ABSTRACT
BROWN GIRL NOISE
When I started to consider myself a writer, and when I knew that I had no other choice but to be a writer, I wanted to be someone who was willing to speak truth to power, and I wanted to be someone who was willing to celebrate myself. Because we lived below the poverty line until I was in the fourth grade, I saw my parents make do with what little we had. I learned that creating beauty was essential to the way my parents lived their lives. My mom and dad were immensely proud of the rose garden they grew in the front yard of our trailer home, roses bigger than our heads. They exclaimed over the redness of their tomatoes, the sweetness of their tangerines, and the thickness of my dad’s lawn. My mom made beautiful dresses with rows and rows of lace, and she embroidered fat roses on our pillowcases. I learned that beauty was important and vital. Later, books taught me that words could be beautiful, too. So I learned to make beauty out of what I had, my words. When I enrolled in Chicano Studies classes, I learned that my words could be both beautiful and powerful. This new political education introduced me to artists who used their art to bring awareness to issues, to explore other aspects of history, to show new sociological perspectives. I knew then that I wanted to be aligned with writers who wanted more from their words than beauty. I want to write like Langston Hughes and the artists of the Harlem Renaissance. I even draw from the Confessionals like Robert Lowell and Sylvia Plath who decided to expose their interiority to the world no matter what they found there. And of course I want to continue the traditions of someone like Amiri Baraka and the ii unapologetic Black Arts Movement, and the early Chicano Movement writers like Oscar Zeta Acosta, Alurista, and Cherríe Moraga who were simultaneously artists and activists. And I want to do what Claudia Rankine has just done. I want to experiment with form and conventions, and what a poetry collection can look like. I want to say that we have a long way to go to progress towards a healthy society for everyone. Despite all of the amazing scholarship and art that has already been created by marginalized communities, the wounds inflicted by exclusion are clearly not healed, are still intentionally ignored, and are continuously ripped open. Like bell hooks, I want my politics to inform everything that I do. I want my work to show that my values are deliberate and obvious. I want my poetry to be deeply rooted in the place and cultures that I am deeply rooted in: the Central Valley, Xicansim, Mexican culture, Hip Hop. I want my work to show that I am an American writer, a Mexican-American writer, an immigrant-somewhere- between-generation-one-and-1.5-writer, a Chicana writer, and a Xicana writer.
Mireyda Barraza Martinez
BROWN GIRL NOISE
by Mireyda Barraza Martinez
A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing in the College of Arts and Humanities California State University, Fresno May 2017
APPROVED
For the Department of English:
We, the undersigned, certify that the thesis of the following student meets the required standards of scholarship, format, and style of the university and the student's graduate degree program for the awarding of the master's degree.
Mireyda Barraza Martinez Thesis Author
Corrinne Clegg Hales (Chair) English
Tim Z. Hernandez Poet/Mentor
Lee Herrick Poet/Mentor
John Hales English
Tim Skeen English
For the University Graduate Committee:
Dean, Division of Graduate Studies
AUTHORIZATION FOR REPRODUCTION OF MASTER'S THESIS
I grant permission for the reproduction of this thesis in part or in its entirety without further authorization from me, on the condition that the person or agency requesting reproduction absorbs the cost and provides proper acknowledgment of authorship.
X Permission to reproduce this thesis in part or in its entirety must be obtained from the family of Mireyda Barraza Martinez.
Signature of thesis Chair:
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Some of the poems have been previously published as follows:
“we are here” was written for and read at the 2013 Chican@ Youth Conference, Fresno, California
“U.S. Guns” was published in the online journal bozalta: arts, activism, scholarship
“The Last Doll” (as “Cihuateteo Rip or Drum or Buzzing in My Ears”) was published in a slightly different version in the online journal razorhouse
“Parading Down Blackstone Avenue” and “Coatlicue Tries to Write Protest Poetry” were published in the San Joaquin Review
“i am a sixth sun xicana,” “four movements: the fifth is yet to be written, let’s write it” and “a time when we bled blood” were published in The Ram’s Tale
“calwa park--one a.m.,” “terrorisms” and “you should write that down” were published in The Ram’s Tale
“Ceremony” was published (as “I am Learning”) in the online zine Kvet
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Page
PART ONE ...... 1
I am suddenly myself again ...... 2
the souls of my feet ...... 3
The Muse of Work ...... 4
what kind of man ...... 5
Squatters on Miguel Barraza’s Land on the Eastside of Porterville ...... 6
My Dad Doesn’t Have Friends, ...... 7
Maria de Lourdes to Her Daughter ...... 9
The Last Doll ...... 10
dignidad ...... 11
Reading the Egg ...... 12
Ceremony ...... 14
PART TWO ...... 16
Speaking to My Sábila on Being a Transplant ...... 17
Coatlicue Tries to Write Protest Poetry ...... 18
Came Here Sweetly ...... 19
Parading Down Blackstone Avenue ...... 20
Bus Stop ...... 21
i am a sixth sun xicana...... 22
social justice ...... 23
we are here ...... 24
terrorisms ...... 25 vii
Page
Cesar Chavez and Shit ...... 26
U.S. Guns ...... 28
four movements: the fifth is yet to be written, let’s write it ...... 30
PART THREE ...... 32
We Shared a Meadow Once ...... 33
how it ends ...... 34
not tonight ...... 36
Obstruction ...... 37
calwa park--one a.m...... 38
first of the month ...... 39
made you a believer ...... 40
he freestyles ...... 41
Sanger ...... 42
this is what happened that night ...... 43
i want to burst ...... 44
in your house ...... 45
Embrace ...... 46
20 Minutes Late ...... 47
PART FOUR ...... 48
My Furniture Reminds Me of Movimiento ...... 49
In My Garden ...... 50
My 10am Eyes (Free-Verse Haiku) ...... 51
Oops, Girl ...... 52 This My Type Of Party Or West Coast Party Won’t Stop Or This Is How We Do It ...... 54 viii
Page
a time when we bled blood ...... 56
American Horror Story ...... 57
november night ...... 58
Kanye stone-faced with smiley fans at Super Bowl! ...... 59
phone talk ...... 60
RIP 32oz...... 61
Heartwood ...... 62
Halloween at 28: Two Taggers and a Zombie Lawyer ...... 63
Sunrise ...... 64
you should write that down ...... 66
the truth ...... 68
Dandelion Suns ...... 69
AFTERWORD ...... 70
. . . my family is fundamentally the reason why I am writer. -- Mireyda Barraza Martinez
I’m going to keep making my brown girl noise. -- Mireyda Barraza Martinez
PART ONE 2
I am suddenly myself again
I am suddenly myself again. The weight of realization is sending me floating
into the clouds like Remedios the Beauty. I am at once up there waving and down
here again. The inside of my skull opening up for itself, a dahlia.
The space kaleidoscoping into more spaces. Doors are opening.
