Poetry

Challenging the Colonizer

From Huizache 11

Elisa A. Garza

My cancer will kill me.
This I have known
for months, a certainty
as knowable as my small bones,
my gift for telling stories
in poems, for keeping
family and pain close.
I do not let things go,
not the stories, the poems,
my family, the painful
quest for perfection,
and now, not this cancer,
relentless as manifest destiny,
its growth a greed
of pioneering, hubris,
blind appropriation.

Illusions

From Huizache 11

Leonora Simonovis

I look at the chicken
pecking the yard, know

that, if I wanted to, I
could break her neck

in seconds. I think
of my grandmother

my great grandmother
and all the women

before me who had
to break something

Moony Gets Pissed When I Bogart the Joint

From Huizache 11

Sergio Lima

Moony tilts her head
away from the lighter’s flame
toward the sunset.
The joint hangs
languid from her lips
as the sun slides
behind the lavender
cotton of a cloud.

I watch as the ember
brightens and grows
with each puckered puff.
The cherry and the sun:
two neon oranges
dueling above the ocean.

A LESSON IN HARVESTING OR THE DAY I WAS TOLD MY BODY WAS A BETRAYAL

From Huizache 11

Karla Cordero

late morning in the garden, ache-kneed & sore hips, i show zoey how to harvest, how to pluck carrots from the ground like loose teeth. carrots the color of all good things: mandarins, marigolds, the winged ends of monarchs gliding above sunflowers. she holds their long slender bodies by their leafy updos. ZA-NA-HOR-IA, i say slow in spanish to add more music to her mouth from the motherland.

Ambahan: Araw ng mga Patay (Día de los Muertos)

From Huizache 10

Barbara Jane Reyes

I am giving you this smoke
rolled tobacco, flowered herbs
tanglad and clean fire, I burn
sandalwood incense, I burn
crackling pine branches, I burn
verses carved on bamboo stalks
verses from dreams and full moons
candles that smell like roses
handfuls of soil,

Palmas últimas / Kasayeo’s Washintonia Filifera

From Huizache 10

Anna Flores

It’s said the desert’s last true palm self-shears, dropping dead fronds by way of storm. The trees
are glaciation descendants. Know an

ocean’s true name. Know when desert arrived. Leaf-less and blood welded, my body is a knowing I cannot fall away from.

Only the Snow Will Quiet the Robin

From Huizache 9

Monica Rico

I loved her, knowing she pecked my father ceaselessly.

She had meat hooks he said.
Her mirror, empty

as the picture she kept of her sister,
almost a twin.
Let me get this straight,

No More Sad Mexicans

From Huizache 9

José Olivarez

where are all the Mexicans who aren’t going to heaven?

tell them to bring their Dickies & their slides & their rosary beads & all their heartbreak & all their primos y primas y primxs. tell them to leave their flags & bring a six pack or something to throw on the grill.

Don Daniel’s Bouganvillia

From Huizache 9

Vanessa Díaz

I’d always come home
from running and come
across Don Daniel, sometimes
alone, sometime with his wife,

their possession of dirt,
a small, cramped country
of ripe fruit, aloe vera, lavender.
The bougainvillea vines
would climb over my eyes

Don’t Hold Back

From Huizache 6

Melissa Lozano

My mother is 21,
conjuring María Félix, smolder
kohl eye.

She is the sound of freeways at rush hour crashing hips. Hourglassed—an ache.

She wears a beehive of unanswered questions: Curios, feathers, silences, heart songs, grafted tongue.

The Sound of an American Flag Burning

From Huizache 6

Nikolai Garcia

It’s the sound you hear
when you turn off your TV.

It’s the sound that old men make at night
as they’re sleeping on the sidewalk,
outside an empty loft building.
It’s the sound of air escaping your mouth
after you get the notice
that the rent is increasing.

Este Puño/Dispatches from
Barbed Wire

From Huizache 6

Abigail Carl-Klassen

They still built the wall. Even though we marched downtown, jackets and ties peering down from high rises as we shouted, ¡Muro, no. Pueblo sí! After we shut down Paisano, horns pressed, sage smoke rising, matachines barefoot and rattling. After we sipped sangre de Cristo through chain links year after year on Día de los Muertos. After our mayors declared,¡Ya basta! San Diego to Brownsville.

Abuelita’s Garden with Parakeet That Says Hijaputa

From Huizache 5

Javier Zamora

Abuelita’s mother died when she was one. No one talks about Tatarabuela
or about how Abuelita draws her eyebrows on at dawn.
I saw them once when I pretended to snore.

Abuelita’s name should be Rocío because she wakes at 5 to water plants. My aunts say her name means truth in some language no one speaks.

Suzi Writes a Poem

From Huizache 5

Jessica Helen Lopez

Suzi write a poem
Write a poem Suzi

You will need a pencil
lined paper and the ability
to abide by the rules

Suzi listen
Follow Suzi follow
my instruction Suzi squeeze
your poem like a baby bird…

Secret Missionary for the Virgin Mary is off his meds

From Huizache 4

Sheryl Luna

He writes of grenades, a universe exploding.

It’s inexhaustible, the sky. Something about badness
turns him on. Passion a candle with two wicks.

He says to me, “Keep burning.”
He is often falling out of love.

The Bolero of Lupe Vélez

From Huizache 3

Alejandro Murguía

The movieland glamour magazines thrive on Lupe Vélez. They thirst for this Mexican beauty. They just drink her up. Her face graces the cover of Film Weekly, Motion Picture, Cinelandia, and True Confessions, over and over, as if they couldn’t help themselves. Couldn’t keep their cameras away from her obsidian black hair, her flashing eyes, the cupcake mouth, and all those society parties, husbands, lovers,

An Unknown

From Huizache 3

Casandra Lopez

for Jim Thorpe (Wa-Tho-Huk/Bright Path) and J.M. Lopez

Jim was always running away from schools, and who knows
what else. One of the greatest athletes in the world is born

in what is called Indian Territory, but on this continent isn’t it all.