The man on TV digs another hole in an unkempt yard.
The teens approaching avert their eyes
from the owl on the eaves of the porch.
It's a clear day, and they're here for help.
Teach us how to fight, they say.
He puts down the shovel.
He'll do it, he says,
for a ride into town & $30.
I'm watching, stretched out again, exhausted from
reading & thinking. The kids are happy & on their own,
doing homework, gaming, playing with the dog. They'll learn
enough to leave me alone for good one day, making their own ways.
May they be safe, & smart. May they know when to return.
And may I have the strength & wisdom they need.
Sonnet inspired by Reservation Dogs S1:E3.
Remembering is an act of will & an act of
hope. You choose a beginning & call it
the beginning, as if that was how it should've
been. You edit, choosing the highlight,
ignoring the tedious realistic details,
pulling into high relief the what of
way back when. What excites or appalls,
a movie always on cue, quickly on or off.
So don't forget the routes he ran in the street,
don't forget the smell of his baby sweat,
don't forget when she learned to act.
And let them grow away from the path
they struggled with once, help them with
the terror & the freedom of their own growth.
These are songs of praise, songs of belonging, songs of family, faith, & joy. Of all the blessings of being born to my people, of all the blessings of having a personal compass pointing south, I am blessed to have been raised with the Virgen de Guadalupe in my life.
I’ve heard the jokes about how frequently she appears in the most unlikely places (tattooed arms, back windows of trucks, miraculous tortillas, etc. etc.), and I’ve probably laughed at a few of them. What’s no joke, though, is being raised to know where you belong, to know where to turn, and to know that when things are difficult, there is a lady full of love who will ruega por nosotros (that is, who will pray / beg for us).
The first piece is about the Virgen pendant I got for my thirteenth birthday. The second is about a life of stages of faith & doubt, but a life where the Virgen endured as a light & an example.
Ave Maria. Por vida.
VIRGEN.
On my thirteenth birthday, we crossed the border. Starched guayaberas
& dress slacks, shined shoes reflecting the high summer sun.
As often happened when we were down in the valley,
we occupied an entire room to feed the extended family.
Passing elote stands & kids selling chiclets, a neighborhood dusty
& busy. In Miguel Alemán, we were comfortable but conspicuous.
Clearly there for the day. A luxurious & easy crossing,
lower prices & local color. We took up the whole
sidewalk, loudly, happily. My gran'pa paid for the whole thing,
including this Virgen I wear still. "Mi'jo, que dios te bendiga."
AVE MARIA.
Before I grew into doubt & anger, disappointment & disgust
with the church, I prayed daily to
Virgin Mary.
She was calm & beautiful, her pain serene,
not a crown of
thorns.
Let it be done to me--disarming
service & bodily yielding, faithful, maternal & beautiful,
clothed in the stars & sky, atop the moon.
Pray for me, Mary. I will be good.
*******
This blog post is part of the #31DaysIBPOC Blog Series, a month-long movement to feature the voices of indigenous and teachers of color as writers and scholars. "Virgen" arose from an exercise with students--one memory, ten lines, ten words each; "Ave Maria" from another exercise--one object, ten lines, line length depending on the digits in your phone number. That is, if your area code is 214, line one is two words long, line two is one word long, and line three is four words long, etc. Here's a thing I wrote for the series a few years ago. Please CLICK HERE to read yesterday’s blog post by Agnes Lopez. Please CLICK HERE to be uplifted by the rest of the blog series.
This is the place it happened. It was here.
The two of them in someone else's nice neighborhood,
walking down the steps to the water. The young man kneels.
This is the place it happened. It was here.
The young woman smiles & cries. She says yes.
They hug & kiss. They make each other a pledge.
This is the place it happened. It was here.
Soon everyone will know they're in it for good, for life.
