The 7th Annual Boca de Oro Festival was held on March 4 in Downtown Santa Ana. A day celebrating visual, performing, and literary arts and culture that curates and champions diverse and evocative writers, poets, storytellers, artists, musicians, and performing artists.

When I arrived for the “Magic of the Devine Feminine, Devine Masculine” reading, East L.A. College Professor Obed Silva was already on stage reading at Calle Cuarto Plaza. He was reading from his memoir The Death of My Father the Pope where he shifts between the preparations for his father’s funeral and memories of life on both sides of the U.S.–Mexico border, chronicling his father’s lifelong battle with alcoholism and the havoc it wreaked on his family.

This day, even as the audience and the writers themselves celebrated their words, we still discussed building community as we engaged in community. Getting L.Á. writers to cross county lines, share art in Orange County. Orange County writers to speak their truth. Discussing with poet and Santa Monica College professor bridgette bianca and others about how my website, Los Angeles Literature, builds community by covering the local literary community.

At Calle Cuarto Plaza, Donny Jackson and bianca also read poetry along with Whitter poet Brenda Vaca, who put together and hosted the “Magic of the Devine Feminine, Devine Masculine” reading, exploring identity, love, heartbreak and family.

In the basement of the historic Santora Arts Building, Diosa Xochiquetzalcóatl read as a part of the “No Ordinary Magic” reading, the author of A Church of My Own and Hechizera: Sus Sultry Spells, with another about to drop. Relaxed and confident behind the mike, she read poems about never giving up, causing good trouble against the systemic injustices in America. About the magic of people.

The Santora Arts Building—the iconic centerpiece of Santa Ana’s downtown Artists Village—was the perfect venue for a reading featuring four poets of color that pushed back against a country that tries to define who they are and what they do. In the building’s past, it acquired “a spirit of underground political activism and community-based arts and culture thrived in its basement,” according to the “Voice of OC.” The basement eventually “became home to a bohemian, marijuana-laced scene with regular open microphone nights that welcomed a range of performers, such as singers, sword swallowers and stand-up comedians.”

Harking back to that spirit of political activism, Benin Lemus read a richly detailed poem about the Black reality of getting an abortion as a young 20-year-old college student. The rich details about the logistics Lemus and her friends had to endure, driving hours from their college to the clinic and personally advocating for her friend receiving the abortion, along with the visual details, immediately connected the audience to the situation as if they were personally involved. Lemus’ poems have strength and confidence behind her words, especially when she picked apart injustices based on identity, immigrants in cages, family separation, while reminding us of their humanity.

Boca de Oro was smaller than last year. Fewer people walking the streets between venues, less of a cross section of local poets. Fewer music and dance performers crowding the sidewalks on their way to their performances. Earlier in the day however, on 4^th St., a group of young Chicanx from Santa Ana High passed by, decked out in traditional folklórico costumes, young women in brightly colored ruffled skirts wearing shoes with heavy clog-like heels, heading to their performance at Yost Parking Lot.

To close out the day, the Poet Laureate of Pomona, Ceasar Avelar, read outside in the Yost Parking Lot as part of Poet and Santa Ana College Professor, Donato Martinez’s reading, “The Magic and Beauty of the Urban.” Avelar spit proletariat verse in the cool air as the sun sank lower in the sky. The wind picked up from time to time.

David Alverado read poetry about the people in his hood. Brown people who make up Southside Anaheim. Alvarado reminded the audience that Anaheim is more than just Disneyland, that there are real people, living everyday lives, in the city’s neighborhoods. He spoke with the rhythm and cadence of an MC spitting lyrics, freestyling.

As Boca de Oro drew to a close—booths lined up in the parking lot taken apart, the crowd thinning—Matt Sedillo and David Romero read their spoken word infused poetry. Each read a new poem and Matt Sedillo announced his third collection of poetry will be released later in the year. Their words boomed through the surface level parking lot. Sedillo mentioned with his usual bombast and disbelief that his life has come this far, that he now has a mug made up with a picture of himself and poem he wrote printed on it. That people can purchase their own if they wish.

Once the final reading concluded, and after I introduced myself to Martinez, everyone was ready to head home.