Doors are opening, and copal smoke is rising from my sex, low and slow,
curling out of my nostrils, reaching for the tiny magenta
flowers tumbling past me on the warm concrete. I am in a new T-shirt that is every white T
on clotheslines and eses, and inside of it, I am imploding and expanding again.
A tight seed of cilantro is holding my mother in the center of my reddest organ,
safe in the men’s pants bought for my father’s stroll. The lines pressed into my palms written there before birth
have birds perched like on powerlines before rain. 3
the souls of my feet
as i walked home that night i put two perfect smoke rings in the november air they floated slowly up and away from me each in its own dream the coming winter began to toss yellow and red leaves to the ground some muddied underfoot others newly fallen picked up by wind and slid across the sidewalk with a ghostly rattle i knew how my head fit perfectly beneath the dark dome of the night sky the streets and sidewalks curved around my hips and held a steady rhythm swirling and gently touching the tops of my thighs stoplights swung from my ears like chandelier earrings. i passed a dark church with an empty parking lot and a sign on the lawn that read “sinners welcome” i floated easily past on fog that had begun to crawl over everything pulling itself along with greedy white fingers it settled around my shoulders thick and warm like wool i inhaled the valley's thick air through my lips heard the blood crash in my veins my reflection gliding window to window over parked cars tasted the drunken sweat of crowded apartment complexes 4
The Muse of Work
--after a poem with the same title by Ellen Bass
If I could choose my Muse she’d have long, black braids through which she feels a magnetic pull to the earth, and hot hands that can dance over the stress built into a dark stone at the base of my neck. She’d swear like me and bump right into you for not getting out of her way. She’d have rotating galaxy eyes with deep wrinkles fanning out of their corners. But I’ve been assigned the Muse of Work. Her clapping hands wake me up before dawn when I sleep in the living room of the house I don’t have a room in anymore. The light above her creates a golden orb around the kitchen and her curly hair a halo. She presses the flour tortilla on the comal lightly with her fingers, willing the doughy disk to rise. She once shamed me for being afraid to turn the tortilla with only my fingertips because women could not be afraid of being burned. The disk fills with hot air and she easily slips it into the tortilla warmer, tucking the embroidered cloth carefully over it. Her soft-slippered steps move around the kitchen without pause. Her skinny calves stick out of her flowered nightgown and glow as she walks down the dark hall to change into jeans and a long-sleeve shirt to protect her skin from pesticides, a piercing sun. I imagine steam rising from her hands in the dark. 5
what kind of man
i’m 8 and my dad says i can taste his beer oh god it is gross i guess maybe that’s what pee tastes like and my dad laughs like the sound comes shouting out of the bottom of his belly probably he doesn’t like it either and that’s why it’s warm because he just holds on to the same beer so he can go no gracias aquí tengo una ahorita voy por otra and our uncles are drunk and our tías have to drive home and my dad thinks what kind of man can’t drive his family home maybe that’s what he thought but in spanish he has stubble to cover the acne scars on his cheeks i think and one time my mom saw the handwritten receipt for my dad’s crisp new sombrero and my mom said yo nunca me he comprado un vestido que cueste $100 and my dad made eyes at me like he was busted and the last time i went home my dad buys a blue slushie and a warm sausage for me and him to share and i don’t like blue-flavored anything and who buys sausage at the corner store and it’s really good half of his mustache is grey exactly half and he limps now and every time he does my heart crumbles and then tightens. 6
Squatters on Miguel Barraza’s Land on the Eastside of Porterville
My father taught me by example that righteous anger can radiate electricity like humming storm clouds. He stands beside me, our twin brows deepening into canyons.
I’m translating for my dad again: that for three months they’ve been keeping things clean, that they’re willing to start paying rent.
I like seeing my dad laugh at this. A laugh that translates itself. A real Mexican peon laugh. A real wetback laugh. I smile and ask Rebbeca? Like that? Rebekah. OK, I shoot back, rolling my eyes into the back of my head and writing her name out, my name, and my dad’s name, the address, and the date, and when the first rent will be due for a month in the trailer home whose short hallway I still lean into in my dreams. We want cash.
If we keep cleaning, will your dad knock something off the rent? I am translating for my dad again, smiling, ready, and my dad’s laugh translates itself. 7
My Dad Doesn’t Have Friends,
my mom said, because he doesn’t drink.
Don Chepe’s cigarette butts crawled around his lush lawn like giant ants. As I drank a glass of water in his kitchen, I put a finger on his wall and scraped off a sticky layer and felt the grime stiffening his curtains.
He was skinny and long like me, each vein sticking out among the deep folds of his leathered dark skin, their blue blending with the blue of his prison tattoos, and he worked like my dad, climbing trees easily with tijeras para podar to trim each other’s mora trees.
The dirt road our little trailita was on wasn’t taken care of by the county, and one day my dad dug a huge hole to make extra dirt to fill the inevitable potholes. My dad, who could only ever work, and this sinewy man-- shirtless, in jean cut-offs and leather sandals, covered in familiar names, a cross, and la Virgen the size of his back, (I wanted blue tattoos like him someday, maybe not drinking black black coffee in July)-- became friends, both with a shovel in hand, as they worked their way down the road in silence.
