Mexico

When I'm that far south, the old words
molt off my skin, the feathers
of all my nervousness.
My own words somersault naturally as my name,
joyous among all those meadows: Michoacan,
Vera Cruz, Tenochtitlan, Oaxaca...
Pueblos green on the low hills
where men slap handballs below acres of maiz.
I watch and understand.
My frail body has never packed mud
or gathered in the full weight of the harvest.
Alone with the women in the adobe, I watch men,
their taut faces holding in all their youth.
This far south we are governed by the law
of the next whole meal.
We work and watch seabirds elbow their wings
in migratory ways, those mispronouncing gulls
coming south
to refuge or gameland.
I dont want to pretend I know more
and can speak all the names. I cant.
My sense of this land can only ripple through my veins
like the chant of an epic corrido..
I come from a long line of eloquent illiterates
whose history reveals what words dont say.
Our anger is our way of speaking,
the gesture is an utterance more pure than word.
We are not animals
but our senses are keen and our reflexes,
accurate punctuation.
All the knifings in a single night, low-voiced
scufflings, sirens, gunnings...
We hear them
and the poet within us bays.


Washington

I dont belong this far north.
The uncomfortable birds gawk at me.
They hem and haw from their borders in the sky.
I heard them say: Mexico is a stumbling comedy.
A loose-legged Cantinflas woman
acting with Pancho Villa drunkenness.
Last night at the tavern
this was all confirmed
in a painting of a woman: her glowing
silk skin, a halo
extending from her golden coiffure
while around her, dark-skinned men with Jap slant eyes
were drooling in a caricature of machismo.
Below it, at the bar, two Chicanas
hung at their beers. They had painted black
birds that dipped beneath their eyelids.
They were still as foam while the men
fiddled with their asses, absently;
the bubbles of their teased hair snapped
open in the forced wind of the beating fan.
there are songs in my head i could sing you
songs that could drone away
all the Mariachi bands you thought you ever heard
songs that could tell you what I know
or have learned from my people
but for that I need words
simple black nymphs between white sheets of paper
obedient words obligatory words words I steal
in the dark when no one can hear me
as pain sends seabirds south from the cold
I come north
to gather my feathers
for quills