Our Teeming Shores
When Earth gasps, the moon drinks
our planet’s lost energy and inches
farther and farther away. Each year,
her shine fading a shade, her pull
weakening until she might loosen
her grasp, let us go. Until she might escape
our footprints lingering for centuries,
our satellites crashing into her,
our spent rockets, dead power packs,
ultraviolet cameras, family photos wrapped
in plastic, diamond pins, golf balls, flags,
shovels, ladders, towels, boots, food
wrappers, dirty wet wipes, human ashes,
96 trash bags full of human waste.
The moon backs away inch by inch
until she might stop us from searching
for her water as ours evaporates, halt
our profitable plans to build bubbles
in her craters and mine metal and mineral,
every rare element we can extract.
Yes, each year the moon places her lips
on Earth’s mouth, draws a breath,
and slips away from the wretched
refuse of our teeming shores.
Because We Come from Everything
Because we come from everything—
from zero; from a doubt slender as a hair;
from a land of travelers, wanderers
and its geography of scars; from frayed edges
and muddy hems; from the border sealed
tight as an envelope—Meskin/Dixon/line.
Because we come from Operation Wetback,
Operation Peter Pan, Operation Gatekeeper;
floodlights, sensors, infrared spy videos,
night vision camera, topo maps, helicopters
and holding cells; from sharp shooting
goose-steppers ’round every corner;
from alien gods and alien names
and alien eyes and wild alien tongues;
from the barbed wire politics of stupidity.
Because we come from the ship
that will never dock;
from a parallel universe,
double helix, synchronized sigh,
the infinite division del secreto terrible,
the screaming sun.
Because we come from steel mill smoke
and silt slaughtering the sky;
a matchbox house beneath the shadow
of the freeway, windows so small you’d think
they were holding their breath
and roaches so big they look Pleistocene,
kids hopscotching on the sidewalk
and a dusty, unpaved road called Sal Si Puedes.
Because we come from the geometry of disaster,
schools torn down and sold for scrap,
bristled restrictions and chuco hieroglyphics,
the gash sewn back into a snarl,
crushed cigarette in a glass.
Because we come from linoleum and Formica;
from rooms boarded shut and rented to strangers
en una esquina aparte de los demás,
hole in the ceiling, kids on milk crates,
the hammerhead of responsibility,
tin plate face down on the floor.
We come from brujas, chavalas, carnales, cabrones, rucas, locas, comadres, los vatos, los perros, y los perididos, una vieja
y sus recuerdos, eternal ciphers with voices
bright as chrome. Because we come
from every cell, every follicle, every nerve,
the petals of the body, an orchid of blood, mapped birthmarks, knowing and unknowing.
Because we come from museums and waiting
rooms—hostile territory and collateral damage,
Because we come from the Out-of-Service Area,
from another bad dream, a bowl of beings.
Because we come from el Rasquache—
Tex Mex with a Brooklyn accent,
Santería Tupperware party,
magnet car-statuettes and kitsch calendar art
at the flea market, la segunda,
from the word “cachibaches,”
and la lotería—a world loaded on each back.
Because we come from everything
on top of everything; from unbending dreams
and a long line of eloquent illiterates,
the throat that must clear itself
and apologize each time it speaks—
a sound like swallowing mud.
Because we come from el camino
de la mestiza—the path of red and black ink,
from linguistic terrorism and literary archaeologists;
from each of the star’s stories.
Because we come from a green flutter,
the hummingbird’s throat;
a chorus resounding for acres.
Because we come from dichos,
cantos, cuentos; from the spoken word—
the seed of love in the darkness.
“Because We Come from Everything” is collage poem after a line by Juan Felipe Herrera. With the exception of a few conjunctions and prepositions such as “and” and “from,” which I added, all of the language in this poem was taken from works by Mexican American and Native American authors whose publications were removed from Tucson Public School classrooms when the Tucson United School District banned the district’s Mexican American Studies Program under the 2010 law HB 2281. In 2017, a federal judge declared this law unconstitutional and enacted with discriminatory intent. The vast majority of the poem’s phrases and lines were originally written by Juan Felipe Herrera, Sandra Cisneros, Caridad Svich, Luis Alberto Urrea, Gloria Anzaldúa, Lorna Dee Cervantes, Bernice Zamora, Diane Rodríguez, Luis J. Rodríguez, Evangelina Vigil-Piñón, Cherrí Moraga, Tomás Rivera, Eulalia Pérez, Culture Clash, Gina Valdés, Tino Villanueva, Joy Harjo, and Sylvia Chacón. This poem is for them.