His backyard was covered in rust like glitter on everything. Bumpers and grills, an armadillo of a trailer, swings, and other mysterious metals twisted into mechanical shapes. A heart attack stopped him back there, and my dad lost his only friend. A man whose kitchen 8 three Mexican daughters, big to small, could run into safely and drink water. 9
Maria de Lourdes to Her Daughter
You won’t eat your beans, hide them under plates I clean, y yo apenitas me sirvo to make sure there’s enough
Papi is a farmworker chain-gang to the grapevine back bent for the straightness of your spine
You with books in hand will show them our genius trabajamos entierrados y empolvados and we’ll grow you up between us 10
The Last Doll
--after Judith Cofer Ortiz’s “Quinceañera”
I blow the dust from my last doll’s brown curls. She’s pale like me with the big, brown Arabic eyes I never had. Eyes that stare and stare. I’m giving my quince dress and my last doll to my little cousin, Selerma, who turns and turns to poof out the pink lace skirt, the rows and rows of lace, just like I did. The skin of my lower stomach is a drying, little round drum, tightening and tightening. I finger the deep red symbols indented by the seams of my jeans before slipping on the papery, blue clinic dress that won’t rise even when I spin and spin. I throw up in a small black trashcan in a corner. My knees are above me like two mountains of flesh stretched over rock. There is a vacuum buzz. The kind I used to run from as a child. I turn from the sound to see Cihuateteo rip out a corn plant and chew the roots. The sliding glass doors close behind me, my little drum silent. The light bouncing from car to car buzzing in my ears, the asphalt sticking to the soles of my shoes. 11
dignidad
el amor nos persigue sniffs at our heels brushes the hair from our face and we, instead of loving back, check our facebook. el viento nos platica warning us this heat and we stare at the microwave and listen carefully to the radiation buzz. la tierra madre grita rips open, second by second, the corn sprouts y la tierra grita that last shout of labor pain and we stomp around like sidewalks and asphalt and valet parking are natural and necessary. the dirt is crunchy between my teeth what is this taste? this pain who is my mother with those lines around her eyes that keep deepening her hands still in the masa working, kneading, her fingers strong saying to me paz y serenidad. 12
Reading the Egg
Someone told her my name is Doña Rosa, and I open the front door wide. Reading the egg is dangerous. You have to be strong, I warn her. Not to let that energy back in. I don’t think she is. The kitchen table is clean. Only egg, bundled sage, glass of water, stones dirty from the tomato garden, hawk feather from the side of the road, matches. Candle to la Virgen and el Santo Niño already lit. I light sage and her nose wrinkles. She’s sixteen years old with a healing womb. Shake my head, Sage demands respect, mija, Or it won’t clean. Clean the egg and my hands. Do her back first--rub a grade A white chicken egg along her thick black hair-- pass over where the neck meets the spine a few times. Energy always gathers here. Roll it over her spine, down down to her cracking heels. Egg warming in my hand. Roll it over her face, fat breasts. Make spirals around her sagging lower stomach. Run it over each leg and pull out when I reach her toes. Her toenails are painted red, and I tell her this is a good choice. Crack the egg into a clear glass of water. See two big bubbles on top of the yolk? There are cages around you. She wants to know what they are. Waft white sage, pray to contain the energy a little longer. How should I know? It’s your life. Egg takes this bad away, but only for now. No blood in the egg. That’s good. Means no brujería. 13
Take her in the restroom and leave the door open. Cages are from inside, I tell her quietly. Ask her to pray with me, pour the water and egg into the toilet, and she flushes it. Leaves a ten-dollar bill and a bag of oranges on the table. I watch her dark hair glitter in the sun as she walks past the gate. In the cool dark of my house my feet begin to swell. 14
Ceremony
I pull a rope threaded with spikes through my tongue; a bowl with strips of paper sits in front of me my blood forms letters, words.
I am learning sacrifice.
I am under the sun again, my arms held up tightly with wires, a dusting of pesticides burning into my pores. A woman with a bandana across her face holds my ripe grapes in her hand. With swift movements, soft click of her scissors, she leaves open wounds.
I am learning sacrifice.
I climb the flowering pots along my windowsill, push aside stones with the strength of my shoulders. I haul bottlecaps of water, burn a leaf of dried sage and direct the cleansing smoke with a white paloma feather.
I am learning ceremony.
I drag my tendido to the moon. Every night I sweep the rough, luminescent ground. I hold my white pillow with “Duerme, Mi Amor” embroidered in red. I curl into myself and whisper 15
What will you ask your dreams tonight?
I am learning ceremony.
The hardness in my heart softens as I become my father. The softness in my hands hardens as I become my mother.
PART TWO 17 17
Speaking to My Sábila on Being a Transplant
See the root strength of your body. Recognize the thirst, and remember the first, desperate sucking.
Stretch your root muscles into this new soil. Remember the first sucking.
Burn sage blessings to recall your first knowledge. 18 18
Coatlicue Tries to Write Protest Poetry
I’ve been staring at my plants for some time now and chipping nail polish.
I sit like stone in front of the window. The bit of sky visible above the next blue building is smog-and-fog grey.
Last night coffee thinned my teeth in a mundane nightmare, and I’m wondering at the texture of my hair today.
I sit like stone in a stone skirt carved with serpents.
Rage is the quiet movement beneath the thin skin of my wrists, the heaviness of my stone feet carved into claws.
Close to the ceiling there is flowered paper cut in the shape of clouds with thin blue ribbon hanging down.
Half a cockroach is still smashed on that wall, its hands lifted in permanent prayer for a rain that won’t reach it.
The sprinklers outside drench concrete, and water pools black in asphalt.
My words fall like stones falling on stones, and sit still like this. 19 19
Came Here Sweetly
And in peace Been here Been here Been here Been here Been here Been here Been here Been here Been here Been here Been here Been here Been here Been here Been here Been here Been here Been here Been here Been here Been here Been here Been here Been here Been here Been here Been here Been here
But in the picture on my green card I look like a ghost 20 20
Parading Down Blackstone Avenue
Yeah I’m talking back yeah talking back yeah and hand claps Ooohing like the Vandellas you know the Shirelles Easy does it down the avenue real low real low stay slow real tho and hand claps and making me stay outta sight? Noo way hombre no way josé no way bay-bay I’m lip-lining and hand clapping every eyebrow in shape Nobody can say I’m not the sharpest knife in this place go ahead and look again Gold-name plate above my breasts you can’t deny it just try it lucky I didn’t enter Miss United States 21 21
Bus Stop
Late How the fuck can I pay for my books I need to get to the northside fucked up my whole day Two buses passed me by I know they saw me Got class at twelve Need to get some teeth pulled Slap a bug from my calf Fake eyelashes feel so heavy Deep buzz of the wrong bus Wait some more Exhaust hot and broke a nail off Holding it in my palm tightly still Silver Galaxy the girl called the color Not even officially in the class I’m just here and gotta pick up my son later I need something different so I’m here I’m not going back to that shit So I’m sitting in on this one class till I get in because right now I’m just here but Mr. Brackett knows how it is I’ll find a way like I found a way to get this dollar and a quarter today 22 22 i am a sixth sun xicana
