RGV poets
“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 guest posts by CM fellows at Letras Latinas Blog 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
*
This Feels Similar
to Something I Wrote About Eight Years Ago[1]
(but maybe
now more people care about border walls)
by Emmy Pérez
Amid
post-election talk about the need for more poetry of resistance, many of us
writers of color acknowledge that we have always been writing as resistance. I
would like to add that even when we are writing about our existence, it is an
act of resistance.
*
We
live in a country where many squirm when a minimal amount of Spanish is used, even
when a word has no English translation, like the bird chachalaca (Nahuatl~Spanish),
or more commonly when we pronounce our last names correctly outside of the
borderlands.
*
“I
don’t speak Mexican,” the seven-year-old says to the four-year-old, mimicking
the parent who said this to an adult.
*
Two
presidents ago, construction of 18-foot steel border walls and concrete “levee”-walls
began here in the Rio Grande Valley, Tejas, and continued into one president
ago.
*
The
Secure Fence Act of 2006. My definition of a fence: a thing that when climbed,
a kid’s adventure, gives a bit. These walls don’t bend.
*
Ten
years later, campaign promises to build “a” wall (as if there are none) frenzied
enough eager folks. The infamous cheerleading chant an order. The chant doesn’t
promise they’ll actually do the physical labor or pay for it.
On
the flip side, more folks are now concerned… because the words hurt, or if not
hurt, provoke. More now that we’re in the first hundred days.
Hurtful
and provocative language has made, to many, the idea of walls and the
possibility of more walls (and taller ones), more real than our existing ones
to them. We know it’s not only about walls. We also know that borderlands
communities are going to have to live (continue living) with the physical ones.
*
In
my poem “Río Grande~Bravo,” I call a wall built here eight years ago the
“concrete abstraction in front of my face.”
Existing
walls are out of sight, out of mind for many, even those who would hate them, like
nuclear weapons and dangerous pipelines.
Most
who want these walls will never touch them in satisfaction. And most who don’t
want the walls won’t touch them in anger or sadness.
Or
maybe, they will become a thing, a tourist attraction, like the satirical “Great
Wall of Mexico” poem written by Ricky Tijerina two presidential terms ago, a
piece he performed as a graduate student in a top hat like a circus-vaudeville announcer.
Without
assigned seating, how have we and do we pick our seats?
Will
we speak more openly now about the virtual or less visible walls, micro?
*
Actual
wall building: big money for contractors and entities bidding for the job as if
carrying out the will of god. (Or, “nothing personal… just business.”)
Many
workers have hungry mouths to feed: “They are making our people build it, to
keep our people out.”[2]
*
Post-election:
the national media attempts to tell the RGV’s untold stories. Still, the whole
community’s voice feels silent beyond our own local sensibilities, though the
stresses are many.
Children
here and everywhere are afraid their parents will not be home when they return
from school.
Pick
up the daily paper and witness plans to defund X, Y, Z, A, B, C… decrease taxes
for the wealthy, increase military and wall (military) spending.
*
Campaign
promise like the words of an Old Testament god. Fear it. Take it. Sacrifice,
knowing some will die.
For
what? No promise of a true heaven, even for the wealthiest elected and
appointed officials, performing morality about who deserves to live (well) and
die (sooner).
*
Activists
spend their hearts and lives. The unsung sheroes/hero~ines. Thank you. You are
hope.
*
Sometimes,
after he’d raged and puffed up his chest, that OT god would decide: you don’t
have to kill your own child after all.
If
Congress doesn’t come through with the billions, maybe we’ll have, at least on
this issue, a “loving” patriarch who reveals our final hope (as in
lottery-ticket-lucky-feelings hope) by saying: I didn’t mean a literal wall.
*
Someday,
the once loudest-mouthed border walls will emit no sound, except to those
“still possess[ing] the need to cross”[3]
them, except to borderlands residents unwilling to grow numb to them, who have allowed
for the experience of loss amid numerous other losses. Except to those everywhere
unwilling to forget the walls exist.
*
“Some
people say it will lull you / to sleep” writes Lucinda Zamora-Wiley in a 2009
border wall poem.[4]
“Comfort food / that makes your soul feel at ease— / those Mexicans won’t be
climbing / that wall—zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.”
*
(I’m willing
to beg: if more walls are built, please don’t ever forget they exist. We know
we exist. We don’t need wall supporters to know we exist. We need them to not
order walls built where we exist.)
*
2008-2009:
I cried watching the construction trucks. How do you raise children in this
hate? I thought. I had no children at the time. Most everyone’s ancestors in
the RGV are from México. Mine too. Regardless. How?
*
Amalia
Ortiz asks “… how to ignore a wall?” in a poem by the same name. The poem calls
out some of the local and global apathy: “Try risking nothing” and “Look
anywhere, but do not make direct eye contact
/ with the wall.”
The
work calls upon writers, including Latinx writers: “Tell yourself the only good
art is esoteric and / consider yourself part of the elite.” “And then when injustices
do occur, avoid / them too. Tell yourself Trayvon has nothing / to do with a
wall…”[5]
*
How
to hide walls? Place some in people’s backyards. Call others “levee-walls” and
make the tallest, exposed concrete sides face México. Don’t tell children the
truth.
*
When
the four-year-old first learned about the walls, and the plans for more, they said,
“but everything will die! The grass, the plants, the river…” The child was not
prompted to say this. “Who did this?” the child demanded. “Why?”
Even
small children know what justice is before even knowing that people crossing
will face the same dangers.
*
Anti-wall
activists make things happen, and will not give up. They need more support. I
will never stop thanking them. For giving us hope.
