Singing at the Gates

by Jimmy Santiago Baca

who kiss their asses while adjusting grins,

  luring audience approval with politically correct quips.

  I want to tell you:

  don’t lie! If you’re going to read a poem

  about a kid getting his head blown off,

  don’t raw jaw your cotton-tipped tongue

  to gain the sugary aplomb and donut favor

  of English Department heads, who like you

  and never scavenged food from dumpsters, who like you

  and never stood in welfare lines, who like you

  while gleaning misery topics from The New York Times.

  I want to tell you:

  if you’re going to preach what you don’t follow,

  testify to what you haven’t lived,

  hoola-hoop your way like a pride-plucked hen

  doormatting your heart for moneyed admirers

  whose concerned faces ooh and ahh faked empathy,

  know that poetry deserves better than that

  hee-hawing, educated, hillbilly-mule

  whinnying for the crowd response.

  I want to tell you:

  while you do your sheepish, poor-me routine,

  your victim-in-distress sighing,

  poor people are being murdered,

  prisoners are being zapped with fifty thousand volts

  of electricity to make them behave.

  O hollow-hearted, New Age activist that you are,

  tell us in your poetry how coolly you’ve risked

  your life helping refugees cross the border.

  I want to tell you:

  what you’re looking for is a new title to acclaim,

  what you want is to be hailed a savior

  when you spice your poetry with theatrics,

  crumpling on the floor and groaning with rage.

  O how the world has done you wrong!

  The last thing we need is more toothless tigers

  stalking thousand-dollar checks from sympathetic patrons

  of first-class airlines and four-star hotels.

  I want to tell you:

  I’m weary of these castrated Uppidees,

  poets and patrons who’ve hardly engaged in life.

  I’m tired of the prejudice they never own,

  tired of them spouting off familiar remedies

  to a world of ills they’ve never known.

  I beg you both, get out of the way,

  please step aside, just a couple of steps,

  it takes too much effort to go around you.

  I want to tell you:

  the flashpoint of paper is 451 degrees.

  WHY AND WHEN AND HOW

  did our lives move from the page

  words composed so elegantly

  boy’s choirs could harmonize,

  how did they scatter

  like crumbs on the floor

  swept up

  and tossed from our lives

  to decompose with the rest,

  how did our pastoral

  move from the canvas

  to join the mob in madness

  when we dreamed we heard angels

  whisper once in our sleep?

  *

  RITA FALLING FROM THE SKY

  Because of the drugs they gave me

  that damaged my brain

  I have been unable to speak for myself,

  but now that it is over, and I roam the hills

  of my village again,

  I will try

  to tell you what happened.

  When I was born my Creator said,

  “I will put this stone that fits in my palm

  under this water,

  and in a hundred years, the water falling on it

  will chisel out a hold, and through that hole

  you will see the secrets of my creation.”

  I, Rita, who fell from the sky,

  am the stone, carrying water and onions,

  and I walk alone,

  across deserts,

  borders, and across lands of many cultures,

  I follow the water

  dripping on my soul.

  They say it is a mystery

  that I did so, that I survived.

  I am eighty-two years old,

  and despite what they believe

  I know where I come from and where I am going.

  I lick my lips so much

  because I learned from the snake to taste, to sense, smell

  danger and intruders with my tongue,

  also because I am thirsty for truth, for love,

  for my land, my people’s lost songs and dances.

  Enough destruction,

  enough talking.

  Enough greed/violence/lies/betrayals.

  I walk a world created ages ago,

  a world where I killed my husband

  because the horny toad spoke to me,

  the goat and the llama

  urged me, and I still exist,

  and for penance I walk thousands of miles

  across desert and prairie

  across international borders

  with only onions and water,

  onions and water.

  How, the doctors ask, did I do it?

  they wonder, make up stories,

  call me insane.

  I have told no one

  what I have seen, who I am now,

  how I have changed,

  the marvels

  I have encountered,

  the friendly spirits I have met and who gave me

  their blessings and wisdom.

  But the doctors think I am crazy

  and I let them believe I am mad,

  but I will tell you the story, who I am,

  why I went,

  what I did—

  My name is Rita from the Sky

  and what you have done to me is not fair.