i am a sixth sun xicana with a hip hop lisp and a farmworker’s limp a woman’s hips and my father’s frown weak arms and a good fist my mother’s hands and your brown eyes dirty feet and clean bed sheets my breasts shine neon and my teeth are falling out one by one i’ve worn smoke as earrings and as thin bracelets i’ve gotten drunk and paper cut off of glossy magazine pages i’ve marched in the streets for peace i’ve said no to love and swallowed my words and licked the plate clean i found the rabbit in the moon but i’m still searching for the eagle and the serpent i want to jump head first but keep feeling with my toes my dna speaks to your dna but we can’t hear the cosmic conversation sometimes i am convinced of my own magic but i can only levitate in dreams when no one else can see i’ve devoured pesticidal grapes and hidden my family behind my heart i’ve used so much ink on men and eaten so much of white america’s toxic dinners and was the last one dancing and was the only one listening and the only one saying good morning to the tree outside my window i burn sage to get clean i don’t forget the disappeared and don’t forgive dictators or war criminals or killer cops i am history’s leftovers and i’m crawling to the new sun to burn off the veil blinding the eyes of my heart which are my eyes 23 23 social justice
there is a growling in the gut a growth something is wrong and this will kill you no medicine no cure no help no health because the hospital wants chunks of gold in payment and the spanish crown took all we had all those years ago the hot cheeto fingers the teen mom the split screen the thanksgiving turkey the easter bunny social drinker/smoker what is justice and who gets it? who is justice and where is she hiding? duct-taped to a chair in the white house basement where obama goes to cry and leave pieces of his soul behind every day one less tear shed every day one more grey hair on his handsome head what is justice? an illegal deported? a convict convicted? a possessor depossessed? who are the murderers? i’ve come to fear suits and ties titles repulse me and name-droppers and hand-shakers and fake-smilers and high heels and matching skirts and eyeliner and blush and bronzer and mascara and sparkly eyeshadow and hi, i’m and my name is and i do this and the chatter will not stop until everyone is convinced she is one of us and the system can still be the system but keep your eye on her justice? we have forgotten our cures and the earth around us dies. 24 24 we are here
where were you when an israeli soldier posted a photo to instagram of a palestinian boy in the crosshairs of his sniper rifle? where were you when my words were stuck in my throat for days, like a bad cold, because i was afraid and didn't trust you to love me tomorrow? where were you when a woman was being dragged by her hair across wishon avenue by a man so much bigger than her? what did you do? nothing? did you call the cops? did it feel like you did nothing? where are you now? now that all of the bees are dying? that the ice is melting around our ankles? that our neighbors are screaming IDLE NO MORE? that the corn seeds sprout poison? now that drones will fly over fresno to see if you use tongue when you kiss? and where are you now? now that obama is deporting us and deporting us and deporting us and deporting us and deporting us and deporting us and deporting us? and where are you now that my heart is open to your heart? where is your heart? where are you now? are you here? do you feel your feet in your shoes? where are your fingers? who is sitting next to you? where are you now? are you here? with me and my voice? are you here? 25 25 terrorisms
Ain’t nobody feelin’ that war. --Diddy on the war in Iraq videos of wmd’s in a cave surfaced on youtube they said saddam flew the first plane hit the eject button just in time. i kept hearing bin laden sent bush a yellow cake on his birthday. remember how the mailboxes were all packed with anthrax? we had to fumigate the entire house. that kid you introduced me to soldier you called him wasn’t it weird how he just started crying? i was glad you locked him in the closet along with those pictures of huddled women dressed head to toe in black their eyes showing too much. 26 26
Cesar Chavez and Shit
After English class, we post up with our tutor in the library-- she’s explaining thesis statements by making brackets with her fingers. We get her to say: Fresno State has a drone. Maybe. Probably. We google.scholar drone strikes. What happens when there is no scholarship supporting your argument? We’re frustrated together. Scroll through journal, journal, journal. We get her to say Fuck drones. Fuck these scholars as she looks around us with quick rabbit-head turns.
She says Chicana, and Juan says Like Cesar Chavez and shit? And she’s like, He called immigration on undocumented workers for crossing the picket line. And we didn’t know that.
She rides bus 28 too, and we go northbound together after we leave the library. I tell her about how my mom charges me for rides to school.
I need a job, my own place, my own car. And she looks out the tinted window like she can see further than Shields and Maroa and says, When you get it, you won’t want it anymore. I tell her about not coming out yet-- she nods once and says I don’t know what that must feel like.
We get off on Cedar and Shaw, and before I jump on the 30, 27 27 I give her a hug. Tell me about community stuff ‘cause I’ll go. 28 28
U.S. Guns
It’s 1968 the U.S. said 44 dead Tlatelolco, México but eyewitnesses say hundreds and we believe each other. It’s Ferguson, Missouri cops say thug thug thug call for backup but we believe each other he was a black boy a black boy a boy a boy. It’s 1968 it’s the Summer Olympics Mexican president says quiet quiet quiet it’s the Olympics Mexicans be quite in ten days it’s the Olympics quiet Mexicans quiet. U.S. guns kill Black Americans. In México U.S. guns kill Mexicans And they leave they run they run from U.S. guns. It’s 1968 in México snipers on rooftops and helicopters say quiet Mexicans quiet. It’s Ayotzinapa Mexican cartels with U.S. guns. a 4 next to a 3 is 43 4 plus 3 equals 7 and 7 fits between 6 and 8. It’s 1968 it’s Memphis, Tennessee Dr. King on a balcony. Bobby Kennedy shouldn’t have broken bread with Mexicans killed in a kitchen in California land that used to be México. It’s Tlatelolco and these are students the U.S. said officially it’s 44 dead 29 29 but we believe each other we know it’s hundreds hundreds of Mexican students now quiet quiet quiet. Michael Brown was a Black American student. In Ayotzinapa they were learning to be Mexican teachers now they are quiet quiet Mexicans.
In México Black American athletes win gold it’s 1968 black poverty black power black scarf shoeless hungry in México a white Australian wears a human rights badge as the U.S. anthem plays because he’s tired of their shit too in México Black Olympians were stripped of their medals like the Spanish stripped México of our medals two black power fists, three bowed heads in 1968 in México the U.S. anthem plays. 43 disappeared It’s Ayotzinapa. It’s Ferguson.
It’s 1988 and my family left México because we were starving. 30 30 four movements: the fifth is yet to be written, let’s write it
1. i want to stop hurting my mother la tierra, this earth who cradled my mother when she cradled me in the ocean of her womb my mother who, covered in dust and pesticides, says to me as she washes her hands to eat “el agua es lo mas bonito que nos ha dado dios” and in kettleman and lanare you just don’t drink from the tap
2. are we so different? you are afraid and i am afraid my pores suck in the same thick valley air that your pores are breathing our nostril hair sways in the same rhythm don’t you see that you are me? and can’t you see who we could be together? can’t we see each other the way we see each other when we kiss each other? (eyes closed and feeling everything?) this is a call to arms arms that link together that wrap around shoulders shaking with sobs
3. we are too late the earth is dying our sisters enslaved to a paycheck our brothers shot dead on mckinley avenue
31 31 4. my poems all sound the same now same syllables, same consonants same ssssssound ssssssolidarity a whisper in the darkness of your ear canal sssssstruggle against police pepper spray against las manos rojas de sangre against u.s. customs agents who touch me and dig in my pockets until i am nauseous with disgust. sssssstruggle against our flesh turned to teflon. i am scared too. won’t you join me?
PART THREE 33 33
We Shared a Meadow Once
Nuestro hermano Leonardo falleció
When you lived by the train tracks, we would spend three days flower-picking.
I let you take them all, bundled up in your black down puffer-jacket.
You inhaled so hard my flower smell. I can still feel it being sucked out by your skin, so smooth like jocoque, walking me to your room.
There our flowers were, folded in half in the corner of your bed up against a wall, and your breath sweet like cilantro stirred con miel dripping honey honey honey across my collarbone sliding down my green leaves.
