and listen to the war inside [ please
no american mierdas ]. Carouse the procession
dancing to the pier. Moor me
in a motorboat [ de veras que sea una lancha ]
driven by a nine-year-old
son of a fisherman. Scud to the center
of the Estero de Jaltepec. Read
“Como tú,” and toss pieces of bread.
As the motorboat circles,
open the flask, so I’m breathed like a jacaranda,
like a flor de mayo,
like an alcatraz — then, forget me
and let me drift.
Montage with Mangoes, Volcano, and Flooded Streets
I helped Abuelita pluck the white flor de izote from stems
to put in the bowl to then drop in the pan
to mix with eggs,
there’s no way Mom, younger than I am now
and in California like I am now,
there’s no way she knew my technique:
grab stalk and pull toward belly,
bowl between legs, petals like rice
from opened burlap.
I’m older than Dad then,
for the longest time I wanted to throw rocks
at fruit bats, wanted to run
out of the kitchen to climb the big mango tree,
branch by branch, up six meters
to watch the volcano’s peak fit in my hand —
lie to me. Say I can go back.
Say I’ve created smoke and no rain.
It’s almost twenty years and still
I can’t keep mangoes from falling six meters down,
to where dogs lick what my aunts,
Mom, Dad, and I still cannot.
The Pier of La Herradura
When I sleep I see a child
hidden between the legs of a scarred man:
their sunburned backs sweat cold air,
the child faces me
and the pier’s thatched roof swallows the moon
cut by the clouds behind them.
Sometimes, they’re on the same roof
wearing handkerchiefs
and uniformed men surround them.
I mistake bullet casings
for cormorant beaks diving
till water churns the color of sunsets,
stained barnacles line the pier
and I can’t see who’s facedown
on the boats painted crimson.
Once, I heard the man —
alive and still on the roof — say
today for you, tomorrow for me.
There’s a village where men train cormorants
to fish: rope-end tied to sterns,
another to necks, so their beaks
won’t swallow the fish they catch.
My father is one of those birds.
He’s the scarred man.
Dancing in Buses
Pretend a boom box
blasts over your shoulder. Raise
your hands in the air. Twist them
as if picking limes. Look
to the right as if crossing
streets. Look to the left,
slowly as if balancing orange
baskets. Bend as if picking
cotton. Do the rump. Straighten
up as if dropping firewood. Rake,
do the rake. Sweep,
do the sweep. Do the Pupusa-
Clap — finger dough clumps. Clap.
Do the Horchata-Scoop —
your hand’s a ladle, scoop.
Reach and scoop. Now,
duck. They’re shooting. Duck
under the seat, and
don’t breathe.
Hands behind your head.
Drop down.
Look at the ground.
Roll over.
Face the mouth of the barrel.
Do the protect-face-with-hand.
Don’t scream.
How to Enlist
for María de los Ángeles
You must meet in the bleachers during a packed fútbol game. She’ll slip a paper with the assignment meet by the dried creek. Try to memorize her face. At midnight, she’ll bring her thoughts wrapped in tamales and tell you to taste each one. That you didn’t notice drunks unconscious on streets like kilometer markers won’t matter. You’ll train in warehouses for months till at the other end of overgrown cane fields, hidden by cashew groves, someone cleaning barrel, bolt, and chamber will greet you. Her laughter will fill you. Laughter saying: The Final Offensive. Shoes like banana peels in a landfill; these will be her shoes. We can’t use him, she’ll say and take shoelace, hands, belts, shirts, till her thoughts turn into dark spots in a ditch where fumes lick her skin. Don’t forget her voice. Vow to avenge her name.
Documentary
from The Houses Are Full of Smoke (1987)
“One day, my mom came running
said ¿How can it be, the dogs
in the fútbol field?
So she asked for money
to buy a casket. I didn’t know why,
she’d seen so many like that.
Neighbors tell me last night
they took so-and-so
found them in such-and-such place,
¿Who took them? ¿Who?
¿Ay por qué? I say.
We’re scared, it’s getting closer,
patrols grease their faces.
Then, someone came running.
They’d found her at El Playón,
she was wearing shorts. Dogs.