  I escaped the State Mental Hospital in Kansas twice

  because I heard my ancestors calling me.

  What you have done to me God will punish.

  I leave when I hear the ancestors speak to me

  they whisper

  to me in the nopal cactus

  in the exquisite

  prairie blossoms and the sage and the prairie doves.

  Have you seen, I want to ask,

  a prairie dove?

  at dawn, plump, they veer here and there,

  carousing with the dawn light,

  as if they are aware of angels

  in every flower, in every rock, in every

  tree.

  They are like my heart feels, that’s how they fly,

  at dawn,

  how my heart feels for humanity, for my people,

  the sorrow, joy, the sadness that is so great

  that nobody even knows.

  Instead they say I am mad,

  and I walk, walk, and walk

  back and forth in my cell,

  thousands of miles, four steps one way, four back,

  thousands of miles.

  To keep an old woman in this cell is mad,

  but I cannot contain your madness,

  the insanity that sane people have,

  tearing up the forest, killing the land,

  dirtying the waters.

  I hear prairie doves singing to me

  in the rocks and sand and dirt and sage and cedar and mesquite

  I hear their wings as voices

  tellin
g me there is a sacred religion

  that none of us are aware of

  but which I hear.

  I hear the singers singing words that make me feel

  alive, make me feel part of life, make me feel

  as if my heart means something, makes me feel

  I am a woman, and my journey means something.

  I am telling you what I am about, what I am made of,

  what I hear and feel and how I live.

  I hear those singers in the grass, in each of my footsteps,

  in my breathing

  I hear my ancestors

  Mayan kings,

  my Toltec ancestors

  praising my skin color, praising my strength,

  praising my value as a woman

  a brown woman

  people claim is mad—

  those doctors with their stethoscopes,

  those nurses with their tablets

  jotting down notes

  to confine me in a cage

  because I will not share

  with them what I know.

  I cannot tell you lies, cannot tell you I do not

  hear voices rising from the silence in the desert,

  angelic and beautiful voices

  singing passionately from the onion

  and the spirits

  that I hear

  telling me Go on Rita, go on Rita,

  even if no one knows we are here, if no one listens to us,

  if no one believes we are,

  you have been blessed, you have been chosen

  and so you walk, you walk to the blessed

  love of our heart’s music for your people.

  Hot chili, hot sun, hot sand, hot rocks,

  that’s where I go, into the hot searing lands

  where life and creation is hot and blistering

  I walk into that, happy and joyous

  when I can endure the walk until I meet the hotness

  of life, the whiteness of heat so hot and painful

  that I hear in my soul the cries of my people

  that ever hurt, that ever endured sorrow, that ever

  experienced soul-tearing tragedy and in that moment and in that

  day of delivery of our redemption

  I have seen, no—

  I am called upon to witness the worst of suffering,

  and celebrate it with my walk, with my onion, my water, and my way of

  paying honor,

  my way of dignifying their hurt, their pain, their destruction

  is to walk on, keep walking, and walking.

  Those are the spirits talking to me,

  those are their ancestors speaking to me,

  their suffering, their silence is their way of telling me

  I should go north, keep walking, keep my silence,

  let others call me mad, let others accuse me of leaving my children,

  let others think the worst of me, but I must listen

  to the voices that come from the sand, from the silence, from the emptiness

  as it travels like an eagle through my soul, soaring

  with screeching predatory cries

  after me I willingly give myself

  to it, open my arms and say here I am,

  and then it leaves, it is afraid, it knows

  I am sent by the spirits,

  because of simple things I believe in—

  chili, rice, prayer, hunger, love,

  respect, truth,

  and that is why I walk, that is why I don’t talk.

  *

  I am Rita the mad woman,

  the woman who betrayed her customs, who disappointed,

  who people had trust to become a family woman,

  Rita the Mestiza woman who dreams of her goats and sheep,

  and the night she accidentally killed her husband,

  who works hard,

  who raised six children and who knows

  three more children I have

  from the divine world, given me by the gods

  who tell me

  that our culture is going to outlast all the lies and betrayals

  all the money of men that come here and force us to grow

  marijuana and poppy plants, force us at gun point to wake up

  each morning and do the work we do not want to do.

