Black Beans and Ham Hocks
Sometimes, I feel like the ham hocks /
left in the pot of beans to soften.
Los Norteños
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.
This Is the Marrow Bone of Miguel
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.
Love Letter to My Last Name
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.
3 Poems
“You aren’t Latina,” they say to the sapling, who could have /
thrived, stretched into the sky, rooted in the cleaving of scarred parts. /
Infra-realisticamente
Guadalquivir /
se llama el río /
donde un antepasado /
(“con dudas”) se persignó /
por última vez //
descabezado. /
La casa & Post-Caliban Blues
this is not Ithaca /
this is Borikén /
and the house dwells beyond façade /
Cuando Estoy Contigo: Writing Letters to the Dead
We shared a language of sounds and one of laughter when our broken sentences in each other’s mother tongues faltered.
To Otto René Castillo
Oye, Otto. /
Siguen unos allí, sin poder hablar. /
They can’t talk. /
Skulls and bones. /
Novela
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 & Teocani and Alejandro
The floor is so cold /
she told her sobbing mother, /
my lips are blue. /
Drunk Tíos & I Used To Work at a Liquor Store
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
This Presentation Is an Invitation
For this issue we had the alegría of collaborating with a committee composed of poets, scholars, and writers. Their call for submissions ignited this issue’s sample of poetry, prose, and essays about and in American indigenous languages, and we have the fortuna of representing Pa Ipai, Tu´un Sávi, Tseltal, and Dizhsa.
Un tatuaje a la espalda
Así, en este número buscamos mostrar un poco de esta inmensa diversidad que somos, una diversidad que no ha estado exenta, como se mencionó, de sus propios procesos de invisibilización, colonización interna, estructuras racistas y otras atrocidades. Una diversidad que no han borrado, ni borrarán, todas estas instituciones y procesos que pretenden homogeneizarnos.
Zapotec Resilience: Finding Belonging In Community
Why would people do a job for free miles away for a community they no longer live in? Because we’re a community. Maybe not particularly in the land where my father, my mother, and my grandparents were born, but it doesn’t change the fact that we continue to be part of a community out here so far from our land of origin.