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Arizona Lamentations by Luis Alberto Urrea

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Arizona Lamentations by Luis Alberto Urrea

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Arizona Lamentation by Luis Alberto Urrea

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The truth is, I've never cared for the National

Anthem. If you think about it, it's not a good

song. Too high for most of us with "the rockets

red glare" and then there are the bombs.

(Always, always, there is war and bombs.)

Once, I sang it at homecoming and threw

even the tenacious high school band off key.

But the song didn't mean anything, just a call

to the field, something to get through before

the pummeling of youth. And what of the stanzas

we never sing, the third that mentions "no refuge

could save the hireling and the slave"? Perhaps,

the truth is, every song of this country

has an unsung third stanza, something brutal

snaking underneath us as we blindly sing

the high notes with a beer sloshing in the stands

hoping our team wins. Don't get me wrong, I do

like the flag, how it undulates in the wind

like water, elemental, and best when it's humbled,

brought to its knees, clung to by someone who

has lost everything, when it's not a weapon,

when it flickers, when it folds up so perfectly

you can keep it until it's needed, until you can

love it again, until the song in your mouth feels

like sustenance, a song where the notes are sung

by even the ageless woods, the short-grass plains,

the Red River Gorge, the fistful of land left

unpoisoned, that song that's our birthright,

that's sung in silence when it's too hard to go on,

that sounds like someone's rough fingers weaving

into another's, that sounds like a match being lit

in an endless cave, the song that says my bones

are your bones, and your bones are my bones,

and isn't that enough?

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A New National Anthem by Ada Limón | Poetry Foundation

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The truth is, I've never cared for the National Anthem. If you think about it, it's not a good song. Too high for most of us with "the rockets red glare" and then there are the bombs. (Always, always, there is war and bombs.)

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Do Not Go into the Library by Alberto Rios

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Do Not Go into the Library by Alberto Rios

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We live in secret cities
And we travel unmapped roads.

We speak words between us that we recognize
But which cannot be looked up.

They are our words.
They come from very far inside our mouths.

You and I, we are the secret citizens of the city
Inside us, and inside us

There go all the cars we have driven
And seen, there are all the people

We know and have known, there
Are all the places that are

But which used to be as well. This is where
They went. They did not disappear.

We each take a piece
Through the eye and through the ear.

It's loud inside us, in there, and when we speak
In the outside world

We have to hope that some of that sound
Does not come out, that an arm

Not reach out
In place of the tongue.

  In Mexico and Latin America, celebrating one's   Saint's day instead of one's birthday is common.  I was born in Nogales, Arizona, On the border between Mexico and the United States. The places in between places They are like little countries Themselves, with their own holidays Taken a little from everywhere. My Fourth of July is from childhood, Childhood itself a kind of country, too. It's a place that's far from me now, A place I'd like to visit again. The Fourth of July takes me there. In that childhood place and border place The Fourth of July, like everything else, It meant more than just one thing. In the United States the Fourth of July It was the United States. In Mexico it was thedía de los Refugios, The saint's day of people named Refugio. I come from a family of people with names, Real names, not-afraid names, with colors Like the fireworks: Refugio, Margarito, Matilde, Alvaro, Consuelo, Humberto, Olga, Celina, Gilberto. Names that take a moment to say, Names you have to practice. These were the names of saints, serious ones, And it was right to take a moment with them. I guess that's what my family thought. The connection to saints was strong: My grandmother's name-here it comes- Her name was Refugio, And my great-grandmother's name was Refugio, And my mother-in-law's name now, It's another Refugio, Refugios everywhere, Refugios and shrimp cocktails and sodas. Fourth of July was a birthday party For all the women in my family Going way back, a party For everything Mexico, where they came from, For the other words and the green Tinted glasses my great-grandmother wore. These women were me, What I was before me, So that birthday fireworks in the evening, All for them, This seemed right. In that way the fireworks were for me, too. Still, we were in the United States now, And the Fourth of July, Well, it was the Fourth of July. But just what that meant, In this border place and time, it was a matter of opinion in my family.

