poems. Imagine T.S. Eliot and Billie Holiday and Jacques Derrida and César Chávez and Frida Kahlo having a baby, and you begin to get a sense of the genetic density and richness of Riley's poetry."
–PROF. G.A. NERICCIO, TEX[T]-MEX: SEDUCTIVE HALLUCINATIONS OF THE "MEXICAN" IN AMERICA
"The poems in this book are so alive that it may be hard to hold them in your hand. "
-RESENAS BOOK REVIEW
Also Available
The original collection from San Diego's Taco Shop Poets. Features work from all of the collaborators and co-conspirators that came through the TSP circle over their 10 years in existence. Now out of print, these few copies have resurfaced to hit the street in the hands of a whole new audience. The San Francisco Chronicle credited this work with "sparking the revival in Latino performance art". This anthology marks the beginning of a whole new movement of Chican@/Latin@ poetry collectives and ensembles that surfaced in the wake of this influential group.
Bio
Tomás Riley is a poet, writer, educator and a veteran of the influential Chicano spoken-word collective The Taco Shop Poets (TSP). With TSP he has appeared in the HBO documentary Americanos: Latino Life in the United States, Gregory Nava's PBS dramatic series American Family (2002), and is profiled in Hector Galán's ITVS documentary series on Latina/o arts: Visiones(2004). His self-released spoken word CD Message From the New Forreal debuted in 2003, and he performs on Chorizo Tonguefire (1999) and a jazz/word collaboration with Chicano artist-activist icons Jose Montoya and Raul R. Salinas entitled Intersections (2004).
As both a soloist and a member of TSP Tomás has performed his unique blend of Chicano bilingualism, cultural politics and lyricism at more than 200 venues across the country including the Guild Complex, Beyond Baroque, the Nuyorican Poets Cafe, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts and countless indie bookstores, cultural centers, universities, taco shops and bus stops in barrios everywhere. He has shared the stage with the likes of Willie Perdomo, Marisela Norte, Guillermo Gomez-Peña, and Lorna Dee Cervantes. His written work has been anthologized in Bum Rush the Page: A Def Poetry Jam, Chorizo Tonguefire: The Taco Shop Poets Anthology, Pacific Review and various journals and literary publications. Most recently his first solo collection of poetry, Mahcic, was published by Calaca Press in December 2005.
He holds an MA in American Literature with an emphasis in contemporary ethnic-American discourse, has taught from the elementary to the collegiate level, and is a founding member of the San Diego visual and performing arts space The Voz Alta Project. Currently he works as the Deputy Director of Programs at Streetside Stories a literacy based arts organization for young writers in San Francisco.
Tropico de Nopal, LA
Living Word Festival, SF