95 Immigration poems

Bananas ripe and green, and ginger-root, Cocoa in pods and alligator pears, And tangerines and mangoes and grape fruit, Fit for the highest prize at parish fairs, Set in the window, bringing memories Of fruit-trees laden by low-singing rills, And dewy dawns, and mystical blue skies In benediction over nun-like hills. My eyes grew dim, and I could no more gaze; A wave of longing through my body swept, And, hungry for the old, familiar ways, I turned aside and bowed my head and wept.

This, we tiptoe. This, we flower in euphemism. The street has swallowed itself into border. Into railroad track. This, where the bus line ends. This, where little boys bike across curfew and into eulogy. This, where board-slapped windows domino into mansions. Runaway men into joggers. This, where Oak Park River Forest alumni rep westside, Redlands East Valley minstrels “Gangsta Day” during spirit week. This, where the grass and the quiet lull mothers to sleep. This, where your heart is not yet a restless telephone wire shackled to the ankle of every one you have ever loved after sunset. This, where the news stations tell you everything you know about what lives across your street, outside of your living room window, at the end of your driveway. This, deliberate. This, abrupt. This, sloppy stitching. Here, you are exception, urban, and articulate. The black friend that let them poke pencils through your kink that one time while you curled a trembling smile, pretending not to be token or voodoo doll, half house, half field a Susie Carmichael or Huxtable. The black family in a White House ran north and bought the plantation. This all too familiar of being someplace but not. You were raised on “twice as good.” Mama left the westside when you were two. You were raised into valley-girl accent. Your voice lost all of its skyline until you went to high school through metal detectors. You were raised on ditches and division streets. Here, where you were born before you were conceived. Here, where your cousin lives in the basement. Here is your first real boyfriend the first tongue in your mouth, and first call from the county. Here is the splintered wall your back will know. Here, where you are no bourgeois success story, just lucky enough to slip through cracks and make it to your front door each night. Here is where your ashes will be scattered. Here is your home 6 years from now. Here is your home 50 years ago. Here is your redemption skin. Your corner store. Your corner stone. Here is your Gramma’s house and dusted porcelain and stuffed bears on the living room walls. Here, where everything grows without permission. Here, where sunflowers rise from the potholes each and every summer.

Lugging my exploded home And trampling on my own name, I trek to a yearned deformation. Imperial chaos hacks flesh, Sends the unmeshed toward a Capsized horizon. They dream Of clean graphic design, houses That don’t collapse onto cribs. Invaded, the invaded invade The invaders’ kitchens and, Soon enough, bedrooms. Look, They’re invading each other. Shut up, smug face, you know Nothing of ugliness, even that Which you’ve long bankrolled.

I only recognized your hair: short, neatly combed. Our mother would’ve been proud. In the Sonoran desert your body became a slaughter- house where faith and want were stunned, hung upside down, gutted. We were taught to bring roses, to aim for the bush. Remember? You tried to pork a girl’s armpit. In Border Patrol jargon, the word for border crossers is the same whether they’re alive or dead. When I read his flesh fell off the bones, my stomach rumbled, my mouth watered. Yesterday, our mother said, “My high heels are killing me. Let’s go back to the funeral.” You were always her favorite. Slow cooking a roast melts the tough tissue between the muscle fibers; tender meat remains. Remember the time I caught you pissing on a dog? You turned away from me. In the small of your back I thought I saw a face. Split lip, broken nose. It was a mask. I yanked it from your flesh. I wear it often.

At first you'll joy to see the playful snow, Like white moths trembling on the tropic air, Or waters of the hills that softly flow Gracefully falling down a shining stair. And when the fields and streets are covered white And the wind-worried void is chilly, raw, Or underneath a spell of heat and light The cheerless frozen spots begin to thaw, Like me you'll long for home, where birds' glad song Means flowering lanes and leas and spaces dry, And tender thoughts and feelings fine and strong, Beneath a vivid silver-flecked blue sky. But oh! more than the changeless southern isles, When Spring has shed upon the earth her charm, You'll love the Northland wreathed in golden smiles By the miraculous sun turned glad and warm.

At a desk made of glass, In a glass walled-room With red airport carpet, An officer asked My father for fingerprints, And my father refused, So another offered him tea And he sipped it. The teacup Template for fingerprints. My father says, it was just Hot water with a bag. My father says, in his country, Because the earth knows The scent of history, It gave the people sage. I like my tea with sage From my mother’s garden, Next to the snapdragons She calls fishmouths Coming out for air. A remedy For stomach pains she keeps In the kitchen where She always sings. First, she is Hagar Boiling water Where tea is loosened. Then she drops In it a pinch of sage And lets it sit a while. She tells a story: The groom arrives late To his wedding Wearing only one shoe. The bride asks him About the shoe. He tells her He lost it while jumping Over a house-wall. Breaking away from soldiers. She asks: Tea with sage Or tea with mint? With sage, he says, Sweet scent, bitter tongue. She makes it, he drinks.

