Golondrinagrafía * 2 de mayo | may 2 | *

La golondrina bebe
las lágrimas de la mujer herida
La curandera la piensa,
la sueña,
la frota de plantitas y oraciones, llantos y colores
Ella ahoga su plumaje
en la menstruación inalámbrica
de la ternura

Su cuerpo bramido
parte soles
para destruir a los soldados
que hicieron guerras contra su horizonte

Golondrina labios acurrucados
vuela a los míos
Tu boca sobre la mia, golondrina
Tus labios, golondrina,
desdoblandose sobre los míos
Se mezclan, se entretejen y haces el nido de nuestra salvación

Golondrina ya bebe de mis lágrimas
Para qué ella descanse
en tu vuelo
sobre tu espalda negrita …

The human tamale (confidential memories of illness)

Arnoldo García

The human tamale (confidential memories of illness)

my grandma
would crush one or two aspirins in a spoon
add a bit of sugar,
a few drops of hot water
then put the spoon into my mouth
a concoction to kill the fever
In the waves of chills, sweats, speaking in tongues
In my body
I would fly over mountains
run under the hoofs of herds of wild horses
pounding my head and body into a dusty pulp.
Other times I would be lost in a desert,
under the night
I could jump
almost fly
and leap over plants, boulders, animals
My self evaporating into the mirages of the desert heat
The worst was being held captive in a space capsule
floating into the nothingness of deep space
slamming my voice and fists into the cabin window
A steady 1-2-1-2-1-2 traversing darkness, insanity
a deadly, suffocating endless silence
My grandma
would rub a water-laden rag
or with alcohol when we had it
across my body
my forehead
my stomach
my back
my arms
my face
other times I'd be on my back
and the bed would flip feet over head
spinning me into oblivion
The night that nothing worked
I did not sleep
I wept
I was in such deep pain
the only soothing medicine
became my listening
I was able to hear my heart pump
I locked into her steady beat
her steady rhythm
I became indivisible
In the morning the fever had ended everything
My grandma decided to fight the fever with fever
She and Melda had already started cooking tamale dough
They started filling cornhusks with tamale dough
first they created a small bed with them
My grandma picked me up, naked, and laid me on my bak
and began covering every part of my body with them.
My feet, my ankles and calves, my thighs, my hips and crotch
my stomach, belly-button, my chest, my shoulders, my arms and hands
then my neck, my ears, my nose, my forehead and top of my heads
only my nostrils and eyes remained uncovered.
Then I passed out.

arnoldo garcía


When words die.


My grandmother suffers a stroke
and the natural world receives a mortal blow.
The healer, la curandera, dies.
With her,
the plants that spoke through her hands
the plants that allowed us to ingest them
the plants that healed stomachs, bee stings,
fevers, rashes, upset emotions, made
conversations flow deep into the evenings
preceded by prayers and riddled
with laughter, healthy gossip, insights
the plants that illuminated stars and nights
died with her.
In the season that was to be winter for
my skin and autumn for my eyes.

Abuelita's nature, la naturaleza humana,
the crowbar of her tongue
prying open the language of leaves, roots, seeds
germinating words that rub, soothe, relax

Dirt under her fingernails
her palms smooth as her face
where leaves, roots, seeds rest
before ingestion,
before toasting them
on a griddle the size of her lungs,
her heart a molcajete firme

What lies behind my eyes?

Fields, horizons, hands,
humans rocking gently back and forth,
silhouettes harvesting the future

My grandmother kneeling between
two rows of green beans
picking
then suffering a heart attack

Behind my eyes
the sing of a frog
the whirlwind
a Yakama ancestor in our migrant camp
the broken horse of loneliness
who eats grass from my hand

I spend nights
ironing towels
until they are untouchably hot
and press them up against
my grandmother's breasts
her angina has flared up
and the heated towels ease the pain
and this is her final remedy
before getting up to make tortillas
and beans for tacos that we'll eat in eight hours for lunch
which she'll wrap in wax-paper

Everyone is at work
the harvest season
spares no time
spares no one

She is in pain (because she told me)
She cringes and leans left as if someone
has just punched her breast
and screeches out a syllable of hurt.
She leans up against the table
where there is a stack of testales
ready to be unrolled into tortillas
She momentarily rubs her left arm
and under her breast
with the right hand she quickly
pulls and flips the three tortillas
that are cooking on the comal...

She will die working in the fields.
We bury her as the harvest season is close to ending
Her casket is rained upon.
We celebrate, eat food, make music, laughter, families.
Tomorrow we return to work without her.

*

With her, mint, chile verde, pipian, enchiladas, jardines, rosas, lirios, unknown plants, their leaves and seeds, aceite de víbora de cascabel, her hands that coerced fevers and pain out of our bodies with gentle massages, her daily rituals, foodmaking, working in her gardens after work, loving her grandchildren, speaking with her sons and daughters every day and night. Her prayers and praying, her daily visits with neighbors, her footprints in the fields, her hands on the vegetables.