This draft has two inspirations. The first is Joshua Mehigan's "The Crossroads", a perfect triolet from which I borrowed the first line. The other is Yi-Fu Tuan, who reshaped the way I think of space & place. My then-girlfriend & I had designed just the right engagement ring for her, for this moment. The jeweler finished it a week early, and we both rushed to the store to make sure it was just right. Then I drove to this spot, a nice neighborhood where we used to walk, in Dallas. We both woke up that morning not knowing that today would be the day we got engaged.
When I learned about love,
I was on my knees,
praying for mercy & wisdom.
I believed what they said:
G-d listened, and G-d cared.
I grew to love myself,
to open my heart (late).
The right girl found me
and waited, and led me
to believe again, believe anew.
The challenge for this one, I think, was to stick to five-line stanzas or five words in each line. Every time I write about my wife, I’m tempted to use that image above..
There are certain items in my parents’ house that are downright totemic.
On a shelf in their study, an official US Post Office scale from the 40s, its elegant detailed dial stilled after decades of bearing & measuring the heft of countless packages, ounce by ounce. My grandfather’s–my dad’s dad.
Under the bar connecting the kitchen to the living room, an iron & smoothed wood sewing machine with a still working foot pedal from the 30s, a real conversation piece. Miles of fabric have burnished the metal guide brackets to a crisp silver gleam. My grandfather’s–my mom’s dad.
Two men, fifteen miles apart their entire lives. Lives of honest work with their hands, with these tools. Work the town depended on, where everyone knew everyone by first name. Generations along those dusty Starr County streets.
And then there’s mom’s molcajete.
Boutique kitchen shops sell the smooth white marble variety, a device better suited to a medieval apothecary than a Mexican kitchen. They call it a mortar & pestle. We call it a molcajete, although technically it’s supposed to be called a molcajete (the bowl) and a tecolote (the grinder). I’m not going to call it that–we never did, never will.
People walk by the molcajete there on the kitchen island. (What a lovely word for this space in our homes–island. I don’t know what they call it in other languages in other homes. This spot that isn’t the fire, isn’t the water of the kitchen. An island of food in the ocean of family, an island of fecundity & fellowship.)
On the kitchen island, a squat rough small volcanic thing. Look close & I’d swear you can see remnants that can never be ground or washed out. Maybe a sharp corner of anise or an eyelash-thin thread of a garlic peel. The pepper pops under her strong loving hand, leaning her whole body into the rotating motion–deep from her shoulder through the palm of her hand, willing the pieces unmeasured into perfect proportion. Decades & generations of family later, everything she creates is always just right.
The rice begins to steam. Mid-conversation, mid-instructions to my father, she sidesteps from island to flame, scraping the pasty earthiness into the pan. A quick stir and then back to the sink. A tablespoon of water to eke out the last little bit before the onions & peppers get sliced and added. My sister & I argue over the rice that gets overdone at the bottom of the pan, the rice that peels off the rest like its own thin rich bloodbrown cake of flavor & motherly love. (She overcooks it deliberately now. Just for us.)
And after dinner, it sits where it began, a low peak on the center of her island. Pockmarked & uneven, blackened & alive, fragrant with the subtlest power.
You'll be tempted to (you'll need to) talk to others.
They'll be tempted to ratify what has happened.
They'll tell you what was wrong, what was not worth loving.
They'll remind you of all the bad times--ignore them.
Take this time to do what seems the least natural:
Make sacred the things that always were (are) sacred.
Curate & cherish what it was like to love her.
You'll have nothing but time for anger if you choose.
Choose instead memories that water your dry heart.
Thanks to Ruben Quesada for the guidance & the challenge of writing a paragraph on heartbreak, and then making each sentence an Alexandrine. The image is Josef Sudek's The Window of My Studio.
After covid, this must feel so different, the
block schedule, getting off zoom & back in the
classroom. He's so happy when he
does his work once it's assigned. We
expect that he'll have some late nights--but for school.
Free period he plays chess in the locker room? I mean, his
grades are strong, his attitude is good, and we're
happy for him. He should be proud.
