Sadness hits first when this memory comes to me, the same as when I heard his words that day. For me to inherit all this, he would have to die. I didn’t want to think about that then. I don’t like remembering now. But this is the circle of life for us Norteños.
Then he announced and repeated to anyone who would listen, anyone who could hear that he was there to save the one who wanted to be saved, the one who escaped before becoming rock in that cloistered village, where the land scorches like burning embers.
Ethnicity is a story. I thought ours was fading into nothing, but there is always a stranger who sees you on me and pokes a hole in the dam.
“You aren’t Latina,” they say to the sapling, who could have /
thrived, stretched into the sky, rooted in the cleaving of scarred parts. /
Guadalquivir /
se llama el río /
donde un antepasado /
(“con dudas”) se persignó /
por última vez //
descabezado. /
this is not Ithaca /
this is Borikén /
and the house dwells beyond façade /
We shared a language of sounds and one of laughter when our broken sentences in each other’s mother tongues faltered.
Oye, Otto. /
Siguen unos allí, sin poder hablar. /
They can’t talk. /
Skulls and bones. /
I hadn’t the strength to put it away, I hadn’t the strength to do anything with any of her things, except pack and place them all in the living room. The small ornaments, her sandals, her ugly old television. Her life. I wasn’t ready to let her go.
The floor is so cold /
she told her sobbing mother, /
my lips are blue. /
The first bitter taste of alcohol /
burns their throat /
but slides like honey /
they listen to some old Spanish songs that crack from muffled speakers /
of their old, beat-up Silverado in their driveway
