Some of the Light, page 4
Used to be that I daydreamed
in a narrow canoe
on the floral waters of Xochimilco,
back when bees congregated in wax cathedrals
& lit veladoras
until military blew ’em out.
In Tajik teahouses I enter
the kitchen in search
of the brew master,
slicing ginger thin, cardamom in molcajete,
because he is my father,
from the forgotten green of
Michoácan,
dressed in worn jeans
& baseball cap that reads Cruz Azul,
blew across Nogales
in a canteen of cactus pulp,
a Swiss wristwatch
set to Mountain Time,
arrived in a Colorado tavern
near Raton Pass
in search of The Buffalo
and wound up a Sherpa
for the gringos who paid cash
to free climb the Grand Teton.
It’s true—
I empathize
with the crime of wire
twisted & left to corrugate
& take blame for delineations
only man conjures.
I am the bastard child you left
hunkered on a coffee can
—I’ll say
promised you’d send for me in a year,
dummied up the papers
and sold them in Greeley
to the cousin of a meat packer
snatched up in an ICE sting
—I’ll say
I’m the meat forgotten
turning rancid
in Tombstone Park
—I’ll say
among the pollos
whose eyes still see
long after the legs
have run off with the body
—Don’t ask if
I’m illegal
the forgotten son,
heartbreak of Olmec proportions,
I am the one who bought out all the intestines
and monopolized the industry
of underground roach-coaches,
this in the millennium summer,
it’s true, no money was ever exchanged
I performed the disembowelment
ceremony with my own two hands,
the paper mistook it for a crop circle
but it was an old Nahuatl joke.
Now I’ve got a sitcom
each week a million faces dial in faithfully
because they know that come Sweeps Week
after the PBS fund drive
& before the State of the Union
we fast in the New Moon
—or was this Ramadan?
I have visited the great stupa
looking to mend the wounds
that I’ve carried since conception
about a miracle boy,
born on the wrong side of Orion,
seeking answers to the suffering
synonymous with joy—
I am nothing but a campesino child,
a brown lotus
of this post-millennial borderland called t/error.
I was in Afghanistan when the first bomb dropped,
from an obscure bath house
I counted down the Year of the Fire Pig,
the day was a code orange
when the Spanish subway imploded,
I was prostrating in the bed of an El Camino
on the outskirts of Coachella
onion sheers by my side.
I’ve traveled the world
believe me when I tell you
it’s all the same.
I was mustard gassed in a Paris train station,
mistook for Moroccan,
it was World Cup season after all
and the canines were in full regalia.
A friend once told me to never turn my back on the dogs
so everywhere I go now
I do so in reverse—
This is how I’ll remember
the ghost waters of the San Joaquin River
fading
How I will remember
Chautauqua Park,
kneeling out beyond the Great Plains
in devotional pose
fading
How I will remember
the still egret standing
in the awful silence of snow
fading
How I will remember
your rough hands combing the vortex
of hair above my scalp,
a penetrable wall,
through which our dreams were visible,
everything about us
fading
11.11.20
The spike in numbers reads like a barometer
of our will to survive. Today we are up
813 bodies. Yesterday it was 1,600.
Rise and fall with the red line. We oscillate.
I hate my life. I love my life. They are one in the same.
Still, sides are being chosen. How far we have slipped
is measured by the number of conversations we have
with ourselves. But what can I do about this?
You can cry.
But is crying enough?
Have you ever cried out loud,
in public, before?
I have.
But did you track the journey of your
tears?
Yes, I did. I did.
Did you taste the salt?
Ask questions of it?
Excuse me?
If you haven’t cried like this,
then you haven’t cried hard enough.
An unexamined cry is not worth its salt.
Remember this.
