A TRANSMEDIA INTERACTIVE INSTALLATION & ARTIST COLLABORATION
POEM by Darren J. de Leon
Music by DJ Rex
Digital Montage by Jacalyn Lopez Garcia
Prayer of San Andreas Fault
O’ Glorious San Andreas,
the archbishop of fault lines
enters the earthquake
of apostolicity.
We bow our heads,
run beneath the nearest arch,
post online before
your shake ends.
You were the first, San Andreas.
You will be forever St. Andrew,
second apostle,
brother of St. Peter,
fisher of men,
crucified and displayed in Patras,
recognized and followed
by the Lamb of God.
Your direction as simple as a coastland break
Point Delgada
to Point Arena,
Point Reyes,
Daly City,
and inland through Berdoo.
We shake as you sing in unity
of the striking of two plates,
a plowed lateral slip
that rocks the State.
Your protection is now called upon.
As you split ranch fences
plot new maps,
gapped for slumbered souls
left behind on desert crosses,
we ask you to protect
the quiet fisherman,
the twisted rope-makers,
humming textile workers,
dark miners,
dusty campesinos,
bloody butchers,
plump pregnant women,
gifted soul singer,
and huddled hands in hospitals.
Bless the igneous people
the locus,
the ganglion magnitude,
the inflex of grandeur,
the seismic creep,
the stirred and shaken apocalypse,
the bodily convulsion,
the throated fevered mouth,
and the earthly whooping cough.
As your fault sleep
we find your vibration foreign,
make your grumbles holy,
beatify your veins of talc,
glorify the exalted flight of angels,
consecrate your magnitude,
divine your tectonic plates.
Teach us to drop and cover,
read the Richter scale,
and surrender us to you
in water service
and canned survival.
May we learn
the lesson of the magnitudes,
and to carry thirtyfold
without complaint
so that we may
dip ourselves in the rubble
at the end
of your majestic dance.
ARTIST BIO
Darren J. de Leon is an award winning poet from San Bernardino, California. His work has appeared in various publications including New Chicano/Chicana Writings (University of Arizona Press), Word Descarga and Raza Spoken Here (Calaca Press); Cipactli, and Fourteen Hills. The Hoops and Crosses of Mt. Vernon (Hinchas Press, 2025) is his first collection of Young Adult poetry and short stories. He is co-producer of the RAMA Blueprints, Project 1521 podcasts, and co-editor of TLACUILX: Quarantined Tongues (Hinchas Poesía Press). He also founded Los Delicados, Poetas del Sol, San Francisco’s leading avant garde Latine Spoken Word ensemble. He loves mezcal and hates gasoline.
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