Singing at the Gates

by Jimmy Santiago Baca

more grass blade and hawk flight.

  I am alive

  because hunger breaks me in tortilla pieces

  I am sober because hunger drinks my blood

  still warm from the sword wound,

  I am content because hunger bathes me in its morning dew

  adding to my flowered soul the moisture for it to rise,

  I am healthy because hunger

  licks the succulent meat from my bones.

  I feel the souls of the ancient come at me

  from four directions

  and each sits at my heart like hungry travelers

  and I heap my heart high

  with offerings of my visions, my dreams, my faith.

  In return they permit me to visit my Aztec ancestors,

  where I remember the many I am—

  How do I bring

  all aspects of Mestiza life

  over a thousand years

  into an old woman’s heart

  and speak the meaning of it to others?

  They laugh when I stare at them,

  as hens in the butcher’s grip

  they begin each day

  and as the sun falls each day

  the butcher’s blade falls.

  I am made of moths and stars.

  I walk north to recover my souls,

  to recover my daughters, my sons, my parents, my sisters,

  millions of them who have vanished into air,

  into moths and stars, I come to recover them,

  bring back their dreams to the Mestiza people

  so we are not separate from earth.

  I want the moths and stars to walk home with me.

  I want us to walk together to church, to my brother’s house,

  to my sister’s maize beer making party

  to share our stories and reclaim our voices again.

  I want to dance, to laugh, to fish, to recite poetry.

  I am Rita, the one who strays, one who dropped from the sky

  to challenge the sorcerers who would steal and harm our souls.

  I go beyond me in my walk,

  it empowers me,

  when I walk I see my dreams

  become lizards

  blinking in the shade of cacti and stone,

  when I walk I am the black butterfly

  deeply indulging fully in flight

  and the delight of floating on air

  knowing it will die tomorrow.

  My wings have developed so I can fly

  fully immersed in pure joy for a day

  then tomorrow die, a lyric in a song

  carried off by the wind.

  I have words in me thirsty to speak

  for centuries now,

  feelings in me thirsty to express themselves

  for centuries now,

  dreams in me thirsty to make real

  for centuries now.

  And that is why I walk north,

  to know more of myself as I become more of myself

  I become more.

  *

  “I never knew this thirst could so completely

  overtake me to a point where I would have given my life

  for a drop of water. I never knew that about water . . .”

  that is what I told the psychiatrist and doctors

  at the hospital in Kansas.

  They found me rummaging through a refrigerator

  in a house. I was a stranger they said, in a house

  picking through food in a refrigerator.

  Others had sighted me along the road,

  sleeping, walking, standing

  and they all wondered who I was, how I had crossed the desert,

  and how I had made it across the border.

  The answers flow with water,

  rush, brimming every field,

  carrying debris, splitting seeds to blossom abundant crops,

  carousing in channels and tumbling down tributaries

  broadening out into pools and shallows

  then gaining momentum and energy

  raging, raging, raging

  in my veins, my mouth, my heart.

  If I encounter you on the road,

  as mother I bless you

  with a crucifix around your neck,

  feed you agave hearts, water in a gourd dipper,

  and move on,

  called by the prophecies in ancient books

  their voices in my head, shoulders, elbows, wrists and palms.

  As a woman who heals

  I offer you cuts of goat meat

  roasted underground for three days and nights,

  an earthen jar of maize beer,

  a willow sapling, a patio and wooden plank bench

  to rest yourself on.

  As human, I offer you my heart

  which is semicircle,

  opening to all who need comfort and love.

  I come from canyon lands in Chihuahua,

  kindling memories aflame,

  illuminate myself as a girl when I roamed

  freely through the canyons singing old songs,

  my running feet rasping sticks on a gourd

  keeping time to soul song,

  I offer boiled chickens, blankets, ground maize,

  to the Gods for blessings.

  *

  They asked me why I left my village,

  what possessed me to journey to Kansas,

  and of course of my feet during those years I walked

  how the bones had reshaped themselves to contours

  of desert paths, how my toes curved to grip dirt

  on coyote and deer trails,

  and during the doctors’ questions, the lawyers’

  sly-eyed cynical interrogation

  implying I was some sort of terrorist

  or madwoman,

  all I could remember was the terrible thirst I endured.

