"Good things come to those who really give a fuck."
-Ezra Letra
When La Migra Stopped Coming
By EZRA LETRA
Ezra Letra is a man of many muses: rapper, photographer, writer, director, graphic designer, producer, proud father. His work has appeared in University of Arizona Press, Red River Review, Out of the Gutter, Sugar Mule Press, & Gutter Books LLC.
Born in Queens, NY, & residing in Phoenix AZ, Ezra holds a B.A in English and Creative Writing from The University of Arizona. He is currently touring the U.S. Southwest to promote his latest musical venture: "The Nobody EP". This is Ezra's debut poetry collection.
Praise for "When La Migra Stopped Coming":
"There is no single poet, musician, MC, or night terror-stricken-mad-creator I can point out that’s able to capture the vision and reason within this volume. However, I can cast a wide net to draw into your field of vision the echoes that this wordsmith delivers, amplifies, and then exceeds as he makes his place among the strongest voices in young poetry today.
This chapbook is the birthplace of a collective awakening between hip-hop and poetry. Letra combines sharp line development without wasting a single word – or ounce of meaning."
This chapbook is the birthplace of a collective awakening between hip-hop and poetry. Letra combines sharp line development without wasting a single word – or ounce of meaning."
"Routines clung to with ritual fervour act as point de capiton and contrast with the flux of uncertainty that is life as a Colombian in the States. This is not migrant tourism. Readers, the bus has left without you. Ezra Letra’s poems do more than show what it’s like to be a migrant in a place where ambitions are big, and promises are revered long after their stomachs have been proven empty as the bubbles in a soft drink; they get inside you, your senses, organs, so that when you close this book, slight though it may appear, you’ll jump at the slam, its smell in your nostrils, taste on the back of your tongue for a generation."
-Rachel J. Fenton, writer & graphic artist
"If Junot Diaz wrote poetry it’d sound a lot like the capsule musings of Ezra Letra. Each thoughtful poem in "When La Migra Stopped Coming" reads like a migrant memory that only distance could’ve spawned. Grace amid mouse traps; the daily rituals of lit-hop life revealing an urban aftertaste in a place called Queens: “crushed into dust as our meat layer…After the feast, we played/Manhunt, religiously.” The work is a quiet testament to the hopes of a street scholar called Ezra Letra, who wipes the windshields for his readers to glean a more beautiful sight: Colombian immigrants blowing on coffee, villain vans and clipboards, empanadas on demand. Part Miguel Piñero in its heart-felt musings, part Nas in its grtty, fragmented lyricism, this debut chapbook tells the tale of generations clashing, subway cars as a kind of grinding refuge. Experiencing these ten poems is like seeing “Liberty as an exhibit,” and for new readers to Letra’s work, it will be an “invisible comfort” that sweetly resounds."
-Jamez Chang, editor @ Counterexample Poetics