In the old days of our family,
My grandmother was a young woman
Whose hair was as long as the river.
She lived with her sisters on the ranch
La Calera-The Land of the Lime- And her days were happy. But her uncle Carlos lived there too, Carlos whose soul had the edge of a knife. One day, to teach her to ride a horse, He made her climb on the fastest one, Bareback, and sit there As he held its long face in his arms. And then he did the unspeakable deed For which he would always be remembered: He called for the handsome baby Pirrín And he placed the child in her arms. With that picture of a Madonna on horseback He slapped the shank of the horse's rear leg. The horse did what a horse must, Racing full toward the bright horizon. But first he ran under theálamo trees To rid his back of this unfair weight: This woman full of tears And this baby full of love. When they reached the trees and went under, Her hair, which had trailed her, Equal in its magnificence to the tail of the horse, That hair rose up and flew into the branches As if it were a thousand arms, All of them trying to save her. The horse ran off and left her, The baby still in her arms, The two of them hanging from her hair. The baby looked only at her And did not cry, so steady was her cradle. Her sisters came running to save them. But the hair would not let go. From its fear it held on and had to be cut, All of it, from her head. From that day on, my grandmother Wore her hair short like a scream, But it was long like a river in her sleep.

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We live in secret cities And we travel unmapped roads. We speak words between us that we recognize But which cannot be looked up. They are our words. They come from very far inside our mouths.

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A Judge Orders the Opening of Federico Garcia Lorca's Grave by Ray Gonzalez

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A Judge Orders the Opening of Federico Garcia Lorca's Grave by Ray Gonzalez

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A Judge Orders the Opening of Federico Garcia Lorca

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Hummingbird on the Porch by Ray Gonzalez

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Hummingbird on the Porch by Ray Gonzalez

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Hummingbird on the Porch by Ray Gonzalez

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Instructions on Not Giving Up by Ada Limon

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Instructions on Not Giving Up by Ada Limon

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Instructions on Not Giving Up by Ada Limon

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1973 by Raúl Zurita translated by Anna Deeny

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1973 by Raúl Zurita translated by Anna Deeny

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Macho :: Hembra by Natalie Scenters-Zapico (page 47 of Lima :: Limon)

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Macho :: Hembra by Natalie Scenters-Zapico (page 47 of Lima :: Limon)

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El Salvador Will Be by Roque Dalton Translated from the Spanish by Zoë Anglesey

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El Salvador Will Be by Roque Dalton Translated from the Spanish by Zoë Anglesey

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The Black Heralds by César Vallejo translated by John Lyons

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The Black Heralds by César Vallejo translated by John Lyons

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César Vallejo translated by Robert Bly and James Wright

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César Vallejo translated by Robert Bly and James Wright

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Every Day You Play by Pablo Neruda translated by Robert Bly and James Wright

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Every Day You Play by Pablo Neruda translated by Robert Bly and James Wright

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God by César Vallejo translated by James Wright

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God by César Vallejo translated by James Wright

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I grew up on the border and though I left

I have brought it with me wherever I've gone.

Its line guides me, this long, winding thread of memory.

The border wasn't as big as they say-

It fit neatly behind my eyes and between my ears-

It guides me still, I know, but it is not a compass.

It is not a place out there but a place in here.

I catch on its barbed wire in both places.

It is a line I step over and a ledge I duck under.

I have looked underneath its skirts, and it has caught me-

Many times. We're old friends and we play the game well.

When someone says border, now, or frontera, or the line.

La línea, or the fence, or whatever else

We name the edge and the end of things-

I hear something missing in the words,

The what it all used to be. Its name does not include its childhood.

I grew up liking the border and its great scar,

Its drama always good for a story the way scars always are.

A scar is the place where the hurting used to be.

A scar the heroic signature of the healed.

The border is not a scar. Instead, it is something we keep picking at,

Something that has no name.

The border I knew was something with a history.

But this thing now, it is a stranger even to itself.

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Border Boy by Alberto Ríos | Poetry Foundation

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I grew up on the border and though I left I have brought it with me wherever I've gone. Its line guides me, this long, winding thread of memory. The border wasn't as big as they say- It fit neatly behind my eyes and between my ears- It guides me still, I know, but it is not a compass.

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America, I Do Not Call Your Name Without Hope by Pablo Neruda translated by Robert Bly

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America, I Do Not Call Your Name Without Hope by Pablo Neruda translated by Robert Bly

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America I do not call your name without hope Neruda

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Unnamed in McAllen, Texas by Jose Antonio Rodriguez

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Unnamed in McAllen, Texas by Jose Antonio Rodriguez

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Unnamed in McAllen Texas by Jose Antonio Rodriguez

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Second Attempt Crossing by Javier Zamora

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Second Attempt Crossing by Javier Zamora

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

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

"¡La Migra!" and everyone ran.