  I am Rita who sings

  don’t you know that my walking is a prayer for all of us

  don’t you know that my walking is a celebration

  of our spirit,

  that my walking is the string that connects us to the gods that care for us

  that my walking is a great song without words

  without sound without tears or laughter or smiles

  or handshakes,

  that my walk is our greatest fight against the traitors

  that try to kill our souls, don’t you know,

  don’t you know, is what my silence says,

  is what my madness wants to convey to you smart people

  who think you know everything, and have all the answers.

  I am speaking to you through the gods’ voices, their messages

  come to you through me,

  through this old gray haired tired woman, wrinkled face woman

  that is worthless and has no value, no place in life,

  don’t you hear me, hear me, hear me.

  *

  I am crazy because

  I do not hate, because I do not hunger

  for possessions, because I walk alone with my many souls

  in a world made of people hating and warring

  for more land.

  I am a woman with no borders, no gold

  only heart blood waves of energy,

  as I move across invisible boundaries into great understanding

  of life and people.

  But they have accused me of being crazy

  but here is what happened.

  It is my soul that walks north,

  to our ancestors’ homeland, to where the blue cranes

  carve air with feather chisels, as they go north

  to my homeland,

  my dreams of a homeland leap from my head and heart

  like green skinned frogs, gorging themselves on insects of my desires

  that buzz about my head all day and sting my flesh.

  The doctors did not understand this,

  how my toes are maize kernels

  my legs the stout stalks of corn

  the pads of feet cracked and

  dried

  like arroyos in copper canyon

  that have had no water in years.

  The nurse who smirked at me in the hospital

  does not understand how many souls I have—

  she wanted to know about presidents and days

  and rational answers and facts to her questions

  but when I mentioned to her

  the time of the Aztecas, the Mayan love of corn,

  the Incan songs,

  she scribbled in her notepad I was delusional

  and I sulked, pretending to be mad

  rather than have these soulless skins

  waste my time.

  Nor were they the only ones who shamed me.

  *

  My tribespeople

  shamed me for leaving my village alone, for being alone in my misery,

  for humiliating myself

  by leaving without a man and in rags, with only an onion and water


  jug for nourishment, heading north because I hear the voices and callings

  of the Old Ones.

  Nor were they the only ones who shamed me.

  Dreams in green skins accompany me

  leaping back and forth into reality and dream

  with each footstep I take north, going across the desert,

  the doctors asked me how I crossed

  I told them the frogs helped me, leaping back and forth,

  frogs basking under nopalitos,

  burrowing in the cool sand

  moistened by deer urine,

  intoxicated by sage and creosote

  I walked from dawn ’til dusk

  thinking how frog’s heart is a green

  pumpkin seed

  in my flesh

  and with each step my heart

  becomes a heavy yellow pumpkin.

  At the end of the first moon cycle of walking

  I felt lighter, I keep losing my tiny souls

  in the desert, while my three big souls

  get larger and larger until they tower over me

  like hot air balloons, making footsteps light,

  I walk north, hardly touching the ground,

  lifted by my three souls, a stick-puppet dangling under them

  held by spirit-string. Wind

  blows me back and forth, a ragged puppet kite

  made of human hair and flesh,

  that expands and wrinkles

  as my large souls shrink.

  *

  How hunger became me.

  Hunger in my sleep, in my dreams, in my imagined death,

  in my spirit-illness,

  hunger distributed through my body as if hunger were a stone

  pushing out from every pore of my flesh,

  root hairs under a turned over rock.

  I go north to see the gringo land that was once ours,

  I go north to study the gringos

  I go north to hear them speak

  I go north to tear myself from my Mestiza roots.

  Reprimanded and scolded and shamed by my brothers and sisters

  my own children turning their backs on me

  the lawyers keeping all the money

  from the court cases they filed on my behalf,

  only the horny toads in desert brush welcome me,

  only the coyote wags his tail at seeing me

  only the wind combs my hair

  only the sun caresses my flesh

  only hunger makes love to my loins

  open me up to make my footsteps in sand

  a language of ritual

  and this journey north is a ceremony to make me more woman,

  more human, more mother, more earth, more universe,