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  para Abuelita Neli y sus hijas

  …los que nunca sabe nadie de dónde son… los que fueron cosidos a balazos al cruzar la frontera… los eternos indocumentados…

  …the ones no one ever knows where they’re from… the ones burned by bullets when they crossed the border… the eternally undocumented…

  Roque Dalton, “Poema de amor” May 14, 1935–May 10, 1975

  Contents

  Title Page

  Note to Reader

  To Abuelita Neli

  Saguaros

  from The Book I Made with a Counselor My First Week of School

  Second Attempt Crossing

  El Salvador

  On a Dirt Road outside Oaxaca

  Cassette Tape

  To President-Elect

  Pump Water from the Well

  Instructions for My Funeral

  Montage with Mangoes, Volcano, and Flooded Streets

  The Pier of La Herradura

  Dancing in Buses

  How to Enlist

  Documentary

  ARENA

  “Don Chepe”

  Disappeared

  Rooftop

  This Was the Field

  Politics

  Aftermath

  For Israel and María de los Ángeles

  Crybaby

  Abuelita Neli’s Garden with Parakeets Named Chepito

  I Don’t Want to Speak of “Don Chepe”

  How I Learned to Walk

  Postpartum

  “Ponele Queso Bicho” Means Put Cheese on It Kid

  Then, It Was So

  Mom Responds to Her Shaming

  Alterations

  Aubade

  Prayer

  Abuelita Says Goodbye

  Let Me Try Again

  Citizenship

  San Francisco Bay and “Mt. Tam”

  Doctor’s Office First Week in This Country

  Vows

  Nocturne

  Deportation Letter

  Seeing Your Mother Again

  Exiliados

  June 10, 1999

  About the Author

  Also by Javier Zamora

  Acknowledgments

  Copyright

  Special Thanks

  To Abuelita Neli

  This is my 14th time pressing roses in fake passports

  for each year I haven’t climbed marañón trees. I’m sorry

  I’ve lied about where I was born. Today, this country

  chose its first black president. Maybe he changes things.

  I’ve told Mom I don’t want to have to choose to get married.

  You understand. Abuelita, I can’t go back and return.

  There’s no path to papers. I’ve got nothing left but dreams

  where I’m: the parakeet nest on the flor de fuego,

  the paper boats we made when streets flooded,

  or toys I buried by the foxtail ferns. ¿Do you know

  the ferns I mean? The ones we planted the first birthday

  without my parents. I’ll never be a citizen. I’ll never

  scrub clothes with pumice stones over the big cement tub

  under the almond trees. Last time you called, you said

  my old friends think that now I’m from some town

  between this bay and our estero. And that I’m a coconut:

  brown on the outside, white inside. Abuelita, please

  forgive me, but tell them they don’t know shit.

  Saguaros

  It was dusk for kilometers and bats in the lavender sky,

  like spiders when a fly is caught, began to appear.

  And there, not the promised land but barbwire and barbwire

  with nothing growing under it. I tried to fly that dusk

  after a bat said la sangre del saguaro nos seduce. Sometimes

  I wake and my throat is dry, so I drive to botanical gardens

  to search for red fruits at the top of saguaros, the ones

  at dusk I threw rocks at for the sake of hunger.

  But I never find them here. These bats speak English only.

  Sometimes in my car, that viscous red syrup

  clings to my throat and I have to pull over —

  I also scraped needles first, then carved

  those tall torsos for water, then spotlights drove me

  and thirty others dashing into paloverdes;

  green-striped trucks surrounded us and our empty bottles

  rattled. When the trucks left, a cold cell swallowed us.

  from The Book I Made with a Counselor My First Week of School

  His grandma made the best pupusas, the counselor wrote next to

  Stick-Figure Abuelita

  (I’d colored her puffy hair black with a pen).

  Earlier, Dad in his truck: “always look gringos in the eyes.”

  Mom: “never tell them everything, but smile, always smile.”

  A handful of times I’ve opened the book to see running past cacti

  from helicopters, running inside detention cells.

  Next to what might be yucca plants or a dried creek:

  Javier saw a dead coyote animal, which stank and had flies over it.

