Juan Felipe Herrera

Radiante, 1967, by Olga Albizu

Radiante (S)

Jestered ochre yellow my umber Rothko

divisions my Brooklyns with Jerry Stern

black then oranged gold leaf & tiny skulls

perforations Dada sugar bread of Oaxacan

ecstasy Lorca’s green horse the daffodil head

corruptions of the State in tenor exhalation

saxophonics blossomings rouged monkey

Dalí roll down the keys the high G’s

underStreets of the undeRealms my hair.

Throttle up into hyper-city correlations =

compassion compassion

Juan Felipe Herrera

 Crescent Moon on a Cat’s Collar

I come from a family of madmen and extravagant women.

My uncle, back in '26

wrote to the president of Mexico.

He accused him of murdering the potato eaters

by the millions.

So, they set him up for life

in a Goddamn Army hospital mental ward.

Another uncle

Xavier Levario got in with big business

making toys out of wood. I could have gone to France,

that’s where the art was, he said. But I joined everybody

in the States.

Armanda, my aunt whose hair has always looked like

gold dust,

a fleece,

owned the only swimming pool in the heart of Mexico City

near la Calle Uruguay. 

My father drove a pink Ford down the main drag in Tijuana.

All the women loved him, no one has ever smiled sweeter.

My pocket is full of ancient coins.

I keep a silver box of African and Zapotec amulets and hair

near my bed, a tarnished sword and acrylics.

Lightning zig-zags like a dog’s tail

everytime I throw a stone in Southern Arizona.

I have fallen in wells and risen.

All my enemies, including the governors and the wardens,

keep away from my eyes and especially

from the rhythms swelling up through my feet and out

of the opal triumph of my voice   

Javier Zamora

                Nogales, Arizona

Saguaro

It was dusk for kilometers and bats in the lavender sky,

like spiders when a fly is caught, began to appear.

And there, not the promised land, but barbwire and barbwire

 

with nothing growing under it. I tried to fly that dusk

after a bat said la sangre del saguaro nos seduce. Sometimes

I wake and my throat is dry, so I drive to botanical gardens

to search for red fruit clutched to saguaros, the ones at dusk

I threw rocks at for the sake of slashing hunger.

But I never find them here. These bats say speak English only.

Sometimes in my car, that viscous red syrup

clings to my throat, and it’s a tender seed toward my survival:

 

I also scraped needles first, then carved those tall torsos

for water, then spotlights drove me and thirty others dashing

into palos verdes, green-striped trucks surrounded us,

our empty bottles rattled and our breath spoke with rust.

When the trucks left, a cold cell swallowed us.

Javier Zamora

 

 

Since Last We Spoke 
after Abuelita

Across the bean field 
we have bulls, silent as grass, 
silent as your calls. My sheets 
don’t smell of kerosene 
anymore. Thank you 
for the stove, lamps,
re-fri-ge-ra-tor, oh 
and the TV. I shoveled 
the dirt myself when 
we turned our icebox 
into pots. I planted 
the peace lilies 
and fancy-leaf caladiums 
you like. Dandelions 
rule the cornfields. It’s how 
the bulls get fat. 

¿Remember Doña Chita? 
She had the biggest 
procession to her tomb, 
but I didn’t go. 
Talk louder, mija, 
my ears are turning low. 
You know, I still see you 
with your backpack 
getting in that van, 
not looking back. 
I hear it’s snowing 
like never before, 
year-round. The cashew 
and platano trees miss you—
Oh, and your sister 
works at the clinic. 
She borrows your blazers, 
she’s a secretary, says 
she’ll never leave me.  

Javier Zamora

[ GRAPEFRUITS ]

and if we were to call you March 1980 

that fourth Monday 

will you know we’re asking silence

to find our teeth 

drying on calendars pluck us 

as if blossoms 

don’t know grapefruits remind us of 

grenades when dew 

remembers night has time to name 

what we call dirt 

carpels burst rinds whisper in church

where walls are shells 

shouting oceans suppose one seed 

is a bullet 

some kind of pearl swallowed by 

an archbishop

Javier Zamora

TO CATCH LA ZUMBADORA 

(image not available)

la zumbadora (genus unknown) Two to three meters long, medium girth, sometimes seen with a rattle, sometimes blue-white checkered patterned, sometimes red with black stripes. Only leñeros have recorded sightings. To catch the fastest snake in the world and hold the oldest secret, the following must be executed: 

You must be unpredictable. Slash tires forgotten atop rooftops, unpredictable run barefoot across cotton-fields, unpredictable translate hymns wearing a plastic cape and touch the president’s mustache while listening to the body-count at seven, unpredictable soak newspapers in coconut juice to predict the cease-fire and laugh at infested bloated faces. O zumbadora seeker, you must be unpredictable to catch immortality.

 

Javier Zamora

 

Sonoran Song

Mom didn’t know, Dad didn’t know
            even if they’d run across fences
before, they didn’t foresee my knees
            crashing into cactus needles that night
one shoe slipped off. She says Coyote
            said I’ll carry him to your front door
myself, Pati. She didn’t know 110 degrees,
            saguaros, no compass to run
north when like Colorado River toads
            we slid under bushes—officers yelled
¡On your fucking knees! You couldn’t have
            known this could happen, Mom.
You couldn’t have. No es su culpa.
            No lo es.

Kaveh Akbar & Javier Zamora

 

A country embraces
absence like something it’s earned—
the gnarled math of dust.

You tried to legalize us,
brief hope. No, no se pudo.