Every sunset, I find myself rushing, cleaning the brushes, hurrying, my footsteps giving a light tap on each rung up the aluminum ladder to the garage roof.
Because urracas are arriving by the thousands from all directions and settling in the river trees. Trees leafless as sea anemones in this season, the birds in their branches dark and distinct as treble clefs, very crisp and noble and clean as if someone had cut them out of black paper with sharp scissors and glued them with library paste.
Urracas. Grackles. Urracas. Different ways of looking at the same bird. City calls them grackles, but I prefer urracas. That roll of the r making all the difference.
Urracas, then, big as crows, shiny as ravens, swooping and whooping it up like drunks at Fiesta. Urracas giving a sharp cry, a slippery rise up the scales, a quick stroke across a violin string. And then a splintery whistle that they loop and lasso from that box in their throat, and spit and chirrup and chook. Chook-chook, chook-chook.
Here and there a handful of starlings tossed across the sky. All swooping in one direction. Then another explosion of starlings very far away, like pepper. Wind rattling pecans from the trees. Thunk, thunk. Like bad kids throwing rocks at your house. The damp smell of the earth the same smell of tea boiling.
Urracas curving, descending on treetops. Wide wings against blue. Branch tips trembling when they land, quivering when they take off again. Those at the crown devoutly facing one direction toward a private Mecca.
And other charter members off and running, high high up. Some swooping in one direction and others crisscrossing. Like marching bands at halftime. This swoop never bumping into that. Urracas closer to earth, starlings higher up because they’re smaller. Every day. Every sunset. And no one noticing except to look at the ground and say, “Who’s gonna clean up this shit!”
All the while the sky is throbbing. Blue, violet, peach, not holding still for one second. The sun setting and setting, all the light in the world soft as nacre, a Canaletto, an apricot, an earlobe.
And every bird in the universe chittering, jabbering, clucking, chirruping, squawking, gurgling, going crazy because God-bless-it another day has ended, as if it never had yesterday and never will again tomorrow. Just because it’s today, today. With no thought of the future or past. Today. Hurray. Hurray!
¡tan TÁN!
Sandra Cisneros was born in Chicago in 1954. Internationally acclaimed for her poetry and fiction, she has been the recipient of numerous awards, including the Lannan Literary Award and the American Book Award, and of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the MacArthur Foundation. Cisneros is the author of two novels, The House on Mango Street and Caramelo; a collection of short stories, Woman Hollering Creek; two books of poetry, My Wicked Wicked Ways and Loose Woman; and a children’s book, Hairs/Pelitos. She is the founder of the Macondo Foundation, an association of writers united to serve underserved communities (www.macondofoundation.org), and is Writer in Residence at Our Lady of the Lake University, San Antonio. She lives in San Antonio, Texas. Find her online at www.sandracisneros.com.
Also by Sandra Cisneros
The House on Mango Street (English)
La casa en Mango Street (Spanish)
Woman Hollering Creek and Other Stories (English)
El Arroyo de la Llorona (Spanish)
My Wicked Wicked Ways (poetry)
Loose Woman (poetry)
Hairs/Pelitos (for young readers)
Caramelo (English)
Caramelo (Spanish)
A L S O B Y SANDRA CISNEROS
CARAMELO
Every year, Ceyala “Lala” Reyes’ family—aunts, uncles, mothers, fathers, and Lala’s six older brothers—packs up three cars and, in a wild ride, drives from Chicago to the Little Grandfather and Awful Grandmother’s house in Mexico City for the summer. Struggling to find a voice above the boom of her brothers and to understand her place on this side of the border and that, Lala is a shrewd observer of family life. But when she starts telling the Awful Grandmother’s life story, seeking clues to how she got to be so awful, grandmother accuses Lala of exaggerating. Soon, a multigenerational family narrative turns into a whirlwind exploration of storytelling, lies, and life. Like the cherished rebozo, or shawl, that has been passed down through generations of Reyes women, Caramelo is alive with the vibrations of history, family, and love.
Fiction
LOOSE WOMEN
With her novel, The House on Mango Street, Cisneros introduced one of the most lyrically inventive voices ever to emerge from the barrio. Now she gives us a book of poems with the lilt of Norteño music and the romantic abandon of a hot Saturday night. Celebrating the cataclysms of love and mapping the faultlines in the Mexican-American psyche, Loose Woman is by turns bawdy and introspective, flagrantly erotic and unabashedly funny, a work that is both a tour de force and a triumphant outpouring of pure soul.
Poetry
WOMAN HOLLERING CREEK
Woman Hollering Creek is a story collection of breathtaking range and authority, whose characters give voice to the vibrant and varied life on both sides of the Mexican border. From a young girl revealing secrets only an eleven-year-old can know to a witch woman circling above the village on a predawn flight, the women in these stories offer tales of pure discovery, filled with moments of infinite and intimate wisdom. Woman Hollering Creek confirms Sandra Cisneros’s stature as a writer of electrifying talent.
Fiction
ALSO AVAILABLE
The House on Mango Street
VINTAGE CONTEMPORARIES
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Woman Hollering Creek: And Other Stories Page 15