In a few months, though,
Joel, he needs to
know that it's high gear time. Who will write his
letter when all they see is him playing chess? Her
mother & I are proud of her grades, but
now is the time to find an office
or club or something to show she took on a
pinnacle experience somewhere. Find it
quick, but make sure it's a thing you love ...
robotics or service or an AP ...
something you really love. It's
time to step up. Colleges &
universities are looking. When's your first college
visit? I just don't know
what we should be doing. There's no
excuses anymore--you're not a freshman.
You are a gift to us, Mr. Gar-
za. Have a great day.
I haven’t been great about keeping track of reading, or maybe I just need to reconcile myself to a method unlike my old one. Here goes some quick takes:
I’ve read a lot of memoir, and I’ve read a lot of border stories. And I’m still certain that I’ve never read anything like Javier Zamora’s Solito. I’ve taught excerpts from Unaccompanied, Zamora’s debut poetry collection, which focuses in parts on his journey north to join his parents already living & working in the United States. Solito, however, is a painstaking recreation of that journey, complete with near-crossings, re-crossings, various groups & safe houses & coyotes along the way. Short of walking the terrain oneself or experiencing Alejandro G. Iñárritu’s immersive artwork Carne y Arena, nothing will quite capture what you thought you knew of a border crossing quite like Solito will. Most importantly, how (despite the title) this is a shared experience, with collaborators & family members, with migrants & guides, all burdened with the same hope & fear, exhilaration & despair, fatigue & worry. Zamora animates & ennobles his memoir with the true account of three fellow travelers who became a kind of surrogate family. Truly unforgettable.
I am late to Louise Erdrich, and I began with Future Home of the Living God, a patient and engrossing novel (though not one as widely lauded as some of her others). It tells a story of unexplained social disintegration & the kind of grassroots fascism that grows most quickly & takes deep root during social unrest. The novel is narrated by Cedar Hawk Songmaker, the adopted daughter of a pair of big-hearted, open-minded Minneapolis liberals, and Erdrich stick to Cedar’s very limited first-person POV. We don’t know what exactly has happened to chickens & ducks, why archaeopteryx have returned, why Black & brown people are disappearing, why exactly pregnant women are feared, rounded up, & euthanized / punished / killed–but we do know that Cedar, pregnant with her first child, is being hidden & hunted. Erdrich makes believable to quick shift from neighbor to willing executioner, from life as normal to life or death. It’s a novel that satisfies more on the emotional (& at times spiritual) than social commentary level.
As Long as the Lemon Trees Grow by Zoulfa Katouh is a harrowing & haunting novel. Set in contemporary Syria, it blends stark realism with trauma-induced dreamworlds, the political horrors of war with the bodily sufferings of its victims, the rubble & unrest of Syria with the heart & hope of its people. Katouh focuses on Salama Kassab, a pharmacy student who has–through necessity–becoming something of a nurse, a doctor, a counselor … whatever is needed at the hospital at the time. While treating a young girl, she reconnects with the patient’s older brother, an activist via YouTube video and her near-match for an arranged marriage before the war undoes everything. It is a long look at a war still raging, one that slipped the attention of many Americans, due to events in Ukraine. In any time, it would be a necessary look at maintaining one’s humanity (not one’s moral perfection) in the worst of times.
I audiobook-read & loved Angeline Boulley’s YA thriller The Firekeeper’s Daughter. And I’d highly recommend the audiobook here, due to Isabella Star LaBlanc’s authentic & tasteful narration. Around the same time, I read an advance copy of Jas Hemond’s YA romance / suspense story We Deserve Monuments. It’s the rare novel that gets the messiness of family right and the messiness of young love right and the liminal spaces of American identity & ethnic / racial identity and the richness & sanctity of ceremony right. These two novels get all of it right in ways that any reader would love, including those skeptical of YA (like I used to be).
what lies beneath
illumines what's above
diaphanous weight
a statue baptised
the bracelet
a shining silver choice
the depths indistinct
no stones no plants
she is alone
and elegantly
out of place
ennobling what holds her
her body is not at rest
toes spread arms drifting
maybe we're all suspended
and safe, floating
facing what's above
listening to the depths
middleagedmiddlechild. 