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George Floyd. Breonna Taylor. Eric Garner. Sandra Bland. Tamir Rice.So many others for so many years. In 2010 police killed over a thousand people in the U.S. Black people are 3x more likely to be killed by  police than white people. 99% of killings by police from 2013 - 2019 have not resulted in officers being charged with a crime. The names of the murdered will not be forgotten. We call on poets, writers, and artists to submit work for an anthology that addresses the continuing problem of police violence in this country and around the world.Your much appreciated purchase allows FlowerSong to continue putting out important anthologies and publications.

...and so, the Wind was Born is about a wind character who finds healing in the many forms of love; self, romantic, friendship, communal, familial, and spiritual. The main character, is the personification of a queer, gender fluid, poet and artist healing from their trauma. This individual discovers that they are wind and wonders what type of wind they are. Are they destructive like a hurricane or gentle love messages in a breeze? This character begins to think about how the wind might also be their love interest, Mon Coeur, because they feel the wind around them every time Mon Coeur is near. The two wind characters begin self discovery outside of their trauma, but the Main character is struggling to let go of the past and searching the present for love. It takes this character a while to get past the desire and need to be accepted by others to feel validated. The main character feels they destroy everything in their path--especially love-- because they fear not being good enough or strong enough or loving enough, but after many tries comes to find that she/he is more than the wind--they are love--and it is important to free themself. They discover who they really are beyond titles. It is by stripping away titles that they find that there is something much deeper and more powerful than romance, but friendship, and sangha. The trials and tribulations of the two characters show us how love not only heals two people in a relationship, but can extend beyond self and couples, and evolve into family and community. Which allows the main character to eventually discuss their desire to help heal the world around them through love, friendship, community, andconnection. This book of poetry shows us how love is an ouroboros, constantly reshaping our love for ourselves and others and making room for more-it is limitless and ineffable. It shows us how we are all connected and that love of self is love for others, and vice versa. The wind character Mon Coeur teaches the main character that love is how we survive and strive through the liminal. She teaches us that endings are beginnings, and that life has just begun.

Sonia Gutiérrez''s Dreaming with Mariposas, written in a Tomás Rivera and Sandra Cisneros bildungsroman vignette style, recounts the story of the Martínez family as told through the eyes of transfronteriza/transboundary Sofía Martínez, "Chofi," Francisco and Helena''s daughter, as well as multiple narrators, emulating oral tradition. The novel embraces food as a communal practice with the ability to heal a family through storytelling. Dreaming with Mariposas presents glimpses of poetic diction in times of anti-rhetoric, inspiring readers to reclaim their sacred spaces and voices and to pursue dreams even when the future looks dismal. Chofi witnesses institutional racism, sexual harassment, and colorism and learns to navigate her parents'' dreams and her dreams as she discovers her superpower, the strength of her Mexican Indigenous heritage, and the spirit world.

alurista, the proto-poet laureate of Aztlan whose enigmatic nom de plume has long been synonymous with Chicano poetry, returns with a pristine and rarefied homecoming coda. ZAZ (in Cal├│: "bam!" or "right on!"), recalls classic Spik in Glyph? multi-dimensional sonic, phonetic and textual word play burnished by astonishing and unapologetic interlingual English, Spanish, Nahuatl and Cal├│ hybridity. The spare and resonant verse gathered in this arresting volume speaks to the mundane, the profane and the esoteric simultaneously. At once ceremonial prayer chants and oracular pronouncements, the poems shimmer yet remained anchored by a welcome formal purity. This collection brings the internationally acclaimed alurista-a leading voice at the historic, first-ever Festival de Flor y Canto (USC, 1973)-home as well to a dynamic new imprint named in honor of that venerated floricanto ("flower-song" from the Nahuatl) tradition. 

Diana Elizondo's second full collection of poetry consists of macabre and somber imagery that comment on love and society. All are told in a surreal motif which blurs the line between reality and dream.

Dreaming brings together lyrical renditions, little boys dancing "the washing machine," prayers over velas, and odes to purple, sparkly hips swaying to cumbia beats. There's thirty-three works of poetry, prose, and fiction on these pages that provide such narratives: "For Selena" by Timothy Daily-Valdés, "One of Us: Selena Quintanilla-Pérez" by Nancy de la Zerda, "La Milagrosa Selena" by Rubén Degollado and plenty more pieces showing the world the impact she continues to make on the dance floor and across generations.