  I keep this book in an old shoebox underneath the bed. She asked in Spanish,

  I just smiled, didn’t tell her, no animal, I knew that man.

  Second Attempt Crossing

  for Chino

  In the middle of that desert that didn’t look like sand

  and sand only,

  in the middle of those acacias, whiptails, and coyotes, someone yelled

  “¡La Migra!” and everyone ran.

  In that dried creek where forty of us slept, we turned to each other,

  and you flew from my side in the dirt.

  Black-throated sparrows and dawn

  hitting the tops of mesquites.

  Against the herd of legs,

  you sprinted back toward me,

  I jumped on your shoulders,

  and we ran from the white trucks, then their guns.

  I said, “freeze Chino, ¡pará por favor!”

  So I wouldn’t touch their legs that kicked you,

  you pushed me under your chest,

  and I’ve never thanked you.

  Beautiful Chino —

  the only name I know to call you by —

  farewell your tattooed chest: the M,

  the S, the 13. Farewell

  the phone number you gave me

  when you went east to Virginia,

  and I went west to San Francisco.

  You called
twice a month,

  then your cousin said the gang you ran from

  in San Salvador

  found you in Alexandria. Farewell

  your brown arms that shielded me then,

  that shield me now, from La Migra.

  El Salvador

  Salvador, if I return on a summer day, so humid my thumb

  will clean your beard of salt, and if I touch your volcanic face,

  kiss your pumice breath, please don’t let cops say: he’s gangster.

  Don’t let gangsters say: he’s wrong barrio. Your barrios

  stain you with pollen. Every day cops and gangsters pick at you

  with their metallic beaks, and presidents, guilty.

  Dad swears he’ll never return, Mom wants to see her mom,

  and in the news: black bags, more and more of us leave.

  Parents say: don’t go; you have tattoos. It’s the law; you don’t know

  what law means there. ¿But what do they know? We don’t

  have greencards. Grandparents say: nothing happens here.

  Cousin says: here, it’s worse. Don’t come, you could be…

  Stupid Salvador, you see our black bags, our empty homes,

  our fear to say: the war has never stopped, and still you lie

  and say: I’m fine, I’m fine, but if I don’t brush Abuelita’s hair,

  wash her pots and pans, I cry. Tonight, how I wish

  you made it easier to love you, Salvador. Make it easier

  to never have to risk our lives.

  On a Dirt Road outside Oaxaca

  The Mexican never said how long.

  ¿How long? Not long. ¿How much?

  Not much. Never told us we’d hide in vans like matchsticks.

  In our town, we’d never known Mexicans

  besides the women and men in soap operas,

  so in our heads, we played the fence,

  the San Ysidro McDonald’s, a quick run, a van.

  Not long, not long at all. In Oaxaca,

  a small brown lizard licks horchata from my hand —

  we’re friends, we pick names for each other.

  Hola Paula. Hola Javier, she says.

  We play the fence, a quick run, the van…

  ¿How long? Not long. On the dirt,

  our knees tell truths to the cops’ front-sights and barrels.

  ¿How much? Not much.

  We’d never known Mexicans besides Chente,

  Chavela Vargas. We’re on the dirt

  like dogs showing nipples

  to offspring, it’s not spring,

  and we’re going to where there is spring,

  we say it’s gonna be alright,

  it’s gonna be just fine —

  my hands play with Paula.

  Cassette Tape

  A

  To cross México we’re packed in boats

  twenty aboard, eighteen hours straight to Oaxaca.

  Vomit and gasoline keep us up. At 5 a.m.

  we get to shore, we run to the trucks, cops

  rob us down the road — without handcuffs,

  our guide gets in their Ford and we know

  it’s all been planned. Not one peso left

  so we get desperate — Diosito, forgive us

  for hiding in trailers. We sleep in Nogales till

  our third try when finally I meet Papá Javi.

  »

  Mamá, you left me. Papá, you left me.

  Abuelos, I left you. Tías, I left you.

  Cousins, I’m here. Cousins, I left you.

  Tías, welcome. Abuelos, we’ll be back soon.

  Mamá, let’s return. Papá ¿por qué?