After Rita Dove Apá, dying is boring. To pass las horas, I carve our last name all over my body. I try to recall the taste of  Pablo’s sweat. Whiskey, no. Wet dirt, sí. I stuff  English into my mouth, spit out chingaderas. Have it your way. Home of the Whopper. Run for the border. ¡Aguas! The mirror betrayed us. It erased your face from my face. Gave me mother’s smile, narrow nariz. Once, I wore her necklace. The gold slick, obscene. God, I was beautiful. Cada noche, I sleep with dead men. The coyote was the third to die. Your money is still in his wallet. Quien engaña no gana. Apá, there’s a foto, in my bolsillo, of a skeleton shrouded in black flames: Nuestra Señora de la Santa Muerte. Patron saint of smugglers, pick- pockets, & jotos. La Flaca. Señora Negra. La Huesuda. ¡Aguas! An animal is prowling this station. It shimmies with hunger. It shimmers with thirst. To keep it away, I hurl my memories at it. Your laughter is now snagged on its fangs. Your pain now breathes inside its lungs. Taste the feeling. Siempre Coca-Cola. America’s real choice — I gathered & smashed bottles. Apá, follow the glass snaking from the barrel to a mesquite to find my body. Lips blue, skin thick with scabs. Apá, kneel in the shade, peel the scabs. Touch our last name. Solís.

Humane Borders Water Station, 2004, by Delilah Montoya Far from highways I flicker gold the whispering gasoline if  I pinch her nipples too hard no joy for her no joy for me so I practice on ticks press them just so so they give but do not burst beneath my boots thistle & puncture vine a wild horse asleep on all fours its shadow still grazing my lips black meat my tongue black meat in my backpack sardine tins saltines & a few cough drops the moon is my library there’s a glacier inside a grain of salt do you understand I’m sorry my Albanian isn’t very good tremble if  God forgets you tremble if  God remembers you out of clay I shape sparrows I glaze their bills & claws I give them names like gossamer inglenook lagoon she bathed a trumpet in milk her tenderness acoustic & plural her pupils perched in all that green there’s nudity around the corner bones cracked & iridescent sometimes it rains so hard even the moon puts on a raincoat zinc razz zinc jazz I notch my arms I notch my thighs five six days I score my skin but not the back of my knees two ovals two portraits my son at ten his eyes ablaze my son at one his eyes shut once I dressed him in burlap once bicycles & marbles once I tore rain out of a parable to strike down his thirst

they clapped when we landed thinking africa was just an extension of the black world they smiled as we taxied home to be met black to black face not understanding africans lack color prejudice they rushed to declare cigarettes, money, allegiance to the mother land not knowing despite having read fanon and davenport hearing all of j.h. clarke’s lectures, supporting nkrumah in ghana and nigeria in the war that there was once a tribe called afro-americans that populated the whole of africa they stopped running when they learned the packages on the women’s heads were heavy and that babies didn’t cry and disease is uncomfortable and that villages are fun only because you knew the feel of good leather on good pavement they cried when they saw mercedes benz were as common in lagos as volkswagens are in berlin they shook their heads when they understood there was no difference between the french and the english and the americans and the afro-americans or the tribe next door or the country across the border they were exasperated when they heard sly and the family stone in francophone africa and they finally smiled when little boys who spoke no western tongue said “james brown” with reverence they brought out their cameras and bought out africa’s drums when they finally realized that they are strangers all over and love is only and always about the lover not the beloved they marveled at the beauty of the people and the richness of the land knowing they could never possess either they clapped when they took off for home despite the dead dream they saw a free future

the wind hits and returns     it is easy to personify a new place and language,     but the new body stings these men with green eyelids, drawing their worth, it was rumoured, from Egypt, knew the work is part of it     a power arrived at the same thirst he borrowed a head for a day but which head     the phrases tremble in the other mouth    it is true and false     the veil of her face, an old porcelain, not for the hand to comfort     she moved beyond the sop one gave for affection    ‘My success has been to keep duty and love alive’    she said her hand waved with the power of disease      Sophia Nichols of the orchards, the deserts, the flooded ponds and games wherein the moon sought our feet died with a mouth full of tumour      it is true and false   the moon flowers  ( that is Blake talking ) tonight it is the half blossom and the stars too above this mud are from the other mouth     this city untouched     the streets, Hotel Lyric have a foreignness, a place outside a window     a sound of bees pulling the lilac     above cement this wonder ( the other mouth ) that crickets were men once who so loved the muses they forgot to eat     now fed on thistles, the language must sting    the flesh turn to a dew ( the other mouth ) the loss,    some glistening blood on the leaves of the mirror plant    Sophia Nichols of the story, the goldenrod, of the snake that entered the cage and ate the captured sparrows, the telegraph keys, pale yellow paper,     of the Odyssey and the homing stories of the soul,     the sea imaginary, light and foaming green on the rocks  dark further out as the eye of the cat if she would be free from words, she would free me   even in the night there are birds summoned by words