Tijuana Book of the Dead Read online

  hopeless breast milk smell. Smell of Morelos gardens

  still in blouses. Burning stink of running.

  2.

  I did not need to run.

  I had a paper moon. Stamped and certified. Mine was

  a colonia moon, a barrio moon, a suburban moon. I

  knew where I was, where I was supposed to be, where

  I was allowed to go, and that was anywhere. We lived

  the outhouse moon, the tortilla moon, the channel

  12 bullfight Tijuana moon. And then we migrated

  north, like monarchs, following the light.

  And my moon was a Boy Scout moon.

  A campout moon.

  A drive-in triple feature moon.

  • • •

  My moon remained poor as a rusted coin in a frozen pond.

  But documented. The green men in the tan trucks could

  read my belonging by this moon’s light. Gave us the all-

  clear to walk, work, die on ground our ancestors had

  forgotten. Let us don Bat Patrol patches and Troop 260

  uniforms and hike the ridgelines where the Mexica had

  taken Huitzilopochtli in their arms and begun their 100 year

  walk to the south.

  My moon rose over tidy houses.

  3.

  She ran.

  She ran all her life. She ran to stay ahead of charging

  darkness, galloping hunger. She ran west to el poniente,

  north toward winter and Mictlán, land of the dead. Worked

  the light of the moon in her small hands the color of earth:

  she molded moonglow into trinkets traded for coins the color

  of sun. Wove moon into bracelets she traded for perfume.

  Worked the ceremonial motel chambers, swept the floors of the

  moneyed, folded bloody sheets and knelt at toilets, scrubbing

  sins of the mighty from their seats.

  • • •

  Everyone moving north.

  She was thirteen:

  Mactlactli ihuan yei.

  I was ten:

  Mactlactli.

  Somehow

  she came to rest in my house. Trucks could not track her

  for an hour. Dogs could not follow her scent. She was on

  that invisible railroad to Los Angeles. Enemy city of the Great

  Walled City of Tijuanatlán. I was in the invisible mountains

  of Cuyamaca, walking in the ghost footprints of vanished

  hunters

  in their tribes, wondering where their arrows went. And

  she slept

  in my bed.

  Too tired to eat or join in the gathered laughter of my

  livingroom,

  she slept in my bed. She lay in my sheets, smelling the odor of

  Thunderbird and America and her eyes pulled themselves closed

  to protect her. Dreams of home.

  • • •

  4.

  I came in and found her.

  I came in and found her.

  Is there any other story? Any other legend to tell? I came home.

  I found her.

  Her head on my pillow.

  The first woman to ever sleep in my bed.

  Her hair

  black across my pillow, spilling toward earth, reaching for

  the heart

  of Ce Anáhuac, the One World. Her eyebrows shallow as streams

  fringed in cress and licorice in Cuyamaca shadows. Her

  brown brow,

  unlined. One hand, fingers curled, nails pale small shells

  against the

  Chichimeca shore of her skin.

  Her breath

  making small melodies of breezes and tides.

  • • •

  And me, holding my breath.

  The thrum and sigh,

  thrum and sigh,

  thrum and sigh

  of her sleep.

  5.

  Then they woke her. She didn’t want to wake. She didn’t want

  to rise. She didn’t want to go. I didn’t want them to wake her.

  I wanted to sleep beside her. I didn’t know anything else that

  men wanted to happen in a bed with a woman. I wanted

  to sleep.

  Beside her. I did not know the language of beds. I wanted to pass

  through the door of her color. I wanted to pray in her temple

  of hair.

  She knew more than I did about this new language. She blushed

  when she saw me at worship. I blushed discovered in my

  beholding.

  We touched hands. Hello. We touched hands. Adiós.

  Then they tucked her in the back seat of a 1964 car,

  smuggled her

  under blankets through trucks up freeways laden with

  runners,

  north, where she’d bask in the light of a thousand toilets,

  where her

  nails would break on their porcelain, where she’d sweep

  more sheets

  off more beds where she could not afford to sleep, where

  helicopters

  searched her alleys with burning eyes all night, where she

  could speak

  to no one and no one could speak to her

  except to give her orders:

  Girlie get your ass over here and wipe this up. You come when I

  tell you to come and you do it now. Have papers? Do you like this,

  you do, don’t you? You like this. I’ll teach you a little something

  right here and now.