So many dogs. My mother
never wore shorts.”
ARENA
Ay mamita, ¿don’t you know Alianza Republicana Nacionalista’s acronym spells sand? Don Vaquero’s blue pickup truck drives by every hour. Those loudspeakers tell us this is the tide that will wash everything. Ay mamita, this is the party of Roberto D’Aubuisson who splits watermelons with machetes to show “everyone is red inside.” People say D’Aubuisson is a close friend of un tal Tío Reagan and that his wife has a culo like Miss Universo.
ARENA’s cheerleaders wear red-white-and-blue dresses; they’re the girls older guys whistle at. At least, these are days boys get free plastic balls and we get free plastic pom-poms. There’s Don Vaquero’s pickup again. Last week he delivered the white voting booths. Behind those black curtains, my father dyed his thumb purple. Ay mamita, I shouldn’t have told him I thought his print looked like the beach, the one with all those washed-up bullet casings.
— Mom, age 13
“Don Chepe”
The war is or isn’t over, but coffee still brews,
sugar keeps vanishing, he’s burned his uniform
and never wears boots, his daughters
break mirrors on him to save their mother
when he returns waking neighbors,
waking his grandson. His hammock is wet,
so are his pants, the parakeet,
a windup clock, his daughters in nightgowns,
his grandson in their arms,
his black boots don’t make towns flee anymore —
Don has always been the wrong word:
redacted addresses, .38s, clips in back-pockets.
To see how many he’ll kill, his grandson
throws rocks at tadpoles. One by one
his daughters leave. Don has always been
what his wife didn’t know how to wash
from uniforms. His grandson’s asked
to fetch vodka when Don tries to forget
the still-opened eyes. Not even that wakes him.
No one can cover mirrors in time.
No one can find the scorpion in their shoes.
Disappeared
Hold these names responsible: ARENA, Roberto D’Aubuisson, Escuadrones de la Muerte, Las Fuerzas Armadas, Batallón Atlacatl, La Guardia Civil, Escuela de las Américas (also known as: Fort Benning or Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation), Batallón Atonal, Bush Sr., Ronald Reagan, Batalló
n Ramón Belloso, Alliance for Progress, USAID, Batallón Eusebio Bracamonte, CIA, Jimmy Carter, Batallón Manuel José Arce, the fourteen families…
Rooftop
for Tía Mali
On top of those tiles,
they thought they saw stars fall
as they imagined snow would
from an orange tree.
They saw them burst
bright yellow, bright
green, sometimes
red, on the ground,
on the roofs,
on the streets, a few
kilometers away,
in the islands,
in the cane.
They climbed the roof
when they heard boots
flash-flood through houses,
and when they felt the ground shiver,
they did not tremble.
She held her two-year-old
nephew, saying
Javiercito, they will stop falling
soon. It’s just snow.
This Was the Field
Some say it’s true — I haven’t seen it — not here close to the coast. Doña Raquel says the islands are where bombs come from. She says those people are guerrilleros, their dogs carry messages, and their children are born with sickles up their asses. Teniente Milton says guerrilleros are scared of this town. Last week, Milton broke four of Carlito’s fingers. If it weren’t for Carlito’s mother swearing she would beat the shit out of him — I don’t know — Milton dragged him to the middle of the street and pointed the M16 at his forehead. That Las Fuerzas will shoot kids for listening to the radio — I don’t know — I haven’t seen it here. It started early one morning — the helicopter flying low to the ground — this happened five days in a row — one shipment an hour. Mamá Socorro says guerrilleros might be winning. It was the first time a helicopter flew over our town. All we read and heard about were battles in Tecoluca, the islands, the capital, the volcanoes. I ran under the helicopter, it never landed — it just threw bodies onto the field.
— Dad, age 11
Politics
If you shoot hummingbirds and eat their hearts,
you can shoot anything,
their father told them
walking them to and from that forest
where for twelve years
hummingbirds fought for hibiscus.
Look, this is how I did it,
the oldest says, arms outstretched,
imagining crosshairs in his old scope.
A good sniper, an obedient son.