I can still feel you drinking the pink out of my cheeks, dyeing your sheets with my sweat. 34 34 how it ends
there is a sadness in my shoulders, hanging from my mouth, ruining my face this is why i would call him he didn’t ask me questions about my future my lack of sanity, my lack of car he didn’t worry about palestine or mexico he didn’t even worry about fresno i called him because he didn’t worry about my neighbors trying to sell him weed he didn’t worry about money because he says he’s got his money he didn’t worry about no sad look in my eye because he’d graze my cheek with one finger and make me forget he didn’t worry about the books and bras all over the floor and bats in the closet and he didn’t worry about the toxicity of my blood or the color of my toenails he didn’t worry about prickly hair on my legs or the knots in my hair i called him because he was a fast talker when i didn’t feel like talking because he liked to drop whatever he was doing to come see me because he knew i could worry i called him because he thought i was smart because there were books near my bed he didn’t worry because i was a feminist and he thought i didn’t need him i called him because i needed him he didn't worry because when we kissed i was careful taking off his LA fitted i called him because i met him at a party and heard him say the government has been fucking him since day one so he was gonna fuck it right back he didn’t worry because i knew a million examples of how the government was fucking us i called him because i liked the way his pants hung around his slim hips he didn’t worry because he knew that no matter what i would be in the mood i called him because i knew that no matter what he would be in the mood 35 35 he didn’t worry about what i needed because he would sit me on his lap and ask me what i needed i called him because he listened to me talk with fluttering hands and his hands responded like he was freestylin in the cypher i called him because sometimes he’d leave me his white tee i called him because he didn’t worry about the next time i’d call him and i stopped calling him and we never saw each other again. 36 36 not tonight
after i read your message, i put my phone down on freshly laundered sheets. i take off the perfume at my wrists, pour it back in the bottle. you're in love with my loneliness, the way it looks at you from each of my breasts. the way it hooks my skinny leg across your lap. the way it steals a kiss from you and quickly pulls away, eyes lowered in shame. after i read your message, i put my body down on freshly laundered sheets, pull the mascara from my lashes, pour it back in the bottle. 37 37
Obstruction
I ask the I Ching if I should break up with my boyfriend He doesn’t understand even after 3 years that I’m not the I’m yours kinda woman More like the tell a guy after fucking that I’m sure it’s safe to sleep in his car on my street kinda woman
We are on the phone while I throw the coins I shhhh him as I count out the hexagram like counting the 4 minutes it takes to zip a zipper unplug a phone charger say good bye at the door with just my waving fingers
I mumble into the phone 39
What does it say?
“Water/Mountain-- Obstruction”
This is bullshit I have to be more “open” to “retreat for the time being” to “seek the error within” myself He kinda laughs and tries to apologize again but I’m remembering a text I sent once that said I’m not really feeling this anymore and some poor guy texted back Why? 38 38 calwa park--one a.m.
i remember the round light of my flashlight hitting the graffiti wall at calwa park i remember the clangs and clinks of the chain link fence as we stuck in our toes and jumped over. the yellow lights from the beer warehouse across the street. the empty swings. i remember the metal bones of a rocket ship sticking up out of the ground like a stoic weed. the naked tree branches and their lonely fingers. your feet sinking into mud next to mine. the way you tucked your hands into the pockets of your black peacoat. your mustache against my top lip. each piece of graffiti hitting the eye like a ghost on acid or a bite of aluminum or a rainbow twisted out of dali’s alphabet. i remember your cold fingertips brushing a strand of hair from my forehead like brushing dust from a painting. i remember holding my cold fingertips to spray-painted smoke on a brick wall. the crunch of candy wrappers under our sneakers. the metal skeleton of a beached submarine. i remember five raindrops soaking into my hair. the shock in my ankles as we tumbled back over the fence. i remember the streets washed in new colors as i sat in your car on the way back home. the white door of my apartment pulsating against its frame. 39 39 first of the month
i remember when i first met you. it must have been the first of the month because there was money in my bank account. i had lived for so long in the palms of my mother and father that i did not recognize your smell the speed of your step, or how you looked against the winter sky. you spoke in strings of pearls, words i had never heard. i watched a white ribbon of smoke curl around your nose. you bit my shoulder and made my eyes catch fire like your black disposable lighter flick, flick, burn. 40 40 made you a believer
it was eyes hands heart heart happened so fast so fast shoulders breath hair open window neck carpet it was eyes the couch hands the floor elbows heart heart the hallway happened so fast made you a believer 41 41 he freestyles
i’m glued to the floor like a mouth to a neck trying to empty my mind of his mic check mic check. 42 42
Sanger
Jairo takes me with him when he goes to Sanger To his mother who refuses to have her front teeth pulled against the warnings of her dentist To Chuck Wagon or Big Mama’s for cheeseburgers and thick strawberry milkshakes To kooleidescope’s house party where we bob our heads in hiphop prayer and they call Jairo by his emcee name To the park where his dad drank and played cards and didn’t watch him To the dried-out pool whose walls and floor drown us in graffiti To Sam’s house with its tree hung with drying salmon standing like a Tree of Life in a garden of car parts To watch the Niners lose to the Cardinals with his brothers who shout at the flat-screen To his nephew who I teach to sing Say it loud: I’m brown and I’m proud! Who hits me with a rubber lizard while we play Who gets really quiet and begins to slap himself Whose hand I pull back and try to explain Hitting is always bad I don’t want you to hurt yourself Whose brown eyes won’t stop staring at me until I kiss his hand and the place on his head where he was hitting Whose brown eyes won’t stop staring at me after we’ve left. 43 43 this is what happened that night
we were lubricated spirits smoothness of lip and skin a seamless silk so close and small noises stirring shyly from your throat traveled to the four corners of the earth eyes half closed to see your silhouette we were a love of some kind the conscious muscle that is the tongue warm tongue taste giggles that melt into solemn ahs everywhere else was darkness but the light from the tv glowing blue and green off of our skin the sheen in your shoulder as i went to suck on it a whirlwind spinning dangerously in my skull as your tongue melted into my body like water into water we were acrobats and this was a long time coming we were that whisper into the phone in the dark this is just between you and me we were going down in history i was stone and you touched eternity we eloped and honeymooned my sighs pounding in your ear drum 44 44 i want to burst
i want to burst into flowers and, like rain falling, bless your steps. your house. your bed. 45 45 in your house
the clink of my earrings on your windowsill the vines crawling along the kitchen window the bricks sunk in the backyard the way you stretch your body the stacks of books like towers leaning the scoops of ground beans crushed like moist, dark earth your skin like fresh parsley in a tea stirred with honey 46 46
Embrace
--after Adrienne Rich’s "Twenty-one Love Poems, IV”
I pull my red bike into the garage after a morning at Spinners with you, a handful of $1.00 vinyl in a bag. I pack a bowl and start the coffee pot. Drop the needle on a Marvin Gaye Live at the London Palladium. I turn on DemocracyNow. The fire in Bangladesh. The women running trapped Death toll tops 1,000. A woman, Reshma, resurrected alive and nearly unscathed after 17 days. Two corpses in the rubble, a man and a woman, intertwined in an embrace plastered all over the Internet, the fire the fire and all of those workers I don't know. 1,000, the death toll. I stare at the wall while I slice an avocado, peeling the thick skin, revealing the bright, green flesh. I turn off the news and begin to pace the living room while I eat the avocado plain, popped in slice by slice into my mouth. I stare at the open door and try to picture you there waiting for me. I picture myself walking towards you and I try to imagine us buried in flames, dying for nothing and reaching for an embrace to say hello. 47 47
20 Minutes Late
This is the first time you are late to see me. Time like a recurring nightmare pushes me to tears like sweat on a summer night. On my doorstep I watch my toes, cockroaches and headphones, twerking and Syria. With my eyes closed I see the way your hands reach for me. The world is pressing down on my shoulders like regret: farmers striking in Colombia, the blank walls of this town, my father's aching teeth, my bones collapsing, my hair lying on top like a wig with knots and lice. This is why I am crying: I see you and me in Palestine, in Georgia, in Chiapas, in Iraq, in the war zones of the world, and you are twenty minutes late coming home and the waiting on my doorstep becomes your hands that don't reach.
