City On The Second Floor: A work of mastery about the social and civil structures that we live and work under. An intellectually riveting description of the struggle in America today, put together with the patience and skill of a precision clock maker. A tremendous work of our times.
Review by Eddie Grijalva
Published 6/5/2022 9:47am PST
Buy Book —> Flower Song Press
Some poets write of love and bravery. Some write of politics, plague and war. Matt Sedillo writes of America today, which means he writes of all these things, though he does so with ferociousness. He writes during an age of great transition and wrath. The very face of America is changing, which scares a lot of people. Powerful ones too. Though when the powerful become remorseless in their actions towards the less powerful it takes an equally remorseless (also fearless) pen to alert the masses that a sword of Damocles looms overhead. City On The Second Floor, the third book by Matt Sedillo and second with Flowersong Press is a foray into sociology and his version of a love song/intervention to Los Angeles, the city he was born and raised in.
Excerpts from L.A. IS FULL OF PIGS:
“Los Angeles is falling apart / In the streets, in the suburbs / In the wind / In a barely kept Hollywood
bathroom / Wheezing, vomiting, coughing up blood / The past few days, these past few years / I have
spread myself across this sprawl / and fear this drive may kill me / May kill us all and I wander / Over to
general hospital / Between whose walls desperation wears in high concentration / Across the faces of the
shopworn / And prematurely ill alike as they wait upon news of illness they cannot afford to have /
Survival without insurance / This may take a while….”
“…Los Angeles is full of good people / Who time to time / can turn a blind eye / to killer policy ....”
Sedillo’s last book: Mowing Leaves Of Grass, was a visceral yet intellectual sally into ethnic studies which took on a life of its own in the Chicano community and beyond. It is now taught in ethnic studies classes in universities around the country. City On The Second Floor is an indictment of the governmental systems that created the society we’re all stuck with today. One of racism, police killings, gentrification, consumerism as God, environmental exploitation, suffering of the poor and many other travesties. Sedillo isn’t shy about it either, he’s a fire-spitter and he’s mentioned before, “ I’m not here to make friends” . He’s been described as, “The stone-cold best political poet in America '' and the “Poet Laureate of the struggle”. He’s been featured in a litany of publications, including The L.A. Times. He’s also appeared on CSPAN and has spoken at over one-hundred universities. He’s been compared to everything from a Biblical Prophet to a lyrical Marx. Whether you agree with his politics or not there are undeniable truths in Sedillo’s historically dense works, or what the Chicano streets and Dr. Jose Prado—the Sociology Professor who authored the foreword—calls “La mera neta!”
Even with the deadly serious nature of the topics Sedillo covers in City On The Second Floor, he expertly balances them out with a bit of comic relief. For example, in his poem Precarious Rex: after reminding us, “Just how precious little / Democracy there is in the way of things”, he then tempers this hard lesson with a bit of levity:
“An invitation to reunion with a dear friend / Only to be met with attempts to be roped in / Into
some type of / Academic pyramid scheme / A tenure track position / In Carbondale Illinois / I would
rather die / A thousand deaths / in all the chain restaurants / of Monrovia / Then…./ I woke up
in the back of a rideshare/ Better there than the jailers I suppose, though I could not help but / Wonder if I had left the bar of my volition / Checked my pockets / losing tickets / still in place / I am after all / A fool
of / Odd and tragic / Sentiments….”
Having lived in the region of Carbondale in Southern Illinois (go Salukis) for a time as a young adult, I totally understand why one would rather, “die a thousand deaths” before committing their future to a life of academic exile in middle America, which I found particularly funny. Sedillo skillfully uses this technique of weaving humor amongst some of the heaviest topics known to mankind throughout this volume of work.
With an extensive knowledge of history and philosophy Sedillo uses the cold hard facts of the past to demonstrate the ethical and moral dilemmas that are still right in front of our faces today. As a result of this historically-deep research used to craft these poems, Sedillo speaks with the authority of a Will Durant. Though also possessing a healthy suspicion of political and social structures he displays a natural instinct to investigate power, similar to a Mike Davis. And akin to a Martin Espada, he’s on a mission to reclaim the historic record and undo the whitewashing of our past. We are watching the blossoming of an incredible talent. At this pace with his tremendous erudition, work ethic, and unflinching ability to tell the whole absurdly-tragic truth, in my humble opinion, he has the ability to be as important to the twenty-first century as Ginsberg and Neruda were to the twentieth.
Another theme in City On The Second Floor is that of environmental exploitation and the global warming that it’s ultimately leading to. He touches on this subject in a few of the poems. Painting a vivid picture of environmental crimes and the consequences we’ll all pay so the powerful can globe-trot and strip goods from the hinterlands of weaker nations to feed the insatiable appetite of ever-starving industry.
Excerpt from Storm Warnings:
“When it all finally goes down / When the Titanic / Finally sinks / When there is nowhere / Left to hide the money / When the Alps finally melt / When Switzerland / Becomes a barren desert / And the Caymans/ Are buried / Miles below / Sea level / The fortune five hundred / Will set up / Tax shelters / On the moon /
A storm is brewing / From the winds of Fukushima / From the ash of Three-Mile Island / From the
Criminal negligence / The killing plunder / You can hear the distant thunder / strip the Earth to feed
Industry / Pillage the country / To please the city / Milk the city / To engorge the capital / Make weapons capable / Of destroying the planet / Turn profit / From tankers that poison / The ocean / From factories /
That darken the sky / And a storm is brewing / From the ghosts of Bhopal ....”
As mentioned before, there’s history in every nook and cranny of this volume, lessons in every throwaway line. He invokes the environmental disasters of Fukushima and Three-mile Island. Two well known nuclear accidents in Japan and America respectively, though he mentions a third incident with “the ghosts of Bhopal”. Which refers to a gas explosion at a Union Carbide Plant near Bhopal, India that killed three-thousand instantly and poisoned hundreds of thousands more in 1984. It’s still killing people today and is considered one of the world's worst industrial accidents. Here Sedillo reminds us of the true cost of industry while at the same time teaching a historical lesson and confronting the reader with a moral dilemma. It is also a “storm warning” to the billionaire class. Reminding them of the fact that they can run but can’t hide from the effects of climate change and the social chaos that comes with. Eventually the Earth will reckon with those who marshaled the wrath of the wind. Golden parachutes are useless in category five hurricanes.
The Sea:
“Whatever it is we are doing / It is only making the storm stronger / There is land under the water /
And there too we drill / Capitalists dream of bottomless pits / Then piss and shit the bed plastic / All life
began in the ocean / And there too we kill / There are mountains under the water / Cities too I imagine /
Arrogant and delusional / One day the sea will swallow us whole.”
City on the Second Floor is a call to action. Especially to the Chicano community. Sedillo is on a mission to get his message across to as many people as possible. This book is his, “ Molotov, tossed towards Camelot”, his way of sounding the alarm. Will we hear it though? We can all smell what’s in the air in America today and we know that something is wrong in the way of things. Maybe we can’t put our finger on it, but a self-taught Chicano intellectual from Los Angeles just put a big red X on it for us all to see. I take an optimistic view of this complex work: that even though the world and our society are the way they are today, if we wake up and start pulling in the same direction the descendants of the poor and suffering of this world can shake off their yokes and experience a more saturnian society in their future. I highly recommend this book to anyone who enjoys well-crafted, deep and meaningful, historically inspired poems, with an edge. It’s a powerful work destined to become a classic. Following his seminal work, Mowing Leaves of Grass was always going to be tough. Though Sedillo definitely rose to the occasion and answered the bell with this sublime volume of Poems.