The young one, my father,
the student who hid
a red handkerchief in his drawer,
looks at his hands, same width,
same color as his brother’s
who repeats, I had to. I had to.
Aftermath
Condoms trapped in mangroves, sometimes
shrapnel, and always that rotted scent
of abandoned pelican nests. Graffiti
and old campaign posters taped
to the pier’s stores where tourists once bought
cocktails from yachts. But that’s
neither here nor there, now there’s foreign films
played at the old baker’s house
with the only TV, people out the door,
no one translating. See,
little has changed. Burned thatch-roof,
you can still stop rain. Bullet holes
in doors, we can see through you.
Little has changed. Uniforms
aren’t soldiers or guerrilleros —
they’re tattoos or policemen.
Storks and pelicans have been spotted
deep in the estero like before
the bombs and there’s talk crocodiles
are back; still, some people
won’t come, appear, they’ll never be
welcomed. See, little has changed.
Clay pots blacken and blacken. Little
frog in the puddle, quiet now,
that’s a beautiful song, but let us sleep
a few more minutes now
between the lull of a fight between
two gangs. Little frog, she’ll come
if she wants, she’s heard, frog,
she’s heard you.
For Israel and María de los Ángeles
I.
My uncle, Israel, and his fiancée, María, were among the first victims of the war in my hometown. Renato Quintanilla, the high-school teacher’s brother, force-injected my uncle with a mixture of unidentified drugs. A few days later, María was raped and murdered by three soldiers under the command of Sargento Cachaca. My mother, then nine years old, found María in the public latrines. Israel became one of the town’s locos before, a few months later, he completely disappeared. Mi familia still does not know where he is.
II.
I wasn’t born when all this happened. I’ve learned to lower my eyelids
So blood looks like dirt. In dreams — a desire to see my uncle
Float from my kitchen past the chicken coop where there’s shade.
The space modules he threw from trees say if he’d been an astronaut,
He would’ve been Israel Armstrong. I can’t remember his voice. When I wake,
My toes pinch and my shirt shortens and the moon says this is a sign.
For the longest time, my father believed Israel was rained on by bombs,
Shadow in rivers, ditch in the dark. Precisely, radio reporters started
countdowns
Backward. But from my uncle’s nose, we think, shrapnel never burst.
My father still carries unopened water bottles in case he finds him.
III.
He wasn’t a Zamora: a loudmouth, a drunk, a dumbfuck,
A thief, or a good-for-nothing, like the rest of us.
He was first to finish dictionaries, first to approach gringos
And speak “inglish.” By then, La Herradura already sang his name.
He looked like Bruce Lee, taught himself kung fu and nunchaku
From mail-order catalogues. When he spoke, teachers took notes.
Every evening, he was last to leave the library. This was when
He learned to steal flowers for a woman other than his mother.
María loved his smile, the way he wrote her lines like
Mi Carita de Ángel, aquí tenés las flores más lindas.
IV.
Curfews, María walked toward him whispering
When the owl hoots three times, amor, that’s death.
May this be yesterday when he choked with her voice,
Not the day his first word was nada.
Her breath, that sweet mango scent, her body, whitened from bedsheets
Tightened around her neck, her hair, coiled nets dragged ashore —
They pinned her limbs to dirt. No ropes. People said
She was a guerrillera, that she was the one
Who came back to this town, that Israel did steal,
That she did tie red scarves at La Nacional,
That he was the first to disarm guards.
Flies buzz in a jar.
V.
Years later, like those men,
I would tie wrists
To a bedframe
Till my teeth would lick
This and walk out of my
Lover’s room.
VI.
Some say you still pace some street without the chain around your foot
That kept you home. You went crazy. Only the streets know.
We’re tired of looking at strangers’ left feet
To see if the big toe and the two next to that are missing.
Uncle, your brothers gave your mother the key
To the steel chain tied to your right foot,
The good one. Around her neck, the key waits for you.
This was after Las Fuerzas splintered María’s door,
After her mother was a thud silenced by rifles, after
the four times
You convinced enough patients to make a ladder
For you to break out of the psych ward, after
Your brothers tied you to the mangrove trunk,
After you escaped to visit María’s cross
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