HER MAJESTY’S LAST STAND
For Toñita Morales, Yolanda Leyva, David Dorado Romo, Veronica Carbajal, Paso Del Sur, and my great-grandmother Nicolasa Flores
We call it Duranguito,
We callit’s two steps
from the port of entry—
The Birthplace of El Paso
it is said, leads
to a dead end,
a duel, West Texas style,
between history
and progress,
now corralled by tornado
fence and adobe
fence amounds, busted brick memories
lost on the dollar—
Where once
newspapers reported
of Amazon women
leading a revolt
in Juárez bathhouses,
broken beer bottles
brokeand civil disobedience,
broken beer bwhere the ghost of 17-year-old
brokeCarmelita Torres
still rises
brokein fumigation mist,
blankets over Overland Street—
Where in the Villa years,
atop hotels, war voyeurs,
sipped tea, and witnessed
revolution, if mortar could talk,
if bone and stone
could bellow
Cucurrucucú Paloma
to coax white Jesus
down from brown Cristo Rey,
he would no doubt
he would no dfind his way
he woulto Doña Tonita’s blue sidewalk
he would nbench, pecked clean
he woby filial pigeons,
he would no dand bow to kiss
he wothe holiness of her
he would no doubtmajesty’s last stand—
This is what exists
he would no doubtin the air above Duranguito,
he woif place holds memory,
he would nothen Toñita’s trembling hands
are the unrecorded
testimonies of the incarcerated
children whose artwork
lines her street—
Alone, she towers,
maybe five feet
maynothing unassuming
the solitary white
haired Doña, overshadowing
the statue of Oñate’s
castrated horse, sweeping
dust from her home,
which is this neighborhood,
which is your neighborhood too,
until it isn’t—
But you’ve heard this story before—
But you’ve hold woman,
stands up
But you’ve heardto greedy oligarchs,
Butguardian of gutted
But you’ve hebuildings, matriarch
Butof crumbling matter,
protests come and go,
no suit wants to be
the one to break her
before the cameras,
so she goes on,
outliving the story,
with one good eye,
fifteen feral cats,
and her slow broom,
night after night,
ushering all the dirt
of the city
back into the light.
VARIATIONS ON THIS LAND
This land is your land,
this land is Comanche land,
Mescalero Apache land,
Coahuiltecan land, my ancestors—
bent to build the Alamo, then slaughtered
and buried beneath it, risen again, to be forgotten,
now a river to be walked upon, treaded by tourists,
on a mission, who find San Antonio a city
with two thighs, good only for entering and exiting.
This land is my grandfather’s land
whipped to suffer his color in the cumin air,
to erase that he ever loved, the way only a brown boy
can love Brownsville, beneath oil derricks
and sugarcane horizons, and fields
of afterthought, a cluster of cancerous
lovers in the wake of red dust, and pickup truck
envy, never again, this land, never—
This Land looks better in the rearview,
better under night’s speckled eye,
better in the black sputum
of its horny oceanic spills, better under
the fog of hurricanes, or the distant plano-myth
of its own romantic promise, this land
is your Matanza land, your prideful legacy
of mounted Rangers by dawn’s zealot light land,
mass unmarked graves, and tales of a nascent Amerika
on the come up, your Corpse of Christ land,
that tore the tongue from my grandmother’s
tender jaw, this is your inheritance, not the land
but the stories of land, this land is your prideful misnomer,
keep this land, bury yourself here, deep in the heart
of your taxidermied glory, of your nostalgic West,
no amount of sermons from your mega-preachers
can undo how vast hexes span.
12.14.20
We have lost
the parents of 545
caged children—
yet, 5G towers
are all the rage.
But can they track down
the families?
We micro-chipped
a monarch butterfly,
and traced it down
to a single tree bough
in Bolivia.
Just yesterday,
NASA’s Perseverance Rover
was tasked with locating
ancient microbial life
on Mars—
but we can’t locate
non-ancient
human life
on earth?
We must remember this.
REFRACTION #6
There Are 14,000 Starlings
in flight right now, a murmuration no one will ever see.
There are 14,000 rumors still hanging
in the DNA of your fingernail.ging
There are 280,000 children’s teeth to be brushed,
at least 7,000 will fall out.ging
So many crayons will ignore the lines in a coloring book.
Children in or outside of detention don’t color in the lines.
There are 28,000 eyeballs blinking at you.
There, in the center of you, a child is suppressing
their own laughter.ging
Now, there are only so many days a child
can legally be detained—it’s your turn.ging
As you read this 2,000 of the 14,000 children are still
locked inside the screw.ging
In Tornillo, Texas, the children spend weeks writing
heartfelt letters to a dumpster.ging
While my son, Salvador, is playing Xbox and salivating
in high-definition.ging
And I can play Bob Dylan on repeat and never think twice.
Now I am home, and no amount of words can pick a lock.
Nothing is alright.
