Mexican Standard About a Birthplace
BY JESÚS I. VALLES
Fabric scraps flailing
From her fingers, bloodied fruits,
The mesquite cries,
“¡Ay, mis hijas! ¡Ay
De mi, Llorona!” She
Begs our ghost mother
And nothing listens.
A few miles away, they find
A man’s head, far from
His body. Elsewhere,
Reporters lose their heads, too.
The headline is red
Hot, reads: Drug Gang Hangs
Beheaded Man From Over-
Pass. Another headline.
The weeping sand tires
Of being called a tomb, flower
Bed for girl flesh. Then!
Near pink paint chipping
Off rows of wooden crosses,
Ocotillo blooms
A crimson dazzle,
And all our dead sing, “I’m next!
¡Yo! ¡Sigo yo!” It’s
Summer and femurs
Murmur, “Aquí. Aquí. Here
I am, sun-bleached clean,
Watered, and buried.”
Ready to bloom into girl,
Bone hopes itself seed.
Mexican Standard About a River
BY JESÚS I. VALLES
First, I emerged rapt
In Rio Bravo, rush-wept
In my mother’s womb.
She, thick-ankled, swole
Fury, cursed the man’s weak wrists.
“¡Pinche coyote!”
The inner tube flipped
In the cold, two-named
Rio Grande; fool’s baptism.
I wed the water
As my mother sank in. I,
Inside her currents,
Did nothing to help.
Tradition. She saved herself,
Cleared across the muck,
Climbed up to meet border
And ran, laughing the length
Of their shitty line.
Later, I emerged
Blue, choked by visceral rope,
The line that fed me.
But I lived, grew.
Met my aqueous groom
Inner-tubed, often
Wet, back and forth. I,
A river’s bride at five years-
Old flipped, too. Like ‘ma
Did. Sank, Nearly drowned.
Then, emerged wrapped in her arms.
How many times are
We born? Somewhere near,
La Llorona is laughing
At me – a fat joke:
I’m a Mexican
Con llantas that cannot float.
Pinche coyote.