PART FOUR 49 49
My Furniture Reminds Me of Movimiento
All of the furniture in my room is staring at me.
I haven’t moved it in over three years, and it’s about to start up a petition against stagnation.
They are no longer inspired by the Pussy Power poster, or the jaguar screenprint.
Even the Virgen de Guadalupe candle lost its luster under a veil of dust.
The couch groans now when I sit on the same spot.
It pushes me off; I bang my elbow on the coffee table, and the carpet burns my knee.
Ok, ok, I say and begin to collect what the walls have dropped in protest. I help the couches move around.
The plants begin to wave, and the books flap their covers.
Movement, everyone sings. Remember, movement! 50 50
In My Garden
Loosening bits of molar the gritty sound the sound of dirt crunched by fragile teeth scraping gum bachelor blue button flowers delicate paper thin petals the blue fills my eye petals eyelash soft three molars loosen into my hand and drop in the dirt like dientes de maíz ashamed and relieved I cover them with dirt little blue flames of flower push to grow into my eyes the land is an angry desert grandmother a dry mountain who cooks caldo de pollo and feeds it to you roughly because it tastes and smells bad to you and is nourishing a plant I rotted with too much water a plant I adored in a fluorescent time and let die of thirst a sunflower that only opened halfway and froze a sunflower that grew fifteen buds and tried to open all at once hands pumping pumping pumping pumping into the earth opening little airways listening for a breath back shaking and slapping and shaking 51 51
My 10am Eyes (Free-Verse Haiku)
5am coffee in a cup sketched with mushrooms
A cat slides out from under my warming car
In my classroom students chatter about poetry
Bits of sky follow me window to window
Screens and white papers burning my 10am eyes
The sound of rushing water is a Youtube video 52 52
Oops, Girl
--after Yusef Komunyakaa’s “When in Rome – Apologia”
Girl, I lost my head in West coast G-funk-- jingling soulful keys lit me. I mean, I was eyeing your dude when you looked away.
I noticed the crispness of his Pendleton, entranced by synthesized melodies, the deep bass tension. Girl, I couldn’t tell you why I was looking so hard.
Maybe it was the two Long-Islands that stepped me out of my lane.
Maybe it was Method Man
& Mary J., my own hips moving or the night air.
I loved the bob of his head right on the beat. 53 53
Girl, don’t get all mad.
I gotta say, he has that hardness I’ve always liked.
Girl, please forgive my dancing eyes. 54 54
This My Type Of Party Or West Coast Party Won’t Stop Or This Is How We Do It
Next to Mauro spray painting on a stretch of plywood I found next to a dumpster Yvan’s pearl-white Lexus sits like a sparkling spaceship between our grove of ash trees its doors and trunk wide open like arms stretching for a hug pumping out Dr. Dre basslines next to the homies pouring Budlight into a funnel connected to two hoses, opening the tap and sucking out a full beer in a few seconds next to white girl witches in black lace and quartz necklaces and purple eyebrows and black creepers drinking tall can micheladas next to a circle of mujeres closest to the lake hands slapping congas and Estephanie beating the cajón
**Baila esta cumbia conmigo** floats like joyous prayer across the water a soccer ball is kicked around like a happy pinball, doesn’t stop rolling like we rolled out of the city no helicopters or slow-rollin cops no one throwing up and no sideways glances all drums complementing each other one by one we start to lay down among tree roots legs sticking out from under jackets an arm across a drum, a bucket hat pushed down to cover the eyes someone finally pulls the key out of the ignition 55 55 and crickets and frogs take up the song sing like breathing and we sleep like laying again against our mother’s rising and falling chest a lost innocence returns to our faces grass criss-crossing ancient patterns against our cheeks 56 56 a time when we bled blood
1. out from beneath a fresno p.d. white sheet slides high fructose corn syrup and food coloring (red 40 lake, yellow 6 lake, yellow 6, yellow 5) seeps across the sidewalk little brown girl with oaxacan eyes watches death as it creeps toward her dora the explorer sneakers with no recollection of a time when we once bled blood.
2. we hit liquor stores and scream into open gutters. spread our legs across car hoods for bus passes and egg mcmuffins. hide in our own ear canals and watch our knuckle-hair grow on youtube videos from a telescope. we drink from liquor puddles in back streets and paint red clown smiles across our noses. we call love bad timing and back away slowly. 57 57
American Horror Story
This is how we sit. Three of us on laptops. This is how we move: on screens all over the world. Sometimes we blink and get up to use the bathroom. We are slow. Slower than slow. We move in a series of boxes.
Pictures of faded palm trees and Miami pastels and fake Polaroids and white window blinds.
We sit like this because our legs don't work so well anymore. They look like masks as big as people staring at you from the street. Like concrete steps leading up to your apartment. Like guns dipped in gold: in someone's mouth, next to some money, under a pillow. Not nearly drunk enough.
There is a pain, a slow pain. It does not lift. 58 58 november night
in our drunken despair sits the artist of my generation beneath the window, on the floor of my living room who sees the world in kaleidoscope love, on his lips i hear the hiss of aerosol spray, the starburst of a shining bronze heart, the wine in the veins of his eyes the poet speaks like boiling water, cilantro jumping to the surface electric stove burning the little silver tea kettle setting off the fire alarm twice as she cuts two lemons in half, squeezes the small tight fruit that remind her of her own breasts and spoons in some honey speaks speaks speaks because walter asks her such an earnest question and she earnestly answers as she pours in the tea and mixes lemon juice, honey, cilantro tea, a thin golden color and is quiet now like the lemon seeds that sit at the bottom of cups tonight everything falls, the picture of the fresno brown berets from the early 70s stuck on the zebra-print lampshade, the picture on the wall above the upside down u.s. flag of a crew of us at last year’s chicano youth conference. one lamp falls twice, tipsy, too, the thick glass top to the jar with the tea in it almost falls on my head and I tell danny everything falls here 59 59
Kanye stone-faced with smiley fans at Super Bowl!