In that dried creek where 40 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,

beautifully. Against the herd of legs,

you sprinted back toward me,

I jumped on your shoulders,

and we ran from the white trucks. It was then the gun

ready to press its index.

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.

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

found you in Alexandria. Farewell

your brown arms that shielded me then,

that shield me now, from La Migra.

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Second Attempt Crossing by Javier Zamora

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In the middle of that desert that didn't look like sand in the middle of those acacias, whiptails, and coyotes, someone yelled "¡La Migra!" and everyone ran. In that dried creek where 40 of us slept, we turned to each other and you flew from my side in the dirt.

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Before Stories, or First Memory by Jose Antonio Rodriguez

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Before Stories, or First Memory by Jose Antonio Rodriguez

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The border is a line that birds cannot see.The border says The border, the word
The border is a beautiful piece of paper folded carelessly in half.
The border is where flint first met steel, starting a century of fires.
The border is a belt that is too tight, holding things up but making it hard to breathe.
The border is a rusted hinge that does not bend.
The border is the blood clot in the river's vein.

The border is a brand, the "Double-X" of barbed wire scarred into the skin of so many. stop to the wind, but the wind speaks another language, and keeps going.
The border has always been a welcome stopping place but is now a stop sign, always red.
The border is a jump rope still there even after the game is finished.
The border is a real crack in an imaginary dam.
The border used to be an actual place, but now, it is the act of a thousand imaginations.

The border is a handshake that becomes a squeezing contest. border, sounds like order, but in this place they do not rhyme.

The border smells like cars at noon and wood smoke in the evening.
The border is the place between the two pages in a book where the spine is bent too far.
The border is two men in love with the same woman.
The border is an equation in search of an equals sign.
The border is the location of the factory where lightning and thunder are made.
The border is "NoNo" The Clown, who can't make anyone laugh.
The border is a locked door that has been promoted.
The border is a moat but without a castle on either side.
The border has become Checkpoint Chale.
The border is a place of plans constantly broken and repaired and broken.
The border is mighty, but even the parting of the seas created a path, not a barrier.
The border is a big, neat, clean, clear black line on a map that does not exist.
The border is the line in new bifocals: below, small things get bigger; above, nothing changes.
The border is a skunk with a white line down its back.

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The Border: A Double Sonnet - The border is a line that birds cannot see.

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from The Way Back by Vanessa Angelica Villarreal

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from The Way Back by Vanessa Angelica Villarreal

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from The Way Back by Vanessa Angelica Villarreal

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/=[(root) (future)] by Vanessa Angelica Villarreal

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/=[(root) (future)] by Vanessa Angelica Villarreal

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Macho :: Hembra by Natalie Scenters-Zapico (page 50 of Lima :: Limon)

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Macho :: Hembra by Natalie Scenters-Zapico (page 50 of Lima :: Limon)

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We plant seeds in the ground

Hoping that, someday, the roots of one

Will meet the upstretched limbs of the other.

We share the sky, all of us, the whole world:

Together, we are a tribe of eyes that look upward,

Even as we stand on uncertain ground.

The earth beneath us moves, quiet and wild,

Its boundaries shifting, its muscles wavering.

The dream of sky is indifferent to all this,

Impervious to borders, fences, reservations.

The sky is our common home, the place we all live.

There we are in the world together.

The dream of sky requires no passport.

Blue will not be fenced. Blue will not be a crime.

Look up. Stay awhile. Let your breathing slow.

Know that you always have a home here.

Poem copyright ©2014 by Alberto Rios, "We Are of a Tribe," from Poetry of Presence: An Anthology of Mindfulness Poems, (Grayson Books, 2017). Poem reprinted by permission of Alberto Rios and the publisher.

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We Are of a Tribe by Alberto Ríos | Poetry Foundation

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We plant seeds in the ground Hoping that, someday, the roots of one Will meet the upstretched limbs of the other. We share the sky, all of us, the whole world: Together, we are a tribe of eyes that look upward, Even as we stand on uncertain ground.

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El Coyote and the Furies on the Day of the Dead by Rigoberto Gonzalez

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El Coyote and the Furies on the Day of the Dead by Rigoberto Gonzalez

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El Coyote and the Furies on the Day of the Dead by Rigoberto Gonzalez