  I never knew thirst could so wholly consume your souls and body,

  so completely absorb every thought and sight and sound and smell,

  scratching my throat like a dried corncob

  in my mouth like a shriveled mushroom

  clawing into my lips like scorpions

  digging into my heels like steel-toothed bear traps,

  burrowing into my belly button

  like a diamond drill head,

  snaking through the bone marrow of my skeleton

  until I succumbed to it completely and became thirst:

  My name was thirst,

  my white onion and empty water jug were thirst,

  my Chihuahua desert was thirst,

  my God was called thirst,

  picturing my children I imagined them as raindrops,

  seeing mirages beyond in the wavering heat of midday

  I rushed to bathe in waterfalls,

  a vulture in the sky was a glass of water

  settling on a rock

  shimmering coldly,

  my tongue turned to a wooden spatula,

  the wood cracked, splintered

  swelled,

  was hard as a brick I scratched at

  with my fingernails

  and I laughed,

  a thirsty laugh

  drowning in so much thirst.

  *

  Sometimes so thirsty and hungry

  I became sick, vomited and had diarrhea.

  I scratched up roots and scrubbed my scalp

  with stone and sand.

&nb
sp; Dehydration left me weak and stunned by sun,

  I walked in circles in a glowing orb of light,

  chanting my grandfather’s owl drum songs.

  I saw my ancestors arrive. I was in a field of light,

  dogs and goats and cattle in the golden fields,

  my auntie Juanita and uncle Torrez,

  they made tortillas, came in from the fields

  with arms full of corn, sweet, healthy, yellow corncobs.

  Then I woke from my delirium,

  my face caked with dirt, ants and bugs in my hair,

  cactus needles in my fingers and arms,

  blood all over me.

  The next day I reentered the place where thirst and hunger rule,

  danced beneath hail and lightning,

  sage fields hit by lightning, burning

  all around sage smoldering

  myself in the center of burning sage fields

  as if I was an offering to God.

  Old gray haired wrinkled Mestiza woman

  gone mad, straying away from her village,

  abandoning her family

  to wander in the desert

  is what they reported in the newspapers.

  The devil has his workers—

  A writer wrote a play about me,

  imagining what my jailers and counselors said,

  how the nurse was, the attitudes of authorities and judges

  especially lawyers, brutes

  without compassion or imagination.

  Should I have told them the truth?

  That I was called on by my ancestors

  to perform this ritual, to cleanse the souls

  of those who chose to forget the earth-laws

  those who forgot the balance of life,

  I walk in 120 degree heat

  not alone,

  but speaking with plant tribes,

  that have cured me in the past with fever,

  head colds, measles,

  some appear on air as beautiful women,

  handsome men,

  most appear as mist beings.

  I am from the people of Rejogochi,

  my own people thought I was bewitched

  but I am not afraid of anyone

  and have no need to avenge anyone

  for only I have harmed myself

  by believing in the voices,

  in the prophecies,

  in the words of our ancestors

  and the beauty of our songs and dances.

  People knew my mother

  carried me sideways in her womb

  and she kept a clay bowl of parched maize

  next to the door,

  she scattered hot chili powders in the house

  to keep sorcerers away,

  she marked my forehead with sage ash

  to keep the devil from taking my souls,

  because I was different,

  I heard the ancient voices

  and followed the ancient trail back to our origins,

  to Aztlan’s Seven Caves, Blue Heron land,

  and took my thousand mile walk to cure my culture.

  My father bathed my body in cedar and juniper smoke,

  and the Mexican government and Jesuits denounced me

  as a mad hag, a babbling fool

  when I uttered ancient prayers,

  when I grew mushrooms in my stomach, when I spit out

  a small stone and worms,

  and when I flew in my peyote visions.

  I saw my people singing on a mountaintop,

  and they instructed me to walk, walk north,

  plant your feet in Aztlan

  bury your heart in Blue Heron fields,

  give your souls to the seven caves like burial bones

  ground to meal and mixed with water and eaten.

  The doctor’s analysis

  was that I was mad.

  They forced me to take sedatives

  pills that made me sleep for months.

  My medicine people

  thought my souls had been kidnaped

  but truly it’s the souls of other that have been corrupted

  and kidnaped.