I’m walking behind Wilbur, our Fresno brown dog, Watching his furry legs carry him His dog-nails click excited on concrete A brown aura glow Under the setting sun This sunny day in February Kanye stone-faced with smiley fans at Super Bowl! Thinking how I’ve never been to the Super Bowl And that if two white bros approached me Or Wilbur for a picture we wouldn’t manage a smile 60 60 phone talk
the timeframe for giving notice husband and wife as joint tenants said sale will be made in “AS IS” condition to an unmarried man a woman mountain bike trinket box with lid dragonware gray sink double wide miscellaneous car parts wicker loveseat with leather trim silver gecko necklace with black pearl disclaims any liability for any incorrectness 61 61
RIP 32oz.
We look at each other during the first gulp. I hate drinking out of plastic. It's weird and weird in a really bad way. Wasn’t this one of the original warning signs that the apocalypse is upon us? We’ve perfected the dose. More masculine, ergonomic design. More masculine! I was getting sick of those effeminate glass bottles. You’re in love with my loneliness, the way it looks at you from each of my breasts. Consistently crisp. Our sadnesses are separate until we have sex. If the plastic bottle can’t retain carbonation it is not a good package overall. The move to plastic can give economy beer buyers the perception of further trading down. It damages the image of beer. Glass is quality. How am I going to casually smash it on the sidewalk when I finish? We’ve done this so many times that I’m confusing it with romance. You ask if you can fall asleep with one hand on my ass. I love the fake graph showing that more people prefer plastic over glass. Shatter-proof bottle avoids costly and dangerous breakage. I’m buttoned up in your Pendleton. Your shoulders in a white tee underneath my knees.
Smooth taste. Is nothing sacred? 62 62
Heartwood
--to be read alongside mieksneak’s Botanical, Side B
We’re pulled into a wet Big Basin, buttoned up like Eazy-E, veiled in white windbreakers. How do we keep our Adidas clean on this muddy path? Ferns lick the smallest hairs on the back of our hands. We find a smooth stone under a red huckleberry. We squat on it like OGs, and unwrap a strawberry blunt wrap, stroking its brown velvet leaf. Crystals cling to our fingers as we break the Cherry Diesel into green crumbs on the spread-open map. We’re smoking deeper into a wet Big Basin. The blood vessels in our eyes dilated. Our legs float us over fallen branches and speckled rocks, stopping us at a hollowed-out redwood. Green leaves too high above us, we take turns standing in its void. We try stretching our arms to touch its insides. Our fingernails reaching out from under their codeine red lacquer toward dark bark-- something like magnets tugging strangers together. 63 63
Halloween at 28: Two Taggers and a Zombie Lawyer
Clank clank clank go the cans in my black backpack. I’m all eyes tonight, barely peeking out from under my black baseball cap and over a black bandana. Half of Jairo’s face a white skeleton, shining under a black hoodie nimbus. The homie Borelli’s grey, sickly face is covered in make-up like open wounds. He adjusts his paisley tie, and then tucks his hands into his neatly pressed suit jacket pockets. We head straight for the jungle juice, sidestepping a clown girl dancing with her clown boy, his eyes dark behind a plastic mask, his pointy teeth permanently bared against red paint grinning. We post up by the DJ table, and I watch the knobs get turned and pads get pressed by a dancing, smiling emoji, listening for the changing sounds. I’m gulping Kool-Aid and maybe vodka and rum and regretting most of my life choices but this one. We post up by the beer pong tables in the garage and a laughing girl with a drunk-white-girl name starts to talk to us and we ask her what she’s supposed to be, pointing to the ivy leaves stuck in her high-heeled boots. I’m fancy Mother Nature, she slurs before a white guy in a tux walks up to us and says seriously, Candace. She has to go away, and I’m thinking a white guy in a tuxedo would do some shit like that to Mother Nature. And we post up in the backyard by the back fence, and it feels good to stand on tightly packed dirt. We watch everyone: werewolf, and a Warrior, a dead mariachi, and witches, and Pikachu, a ladybug, and only two racist costumes. Two taggers, Jairo and I, all black shadows, with our zombie lawyer. A red firefly at the tip of a blunt flying between the three of us, and a ghost in skinny jeans asks to join us. 64 64
Sunrise
--after Frank O'Hara's “A True Account of Talking to the Sun at Fire Island”
6:30am in Fresno and my alarm goes off and I hit snooze like I do every morning.
“You gotta be goddamn-kiddin’ me!” I hear my neighbor shout through my groggy haze. “This ain’t yo neighbor, either!”
“Then why do you sound like my neighbor?” I ask, pulling the blankets back up over my head.
“Ain’t nobody got time fo’ stupid questions!” The Sun’s voice shook the perfume in the bottle on my dresser; my pens did the harlem shake and my earrings salsa- danced against the wall. “Why you keep hittin’ snooze anyway? Ain’t you know I'm ’bout to get my shine on?”
“Waking up ain’t easy, okay?”
“What yo momma tell you? This was gonna be a stroll in the park? Think I don’t know yo momma well? Since when does a farmworker woman teach that?”
I pull down the blankets a little and see the Sun’s big brown eyes taking up the view in my window. I know exactly what my mami says and I’m ashamed so I stay quiet.
“Damn right!”
“You just here to yell at me? I yell enough at myself.” I'm too old to be pouting but the Sun is making me feel pathetic!
“I'm here 'cause you need to hear some truth!” The Sun’s gaze is so strong a corner of my Virgen de Guadalupe blanket catches fire and I have to sit up quick to stamp it out with my pillow.
“Please, be careful, Sun! I’m listening, alright!” I don’t lay back down and I push my hair back. I rub the crusty crust from my eyes and I put on my best listening face.
65 65 “You look like you listenin’. You listenin’?!” His voice knocks over books and candles and dried flowers and saved stones.
“Please, Sun, you are making a big mess! I am listening!”
“You makin’ a bigger mess!” His big sun-voice fills up my whole skull and my whole room. “All them words you ain’t writin’ better be marinatin’. Better be on some slow-roast-type shit. Or what the fuck you learnin’ for? To get a degree and a salary? Doubtful. I know you.”
“I hear you, Sun. I do. It’s just hard sometimes...” I try to explain but the Sun ain’t having it.
“Best start blastin’” he shouts over me. “Biggie Smalls kickin’ down the door type mess! Handle yo bitness, don’t let yo bitness handle you. Non-doing. You know what it is. No excuses, none of that lazy shit. Bring that crazy new shit. Your word is your weapon. Unload that clip.”
“But...”
