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THE MEXICO JOURNALS ©Debora Barrera Pontillo (Summer 1998)
A.
laying my body against earth
calling the ancestors
re-emergence
re-emerge
disputes 500 years of tormented history
bone grinding against bone, marrow nourishes
i am ground into meal, flesh and bone
to rise again in golden maize,
baked red in michoacan sun
bleed blue in frozen tundra
fill your belly and bleed me
as the moon cycles full and you rise to fill her light
and life trickles down my fleshy thigh
wraps itself around ankle, seeps between toes
until i cannot bear
and i rise in the heat of the night
crawl from the womb and you are me and i cannot speak, lips crusted
unable to form or mold or utter basic sound
through lips, crusted pus and blood
i enter, in search of, absolution
only to exit and encounter myself
B.
i am here, my chest ripped open
my heart being scraped raw
against reality
ahhh, mi corazon
around every corner, voices whisper chants of humility
and i am reminded of what was sacrificed
and whose blood stains the altar
that i might be where i stand today
i feel very small and my heart is full of gratitude and i am in awe
i am mexicana in the deepest realms of my heart and it beats blood red
ears/ green corn/ maize/ ground under brown feet/ picking corn august sun
holding my history in my hand
my family came here/ fed by the dreams of the deprived/ first bending in onion fields/ then over
railroad track/ pounding stakes into ground/ mi abuelo never knew he was pounding them into his
own/ heart/ they came bending/ begging/ my life exists on their backs
C.
humility
today someone in the street asked me for money
a pin prick in the illusion...i paused...realizing
i am no longer surrounded with the air of poverty
i have crossed the border and it wears itself around me
my round body signifying the luxury of consuming at will and
the ignorance of unfinished plates...taking more than one needs
this must be what colors me now and i want to scream
into every abandoned building, to every mother holding a child to dry breast
look behind the mask of enough and i am still you
my hunger is only cloaked in a different veil, a different hue
still it is hunger nonetheless
poverty must have its own scent, it must be a mist that lingers over one, an aura of scent that
allows one to be recognized as such
i no longer belong, my scent is of comfort but the scent closest to the surface is still that of
poverty, of not enough, not enough
poverty has been my identity for so long that in some ways i feel lost without it...i mourn the loss
and now, a piece of my heart is buried in the desert soils of my mother
you cut into it, bite into mi corazon i wonder what have you done with this fragment of me
did you discard it, discard it without looking...spit it out
roadkill for hungry vultures
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