  Had I words to say what I feel,

  the poet in me would tell you

  how I passed through cities

  cafes and restaurants filled with people

  gorging, while two blocks either way

  children slept in cardboard boxes and mothers sold their infants;

  kings of the land were the drug dealer

  driving luxury SUVs, Cadillacs, and BMWs,

  sports stars bedding down with fourteen-year-old girls

  movie stars trading money and diamonds for virgins and drugs,

  bankers laundering money for corporate gangsters,

  no one cares; no one remembers their mother memories,

  no one turns to their neighbors in compassion,

  it’s all blood and greed and lies and betrayals and destruction,

  city after city I passed

  I saw this, heard and felt it, smelled

  gutters with young girls

  worming their way around for crack,

  saw the black and brown and white thugs

  raping and killing and numbing their brains

  with shocks of crack,

  I paused in front of storefront windows

  banked with TVs

  and saw the killing in Afghanistan and Iraq,

  saw the Twin Tower corpses shoveled up,

  saw Enron and Anderson accounting firm and others

  rob, steal, lie, cheat and destroy

  millions of people’s retirement savings,

  and you accuse me of being crazy?

  I, Rita, who fell from the sky,

  entered my ancient lands of Atzlan, to re-create myself

  in the sacredness of each footstep

  hard toes brittle and scaly like a female wolf,

  I come as warrior woman you despise, ridicule, scorn,

  my bones ancient flutes humming my song of peace, forgiveness and love.

  Don’t you know! Can’t you see! Listen, hear the Gods!

  With my onion bag and plastic milk jug of water

  I walk past your TVs, your mansions, your gluttonous ways,

  your snarling over drugs and money and possessions.

  In the midst of this I re-create myself—

  walk like sperm toward the egg-sun

  and my development begins, anew, male/female,

  mad and crazed in the belly of sinful life,

  fertilized by women from ancient ways

  carried in the current of wind and dust,

  carrying me gently toward the womb

  as I divide into many women,

  woman at the street corner woman carrying a briefcase

  woman pushing her baby carriage, woman jogging,

  more and more divisions of me take place

  until I am everyone

  until I am in the birth canal of creation

  re-creating myself into all of you.

  I burrow into life,

  into the sunlight, into the moonlight, into the cacti,

  attach myself to the cells of the horny toad’s tongue

  and suck vital nourishment from the stones, sand, leaves, cacti spines,

  that forms in me a new brain, a new spine, new nerves and skin,

  wind forms my heart again,

  water shapes my blood,

  sky m
y muscles and the earth my skeleton.

  This is who I am, Rita, from the sky,

  rumbling with ancient ancestors’ voices,

  and eventually, under the stars

  as I rest on dirt,

  I am reshaped,

  my heart twitches anew, beats again with renewed vigor.

  *

  I keep walking north, to my ancient lands,

  push forward, hungry, thirsty, seeking life, push

  up, my arms bud out, I rapidly gain size,

  grow new in this world north of my village,

  as people laugh at me, mistrust me,

  accuse me, suspect me.

  I cry in the dark, I am without parents,

  am utterly alone,

  but I go on, my lungs expand,

  my face now made, grooved out by God’s clay-shaping fingers,

  my ears grown out, I am amazed at my fingers again,

  and know

  that is why I came north,

  to remake myself, to follow the ancient works of God,

  allow myself to be made anew

  into one we are all, filled with tears and laughter,

  but they spit at me,

  diagnose me as stupid and insane,

  while my tongue creates a new language, my tongue

  stretching and pulling words

  to make things all around physical,

  I have knees now; I slowly stand up against these mockers,

  dig my heel and toes into the ground against these scoffers,

  my eyelids blink in the cold harsh wind,

  as I move onward, following the internal map of my heart

  toward home, until I am joined together with home,

  joined to the plants and birds and air and fire,

  until I am one with creation.

  And in Kansas,

  I surrendered myself as your prisoner,

  Rita, fallen from the sky . . .

  *

  I didn’t go north with weapons

  no sticks, rocks, knives or guns

  filled my pockets,

  no deception, lies or betrayals

  bulged my heart,

  no reason to fight or imprison others.

  Instead,

  on an afternoon when clouds poured

  earth gouging gully washers

  in arroyos,

  I threw myself in the stream

  and the raging water transformed

  itself into a young black bear that kept me afloat,

  cottonwood saplings

  transformed into coyotes dragged me up

  by my arms and legs onto the bank,

  and there, coughing up gulps of water

  I thanked the young black bear,

  I bowed to cottonwoods,

  re-born from their hands into a freer life,