  That night I lay in her outline on my sheets.

  She was hot as sunburn on the cotton.

  I sank my face

  into the imprint of hers,

  her perfume

  crept from the pillow,

  the smell of her memories:

  I smelled her mother

  in a kitchen with clay pots

  and cilantro on her hands:

  it was all there: it is still there:

  hibiscus

  tea, a river, a handful of

  shampoo falling to a drain

  like melting snow drifts.

  First grade, the Mexican anthem,

  the snap of the flag,

  chalk dust sneezes,

  smell of library paste.

  Village church.

  Incense.

  The crack of unopened Bibles

  freeing their musk.

  Laundry day,

  the boiling.

  Tamale day,

  and the aunts with their

  crow-voice laughter,

  the meat, the masa, the

  raisins, the cinnamon.

  Morning glory

  vines all tangled

  through cheap Tijuana

  perfume.

  • • •

  Just an illegal drudge

  in crepuscular rain.

  If you see her, protect her.

  Revere her.

  My unknown sister.

  Light candles in her honor, you travelers.

  She is the mother of my race.

  Siege Communiqué

  In Tijuana

  they said Juárez

  was the pueblo where old

  whores went to die, where

  25 cents bought flesh

  by the river, no

  body loved you, Sister—

  so close to Texas

  so far from

  Revolución.

  Today, they say

  you are the cementerio

  of hope: the only crop

  in your garden of Río

  Grande mud is bullets,

  is machetes, is

  acid baths for bones,

  choruses of prayers

  from those in torture church.

  Hermanita of Perpetual

  Sorrow, what flowers

  do we hand you—we

  who
die now too.

  We who dangle nude

  and burned from bridges,

  we who hoped

  to see our daughters

  run through sunlight, only

  chased by waves

  not bleeding

  yet,

  but laughing.

  Arizona Lamentation

  We were happy here before they came.

  This was always Odin’s garden,

  A clean white place.

  Cradle of Saxons,

  Home harbor of the Norsemen.

  No Mexican was ever born

  In our land.

  Then their envy, their racial hatred

  Made us build a border fence

  To protect our children.

  But they kept coming.

  There were never any Apaches here—

  We never saw these Navajos, these Papagos,

  These Yaquis. It’s a lie we cut from

  Their history books.

  • • •

  But their wagons kept coming and coming.

  And their soldiers.

  We worshipped the god’s great tree,

  But he forsook us.

  We had something grand here

  We had family values, we had clean sidewalks.

  Then these strangers came. These mudmen.

  They invaded our dream

  And colored it.

  Sombra

  Mi cara

  en la orilla

  de tu pelvis

  Yo

  hincado

  a tus pies:

  suplicante

  alabando

  A tu olor

  de mar, manzana,

  margarita

  Un minuto, nada más

  Tú

  ahora

  tan delgada en mi memoria

  como estas telarañas

  de tinta.

  Typewriter

  we were poor enough

  big deal

  everybody

  was poor

  and we

  among them

  mom

  watched me scrawl

  poems

  on butcher paper, notebook

  drawing tracing

  paper.

  went

  into the garage, dug

  through boxes for her

  WWII

  typewriter.

  it came in a beat box

  w/ rusty hinges, had a black

  and red ribbon tattered, some letters

  came out two-toned, half red & half black—

  that was all right with me:

  it looked

  like the words were burning:

  fire above,

  night below.

  banging away in the kitchen, ratta

  tatta like crazy hail

  on a tin roof.

  naked girls lived in my typewriter.

  I pried ink clots

  from the mouth of the O,

  from the Q, the % and the B.

  at night on our phone

  I whispered my poems

  to Becky

  who cried into her pillow

  all the way

  across town.

  I had a book by Stephen Crane,

  so I clacked out second hand

  Stephen Crane. Richard

  Brautigan wrote really short poems,

  so I beat out Brautigans.

  then I read Jim Morrison’s book

  & locked myself

  in the bathroom, bellowed

  second rate Morrison.

  a $4.95 Bukowski.

  a $1.98 Wakoski.

