“Maria’s Jawbone” and “Declaration from the Hopyard”

Maria’s Jawbone

Maria’s first language was Spanish, a broken
caracol camisole pigeon toe tongue still wet

tumbling in the rusty maytag dryer, still wet
stumbling that púrpura oracion, still wet

crumbling when her meadow hip cracks corn
on the pavement, her language a corn crack

tumblestone, a periwinkle broomcorn smack’n
stumble, a suckle whisky “aye” instead of ouch,

her montaña language a whip of juju caramelo,
a smooth wispy “oye” instead of help.

No one prays for you more than me, a jaw
bone I cradle like laughter-long-lasting.

Tonight, I brush your teeth with miswak,
when I am hungry for monkeyflower,

when I am sleeping with peasant skin
when I am waking with a milk name,

when I am a name for comet moths that
line El Cometa like pans full of manteca

simmering with faces watermarked with cast
iron halos, simmering with fathers who will

return, but not morena daughters like Maria.
Maria was a moth ball still shot stumbling

when the cow cries, still shot stumbling
when the antlers shed, still shot stumbling

when I hold your dirt, a copper cone mountain
that shivered a headstone I sponge with manzanilla,

my fingers a criss cross bouquet undoing bullet points
in the hairline, undoing a stockinette stitch in the ribs,

undoing a father who furnishes an alter with a jawbone so shiny
it pools a catfish that becomes the light that sits beside me.

 

Declaration from the Hopyard

I.

We are punctured pine flowers pickled purple
our leaves strewn in layers picked by staredowns
between soleil and lune, pointed with barrel shotgun
in the brush, dragged by coyote through el Rio Grande,
fingers stretched by prickly pears, smeared fingerprints
a pinhole kaleidoscope of fermented skies rolled tight
with moss and blood, but how can blood be a metaphor
for contamination?

II.

It began with Aztlan, the place of the Heron
became the place of whiteness, it began with silk
devils bleaching brown kernels and selling bottled ice
tea, Coatlicue Nahuatl for serpent skirt Guadalupe, a river
of wolves, the one who is one with the beasts, but Karla Latin
for strong one English for song, a bowl of posole singing a cow’s
tongue. As saint she performs limpias with an escoba of canela, pours
frankincense onto swollen beer belly, massages with index and pinky, licks
the head of cotton as nails pierce fat for sarcoma, removing the gallbladder
of salmon stones, each thunk as critiqued as queer theory.

III.

In the fields   I paint the man’s fingers pink   slice nerves down
ashy creases   to queer becomes an act   our sexual identities trans
gressed by old men politics   we can’t even stand the devil’s dance
to win our souls   jump the cable   barb the wire   down our waists
as we walk the hop lines   cower from smoking trucks   brown children
run along chemical trails   caked hands eat roasted chiles from a glass jar
stretch aluminum tortillas in bucket palms   kiss bandannas with beer sweat.

The bread, power, finger, field, jaw, life, sky, land,
tow, hem, irrigation, bee, buba, belt, and border lines.

One day we’ll say it ended with El Cometa, the jagged radical, with Atzlan’s blood.