SLEEPLESS NIGHTS (THICH NHAT HANH IS DYING)
For Margarita Luna Robles & Juan Felipe Herrera,
Mayela Padilla, Reed Bye, Bobby Byrd (RIP), and Keith Abbott (RIP)
I.
It is Thursday, March 21, 2019,
and Thich Nhat Hanh is dying.
It rained last night and I missed it.
I awoke to two puddles at my doorstep,
and spent the day looking down
to the heavens. My children are in California
again, visiting their mother, and the job now
is to make a good salad—that’s it.
I’m considering quitting meat for good, seriously.
Thich Nhat Hanh is dying. I heard he went
back to Vietnam, where his family was killed.
I could never again return to live in Visalia,
where I have had family killed.
Visalia killed Virgil. I’m over it. I am.
But I’m not going back. Visalia is not Vietnam,
I know. And I am not Thich Nhat Hanh.
El Paso is a lonely city. So was Boulder.
At least there were trails to keep me found.
I am lost without a trail.
A woman once told me that in my weakness
I am most strong. I still can’t grasp
what that even means. Perhaps I’m not
as weak as she thinks.
II.
It is now Saturday, October 5, 2019,
and I am 45 years old again, and I don’t remember
having to clip my fingernails this frequently.
How is it that some bones never give up?
And what is this need to rid myself in tiny ways?
Look at me, so existential at 8:50 a.m.
I quit hallucinating long ago.
I still can’t shake the insight. I found something
holy there, and it refuses to let go.
As I’ve said at least once before, it’s suddenly
9:47 p.m., and I am sitting in my truck,
parked in our driveway, Ringold Road,
Texas, planet earth, one galaxy or another,
so what? Thich Nhat Hanh is dying.
III.
While studying at Naropa University,
I took a brushstroke class with Keith Abbott.
My tablemate was a kid named Justin.
We dipped our brushes in the same ink.
Laughed at our clumsy hands. Shared rice paper.
Championed one another’s feeble attempts.
This is mū.
This means is.
This is is-ness.
Circular stroke.
Ensō.
Means I am here
was here
am here
returning.
Around this time, my grandfather had just died,
and I got stuck in California. I documented
his last words: Return the lawnmower to the neighbor.
He only wanted to do right by people.
When I returned to class, I was told that Justin
would not be returning. In that brief time
I stepped away he had taken his own life.
Justin knew nothing about Vietnam.
Neither did I. And now Keith Abbott is dead too.
This is mū.
It means without.
IV.
Today is February 2, 2020, and I cannot help
but remember Justin, or Keith, or my grandfather,
and that somewhere in Vietnam, Thich Nhat Hanh
is dying. It scares me, to be without. I know Vietnam
is not Visalia. Though people have fled it all the same.
I’m still in exile from who I was in those years.
I’ll never return if I can get away with it.
As a young man I considered taking my own life,
genuinely felt it was a benevolent option.
I thought I had lived enough life
to feel complete. It’s true.
And just like that it is April again, and they tell me
it is the one year anniversary of the great fire
at the Cathedral of Notre Dame. So what. Somewhere
in heaven Thích Quảng Đức is still kneeling
in contemplation. You weren’t even born yet.
Nor was I. Things burn up every day,
doesn’t mean we get to shine.
V.
It is now exactly 7:00 p.m.
May 18, 2020,
and Thich Nhat Hanh is somewhere,
at this very moment dying,
and I am frightened
at the thought of it.
When he goes who then will hold up
that part of my life?
You’ve got God.
I’ve got glue.
You’ve got job security.
I’ve got faith.
You’ve got good looks.
I’ve got seven prayers
still unanswered.
VI.
Today is Saturday, June 15,
in the Year of the Rat,
and I am reminded of what he said:
We are only a continuation.
We do not die.
We carry on.
If so, then this poem could very well
have been the butterfly that we found
perched on the concrete of our porch
yesterday morning. We fed it water
from a blue cup. It sipped
with its proboscis. The unraveling
is a tricky thing. They call it
reincarnation—but how can we be sure
that isn’t just nostalgia
coming back to bite us?
VII.
There are enough anniversaries
to go around. It is now August 3, 2020,
and they are asking us to remember—
Walmart was shot up this day a year ago,
while you were busy writing poems.
23 lives taken—
while you were busy repairing busted sinks.
One of them just a kid—