  I hammered my way

  through second hand books.

  it was beautiful.

  all of America, which I had yet to see,

  lived in my typewriter. then China.

  then Argentina. then Chile. then

  Japan.

  mom

  sewed my manuscripts together,

  kitchen books:

  I was the most famous

  author in my

  dining room.

  grime

  slowed the keys—the R

  stuck, the—

  wouldn’t go

  over the N.

  then

  one day,

  trying to help,

  mom

  oiled the machine.

  poured

  cooking oil

  into it—Wesson

  in its dirty heart.

  freezing the O.

  Q was paralyzed.

  the % fainted, the B

  was in a coma.

  words dusted over

  and died.

  Becky moved away from my typewriter.

  oh well,

  it was only fun, anyway, only

  a goof.

  every morning

  I’d walk a mile

  and a bit

  through California fog

  to my silent school.

  I only cried once.

  Skunks

  For Rane Arroyo

  Only the cats

  had that much trouble

  sleeping.

  3:00 a.m.,

  I’d be out there

  in the yard,

  naked where

  thank God nobody

  could see me,

  under the crooked pine

  our unhappy family once

  brought home in a coffee

  can, living Christmas

  tree, planted

  when I was a kid

  now taller

  than the house. Alive

  with ants.

  • • •

  Again. Awake.

  An owl, old midnight cliché,

  on the tv antenna

  like a fat devil

  hooted: who, who

  who: and I, that

  other cliché,

  answered: me, me

  me. Both of us

  bored beyond sleep

  by Orion

  doing his slow

  handstands

  toward dawn.

  I loved a California

  Christian girl

  from Maranatha night

  in one of those abomination

  churches the size

  and shape of a nuclear reactor

  or a shopping mall:

  Surfers there

  slain in the spirit

  spoke in Tongues—

  dudes cried out their

  improvised Hebrew:

  AAMRALLAH! SAMBALLAH! SOODAYA! OH ELOHIM!

  ALHAMBRA BRUSCHETTA HAHAHAHAHA! SELAH!

  Prophesying in the name

  of the Lord:

  O MY PEOPLE

  DO NOT

  BE BUMMED

  for Christ

  was not no

  bummer.

  She smelled

  like soap and

  wildflower shampoo and

  fruit gum and

  Marlboros,

  Praise God, and

  she kissed me a

  couple of times

  so sweet we

  lost our footing

  and fell into her open

  car trunk

  where she’d hid

  the Southern Comfort

  and Coke

  and, Can Somebody Say Amen,

  when I wrote her love poems

  she went to my best

  bro’s apartment—

  Can I Get A Witness—

  and wrote that third

  cliché and straddled him,

  pumped him

  all afternoon.

  Let Us Give The Lord

  A Mighty Hand of Praise.

  I took this book

  of poems I was writing her

  and shook gas

  from the mower on it

  lit it

  watched it burn.

  The owl watched.

  The cats came out

  an
d watched.

  I took the charcoal

  corpse and a hammer

  and crucified it

  over my bed

  so I would not sleep easy

  on false prophecy

  and the testimony

  of sweet mouths

  with the gift of tongue.

  And skunks

  came up from the canyons,

  from their trashcan

  graveyard shifts,

  squeezed through

  the fence: a mother

  and six kits. They stole my catfood,

  they brushed my naked legs

  with their featherduster tails,

  they walked the circle

  of the yard with me from jade

  tree to geranium, from honeysuckle

  into the cosmos.

  Skunks

  have always been

  my friends.

  Went inside at 5:00,

  rolled a fresh

  sheet into

  the machine,

  spooned instant

  into a cup,

  put my pale ass

  in a chair

  and wrote a memo

  to myself

  since I was awake

  anyway:

  Item A) get over it.

  Item B) keep typing.

  Fall Rain

  I paint myself in your sweat.

  The blade of my hand peels

  Heat from your breasts.

  Your heartbeat moves

  My blood along the branches

  Of my wrists.

  Under midnight’s slate

  Can you tip this gray away?