“Because We Come from Everything: Poetry & Migration” is the first public offering of the newly formed Poetry Coalition—twenty-two organizations dedicated to working together to promote the value poets bring to our culture and communities, as well as the important contributions poetry makes in the lives of people of all ages and backgrounds.
During the month of March, coalition members CantoMundo and Letras Latinas are partnering to present posts by CM fellows that will include essays, creative non-fiction, micro reviews and dialogues between writers. This year’s theme borrows a line from U.S. Poet Laureate Juan Felipe Herrera’s poem, “Borderbus.” Please return to this space and enjoy all the pieces in the series, and leave comments to participate in the dialogue.
Barbara Curiel, CantoMundo
Francisco Aragón, Letras Latinas
Micro-review:
Manuel Paul López, The Yearning Feed, University
of Notre Dame Press, 2013
by
Sheryl Luna
Much of Manuel Paul López’s The Yearning Feed (University
of Notre Dame Press) is written with sharp colloquial language. Lopez often
utilizes slang and Spanish. This is true of the long poem titled “The Xoco
Letters” which opens with an angry letter that states:
“OPEN SEASON’ on “ANYONE” coming across
the border. …Maybe a few transgressors littering the desert floor with gaping bullet
wounds through their heads will force change in your homeland.
The
long poem also includes Yelp Reviews about “not spicy chicken caldos for the
kiddos” or customers being surprised that “tortas” are actually sandwiches. The
restaurant being evaluated is called XOCO.
The
many letters in the poem’s sections are written to “Xoco.” Here’s are some
examples:
Xoco, I’m
obsessed with numbers, statistics, and the diminishing
half-life
of each new story that announces another nameless immi-
grant who
died crossing the desert.
Xoco,
Since volunteering with the Border
Angels, I’ve witnessed two water
tanks slashed. One near Jacumba was
contaminated with urine. Who
would do such a thing, Xoco? Xoco,
there is only one thing as unfor-
giving, and that is thirst.
Also, a
listing of undocumented migrants buried in Holtsville cemetery is presented,
along with some compassionate words from some of the Border Angels.
Later he
incorporates a passage from The Devil’s Highway by Luis Alberto Urrea,
“Getting bodies,” in Border Patrol
lingo, didn’t necessarily mean
collecting corpses. Bodies were
living people. “Bodies” was one of
the many names for them. Illegal aliens,
dying of thirst more often
than not, are called “wets” by
agents.” . . .
"Wets” are
also called “tonks,” but the Border Patrol
tries hard
to keep that bon mot from civilians. It’s a nasty habit in
the ranks.
Only a fellow border cop could appreciate the humor of
calling
people a name based on the stark sound of a flashlight break-
ing over a
human head.
The
lengthy poem is a migration between cultures, between callousness and empathy,
between denial and reality.
Sheryl Luna
is the author of Pity the Drowned Horses (University of Notre Dame
Press), recipient of the Andres Montoya Poetry Prize and Seven (3: A
Taos Press), finalist for the Colorado Book Award. Recent work has
appeared in Poetry, Saranac Review, Pilgrimage and Taos International
Journal of Poetry and Art.
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