There
is hope in the poets, too, in their refusal to accept what has been imposed,
historically, and currently.
*
“Not a person, no.
You, border lands
You, home, you bloodied me,
swallowed me, made me”[6]
-Noemi
Martinez
*
I’d
like to propose that more poets and readers, including Latinx poets and
readers, might lend their ears to more borderlands poets from the RGV[7], the
birthplace of Gloria Anzaldúa and Américo Paredes, en la “herida abierta” where
they were raised, where the communities are quite alive and among the most
militarized.
While
some in the literary establishment (and those who internalize or work within
its values) are trying to catch a “poetry of resistance” wave in response to
the recent election, I wonder when the larger literary establishment will be ready
for the whole truth of our poetry.
*
Several
RGV poets have won book prizes, achieved various markers of literary acclaim,
and are Macondo Writers’ Workshop members and/or CantoMundo fellows (Rosebud
Ben-Oni, ire’ne lara silva, my near tocaya Emily Pérez, Octavio Quintanilla, and
Vanessa Angelica Villareal are all CantoMundo & RGV poets who live in other
regions now).
Many
RGV poets write in more than one language, or only in Spanish, with lyric power,
and directness. Thank goodness for spoken word borderland poetry, such as the
dynamic poetry of Amalia Ortiz, author of Rant.
Chant. Chisme. published by Wings Press
(she has another, Canción Cannibal
Cabaret, in the works) and
Veronica “Lady Mariposa” Sandoval, whose first poetry book is forthcoming from FlowerSong
Books, an imprint of VAO Publishing, a local press founded by poet and writer David
Bowles.
The
poem quoted earlier by Lucinda Zamora-Wiley was published in Gallery student magazine in 2009 when
she was an MFA student… somewhere else ought to feature it too.
RGV
poets are also publishing in high profile venues: José Antonio Rodríguez, the
author of three books, has a poem forthcoming in The New Yorker and prize-winning poet Rodney Gomez has recently published
in Poetry magazine. All of their
books and chapbooks are excellent.
Also
check out books by local presses: Noemi Martinez’s South Texas Experience: Love Letters (Hermana Resist Press), Erika
Garza-Johnson’s Unwoven (FlowerSong
Books), Edward Vidaurre’s Chicano Blood
Transfusion (FlowerSong Books). Or pick up a copy of the anthology Lost: Children of the River published by
the Raving Press, and edited by Gabriel H. Sánchez and Isaac Chavarria. There
are more.
The
Rio Grande Valley International Poetry Festival (VIPF) is now in its 10th
year of existence. FEIPOL (Festival Internacional de Poesía Latinoamericana) is
planning its second international poetry festival. Pasta, Poetry, and Vino is
another popular reading series. Lots more going on in the community and at the
university too. We are here.
RGV poets
*
Sometimes
a few Latina/o/x students dabbling in creative writing worry if their work is
“universal” enough, avoiding, in some cases, the painful and sometimes shameful
idea of home in the borderlands. This happens often to students of color not provided
with opportunities to study their histories and literature in their K-12 educations,
or in college unless they seek out specialized courses or later set out on
their own reading and experiential path. Resistance to writing about home is an
important part of the process. There is always hope for decolonial healing in
the future, and not only in writing about home.
The
most active poets and writers who live(d) in the RGV write about their homes (this
one and others) directly, imaginatively, with lots of love, even when they are
critical of or complicating any definitions of home. We are planning a project
to make this work more widely known. Most RGV poetry is hard earned for the
poets and essential reading for the world.
*
Emmy Pérez is the author of
With the River on Our Face (University of Arizona Press). She is
also the author of Solstice (Swan
Scythe Press). She has lived along the Texas-Mexico borderlands, from El Paso
to the Rio Grande Valley, for over 16 years. She is a recipient of a 2017 NEA
poetry fellowship and teaches creative writing and Mexican American Studies
courses.
[1] My lyric essay “Healing
and the Poetic line” (in the anthology A
Broken Thing: Poets on the Line, University of Iowa Press 2011) was written simultaneously with my
poem “Río Grande~Bravo” (With the River
on Our Face, University of Arizona Press 2016).
[2] Emi Z. as quoted in the
above publication
[3] see #1
[4] “Seeing Through It:
Reflection on the Border Wall” by Lucinda Zamora-Wiley in Gallery magazine, University of Texas Pan American, 2009.
[5] Rant. Chant. Chisme by Amalia Ortiz, Wings Press 2015.
[6] South Texas Experience: Love Letters, by Noemi Martinez, Hermana
Resist Press 2016.
[7] A brief list of some
Chicanx/Tejanx/Latinx RGV poets (raised here and/or live(d) here) with books
and/or other literary accolades: Elvia Ardalani, Amado Balderas, Nayelly
Barrios, Rosebud Ben-Oni, David Bowles, Christopher Carmona, Isaac Chavarria,
Julieta Corpus, César de León, Lauren Espinoza, Anel Flores, Odilia Galván
Rodríguez, Daniel García Ordaz, Erika Garza-Johnson, Rodney Gomez, M. Miriam
Herrera, Meliton Hinojosa, ire’ne lara silva, Rossy Evelin Lima, Noemi Martinez, Brenda Nettles
Riojas, José Antonio Rodríguez, Edna Ochoa, Octavio Quintanilla, Gabriel H. Sánchez,
Veronica “Lady Mariposa” Sandoval, Verónica
Solís, Lina Suarez, Edward Vidaurre, Vanessa Angelica Villarreal. Also my near
tocaya Emily Pérez and me. There are many more I may have missed or who haven’t
published much yet that I’d love to list, but that is part two someday.