“Get off yo ass, woman! I ain’t sayin’ it again!” This time his voice was so loud, it shook me right off of my bed, tangled in my blankets. And he sent down a sun ray so strong that my blinds were scattered all over my room like broken teeth and my window shattered all over Tenth Street, sparkling like eyes reflecting the sunrise. 66 66 you should write that down
there is a smile on my face because this morning i made love to abbie hoffman right before he left for chicago and the democratic convention of 1968 my fingers tangled in the knots of his maniac hair. last friday i gave marilyn the key to my hotel room and she bit my lips between giggles and gulps of champagne. a few days ago i spent the night at frida’s she swung my hair over my shoulder and painted herself naked on my bare back the feeling of wet paint covering me head to toe in goosebumps. there is a smile on my face saturday night at pod’s and jerry’s low light hovers above dark tables i’m sitting on langston’s lap, candlelight flickers across his hand which rests easy on my thigh. billie’s voice fills the room like the warm smell of cinnamon. sometimes there’s sad blues her voice a smooth hand on the back of my neck and sometimes there’s happy blues. this one goes out to the two of you. heads turn to our table in the back. she nods slow and soft 67 67 the diamonds at her ears catch the light langston nods back and whispers i could take the harlem night and wrap around you. i press my lips to his temple and say against his skin you should write that down. 68 68 the truth
because love is bursting from the throat and tickling the tongue and rubbing lips together. irresistible like the exposed thighs of the poet to whom time is a concept she has never grasped so she can never count her age in years. she looks in all directions breathing in every cockroach running along the baseboard and the mole in the crook of your pinky. the spirits yearn to speak to her and begin to improvise a language a rosebush leaning forward into her path she tries to understand the petals rubbing her teeth and chews them. presses a palm against the bark of the tree outside her bedroom window, or brushes dry grass into a pile and lights a short-lived fire. the poet looks in all directions and sometimes sees nothing except the back of her own head. she stands, leaning back, supported by wind, allowing her skin to goosebump her nipples to harden the hair on her head lifts. she reaches out to listen with naked toes to the crying spirits with their weak voices. they hope that one day the poet will look at nothing and finally see everything. 69 69
Dandelion Suns
A short break between classes allows me to slip into a sundress to walk Wilbur the brown dog around the block. Once outside, I jump on a large stone that shifts its weight under my feet. This early spring sun weighs heavy on our shoulders. I balance above a patch of grass where bright dandelion suns congregate, and watch my friend follow paths of scents that surpass my senses. The birds sing in Fresno with the same abandon that our cars groan with. They jump from tree to tree above us with quick hops and darting eyes. Wilbur and I look at each other, our ears pointed at squawks and chirps, rustling leaves, and the silent rain of petals. 70 70
AFTERWORD
Mireyda Barraza Martinez died in a car accident on November 20, 2016. She was 29 years old. Her thesis had been eagerly anticipated by everyone who knew her as she made her way through the MFA program. We all knew it would be terrific. The last time I saw Mia, on the Friday before she died, she and I agreed to meet after Thanksgiving break to look at what she had assembled so far, to talk about what additional poems to include, what poems needed revising, what organizing strategies might work best—all of the things that a student and her thesis advisor toss back and forth as the process approaches its completion. I’d been reading her poems, her revisions—and her prose about poetry— closely, and with great pleasure, for nearly five years by then, and I knew that Mia had been thinking about and working toward this collection for a long time. She’d already gathered together most of the poems that she was sure she wanted to include, so I started there and followed her lead. I added a group of powerful new poems from last semester’s workshop; some excellent poems written as responses in a couple of literature courses; and various poems and revisions we found in emails, on her laptop, and even in contest entries—such as the Andrés Montoya Scholarship (which she won for the second time this year). I’ve changed nothing in individual poems but typos and spelling errors. When making choices between versions (sometimes there were many), I simply tried to go with Mia’s most recent version unless (as in a few cases), the newest one was clearly incomplete or in flux. When it wasn’t clear which was the most recent revision, I selected the version I thought was most fully accomplished and most powerful. My goal was to make the thesis as close to what Mia wanted as possible, while facing the real and obvious limitations of the situation. 71 71
Some of the poems here employ conventional punctuation and capitalization, some have variations on the conventions, and some demonstrate decidedly unconventional choices. Mia and I had talked at length about the benefits and drawbacks of consistency in a collection, and I’m confident that Mia would not have decided to smooth out these variations. She was not concerned with making a homogenized or uniform book manuscript. She was, in fact, determined to mix things up, to upset the norms, to ask her readers to question all conventions—including consistency. The thesis Abstract is excerpted from two essays that Mia wrote about her own aesthetics as a poet, one for my Form and Theory: Poetry course, and another for a graduate workshop. She wrote several beautiful and articulate prose pieces as a graduate student that speak to her goals and intentions as a poet—and how those things intertwine with her political and moral convictions—and those have been a great help and a guide as I worked with this thesis. I’ve arranged the poems in the manuscript according to what seems, in my judgment, an order most conducive to reading the work, and most closely aligned with what I know of how Mia was thinking about presenting her work. Several thematic threads and obsessions run through the thesis, but most prominent to me is the way this manuscript merges and interweaves the political and the personal all the way through. These poems insist on a deep connection between social justice—and righteous anger in the face of injustice—with love and human compassion. They create what Mia called the “intimate immediacy of one person speaking directly to another” as a means to move us closer toward empathy and to bring about deeper understanding within and between communities. In a world she saw as seriously flawed, and in need of much hard work, this writer also found plenty of joy and hope. “Some of my earliest experiences with 72 72 poetry,” she wrote, “were when I was introduced to Hip Hop: the playful enjambment, the steady rhythm or the intentionally broken rhythm, the intricacies of word play. I was heavily influenced by the community aspect of Hip Hop. It was something that was created to uplift a community, either by openly expressing struggle, pain, or injustice, or by creating something fun and positive.” Mia’s poems are often funny and whimsical—and they are often bristling with outrage— or filled with love, lust, and wisdom. And sometimes they manage to contain all of these things at once. In her words, they were “created to uplift a community.” She believed in the beauty of language, but insisted that her own poetry should offer more than beauty. “Leaving a poem on a page,” she wrote, “isn’t satisfactory when I know how deeply poetry has affected me. There is a sense of urgency—poetry needs to get up and do something.” She would be very pleased that her poem “Parading Down Blackstone Avenue” has been set to music by Professor Ben Boone and will be performed by the Fresno State Chamber Choir at the U.S. Library of Congress in April 2017 at a celebration for U.S. Poet Laureate
Juan Felipe Herrera. Clearly, Mia was anticipating—and many of us were anticipating with her—a long future of powerful and consequential work in this world. With her death, we lost not only her physical presence, but all that she might have done next—and that, of course, is part of our deep, collective grief. But what she left behind is substantial: her direct and indirect influence on our lives, her many kindnesses, and her various artistic creations, including the extraordinary poems in this thesis. Her MFA degree will be awarded posthumously on May 20, 2017.
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Mireyda Barraza Martinez
Type full name as it appears on submission
April 2, 2017
Date