  Mamá, marry for papers. Papá, marry for papers.

  Tías, abuelos, cousins, be careful.

  I won’t marry for papers. I might marry for papers.

  I won’t be back soon. I can’t vote anywhere,

  I will etch visas on toilet paper and throw them from a lighthouse.

  «

  When I saw the coyote —

  I didn’t want to go

  but parents had already paid.

  I want to pour their sweat,

  each step they took,

  and braid a rope.

  I want that cord

  to swing us back to our terracota roof.

  No, I wanted to sleep

  in my parents’ apartment.

  B

  You don’t need more than food,

  a roof, and clothes on your back.

  I’d add Mom’s warmth, the need

  for war to stop. Too many dead

  cops, too many tattooed dead.

  ¿Does my country need more of us

  to flee with nothing but a bag?

  Corrupt cops shoot “gangsters”

  from armored cars. Javiercito,

  parents say, we’ll send for you soon.

  »

  Last night, Mom wanted to listen to “Lulu’s Mother,”

  a song she plays for the baby she babysits.

  I don’t know why this song gets to me, she said, then:

  “Ahhhh Lu-lu-lu-lu / don’t you cry / Mom-ma won’t go / a-way /

  Ahhhh Lu-lu-lu-lu / don’t you cry / Pop-pa won’t go / a-way…”

  It’s mostly other nannies in the class; it’s supposed to help

  with the babies’ speech development, she says, mijo,

  sorry for leaving. I wish I could’ve taken you to music classes.

  She reached over, crying. Mom, you can sing to me now,

  was all I could say, you can sing to me now.

  To President-Elect

  There’s no fence, there’s a tunnel, there’s a hole in the wall, yes, you think right now ¿no one’s running? Then who is it that sweats and shits their shit there for the cactus. We craved water; our piss turned the brightest yellow — I am not the only nine-year-old who has slipped my backpack under the ranchers’ fences. I’m still in that van that picked us up from “Devil’s Highway.” The white van honked three times, honks heard by German shepherds, helicopters, Migra trucks. I don’t know where the drybacks are who ran with dogs chasing after them. Correction: I do know. At night, they return to say sobreviviste bicho, sobreviviste carnal. Yes, we over-lived.

  Pump Water from the Well

  This is no shatter and stone.

  Come skip toes in my chest, Salvador.

  I’m done been the shortest shore.

  ¿And did you love all the self out of you for me?

  I want you to torch the thatch above my head.

  To be estero. To be mangroves.

  There are mornings I wake with taste of tortillas in warmed-up milk.

  There are pomegranates no one listens to.

  ¿Is this the mierda you imagined for me?

  Everywhere is war.

  The patch of dirt I pumped water from to bathe.

  Chickens, dogs, parakeets, this was my block.

  The one I want to shut off with rain.

  Where I want to plant an island.

  Barrio Guadalupe hijueputa born and bred cerote ¿qué onda?

  The most beautiful part of my barrio was stillness

  and a rustling of wings caught in the soil calling me to repair it.

  Don’t tell me I didn’t bring the estero up north where there’s none.

  I’ve walked uptown. I saw Mrs. Gringa.

  The riff between my fingers went down in whirlpools.

  Silence stills me. Pensé quedarme aquí I said.

  I don’t understand she said. From my forehead,

  the jaw of a burro, hit on the side and scraped by a lighter to wake the song

  that speaks two worlds.

  The kind of terrifying current.

  The kind of ruinous wind.

  Instructions for My Funeral

  Don’t burn me in no steel furnace, burn me

  in Abuelita’s garden. Wrap me in blue-

  white-and-blue [ a la mierda patriotismo ].


  Douse me in the cheapest gin. Whatever you do,

  don’t judge my home. Cut my bones

  with a machete till I’m finest dust

  [ wrap my pito in panties so I dream of pisar ].

  Please, no priests, no crosses, no flowers.

  Steal a flask and stash me inside. Blast music,

  dress to impress. Please be drunk

  [ miss work y pisen otra vez ].

  Bust out the drums the army strums.

  Bust out the guitars guerrilleros strummed