23 Reasons Why Mexicanos Can Still Be Found in a Walmart

after Juan Felipe Herrera’s “187 Reasons Why Mexicanos Can’t Cross the Border”
con amor para los 23 del 3 de agosto del 2019/with love for the 23 of August 3, 2019.

Because we will still travel for a Walmart weekend in gringolandia.
Because we will still buy Bic pens in bulk so they last our children until they’re 21.
Because we will still recognize that 7-Eleven gas lasts longer than Pemex.
Because we will still smile when a dog sniffs our bags, troca or traseros.
Because we will still sweat into our shoes, jeans, eyes to climb the bridge and say “American.”  
Because we will still pack Sabritas, Bonafont, and bedpan in our cars to wait in line for hours to show our green card.
Because we will still cross to Juárez to get tacos, tortas and steaks for the best taste and price.
Because we will still lick our fingers before grabbing the wheel to drive back to El Paso.
Because we will still have a love/hate relationship with I-10, the kilometers turning into miles.
Because we will still whisper paciencia when Chuco people signal right but don’t, in fact, exit on Hawkins to get to Walmart.
Because we will still fundraise for our daughter’s fútbol team under this sun.
Because we will still think maldita sea when we see the Equate brand of Gain is out.
Because we will still scoff at the price of avocados and think esto no puede ser aguacate Hass.
Because we will still think we’re beating the Orange Man by knowing where to buy what.
[Because we are beating him. We’re la frontera, the border, no one looks or does it like us!]
Because we will still say thank you and gracias or thankyou-gracias to the cashier.
Because we will still be as warm as August, the warmest-turned-coldest month.
Because we will still give our backs to bullets so our children and spouses don’t die.
Because we will still feel 23 lives in our necks’ cuero enchinado but stay free; no prison or suicide watch.
Because we will still leave our screen, wood and metal doors open. To anyone.
Because we will still walk while brown in a Walmart (or Target, Sam’s, or Ross) and walk tall.
Because why not? Because heart. Because God. Because Mighty Mexican Super Ratón. Because human.
Because

            Adolfo Cerros Hernandez &
            Sara Esther Regalado Moriel
            Alexander Gerhard Hoffman
            Andre Anchondo &
            Jordan Anchondo
            Angie Englisbee
            Arturo Benavides
            David Johnson
            Elsa Mendoza de la Mora
            Gloria Irma Marquez
            Ivan Filiberto Manzano
            Javier Amir Rodriguez
            Jorge Calvillo Garcia
            Juan de Dios Velazquez Chaires
            Leo Campos &
            Maribel Hernandez
            Luis Alfonzo Juarez
            Margie Reckard
            Maria Eugenia Legarreta Rothe
            Maria Flores &
            Raul Flores
            Teresa Sanchez
            Guillermo Garcia

Related Poems

excerpt from "Río Grande~Bravo"

We cannot tattoo roses
On the wall
Can’t tattoo Gloria Anzaldúa’s roses
On the wall
Roses grow in the earth of white-winged doves
The doves coo all day with roosters at Valle de la Paz
Cemetery, the panteón in Hargill near La Sal del Rey
Where deer snort warnings
From the monte, warn visitors
Because the freshwater puddles near the saline lake are shared
And deer prints outnumber all others, wedge prints fill with salt
And when the sun beats down on the washed-up body of a crystallized frog
I remember Prietita having to kill and bury her fawn
Before the game warden arrives and incarcerates her papi

And I remember a gardener tending flowers
Was thrown by a car carelessly backing up fast
In a McAllen strip mall parking lot. The gardener
Forced a dizzy smile, spoke only Spanish when he finally stood up.
He didn’t want to call attention to his presence
On this earth,
This strip mall earth. And so the driver zoomed off.

And I remember the parakeets eating bottlebrush seeds in spring
Their anxious huddling in fall on urban electric wires
I remember buying cascarones on a spring corner
After my own accidents
I remember Brownsville’s red-faced parrots
The ancient tortoise at Laguna Atascosa
Hundred-year-old sabal palms uprooted for the wall’s concrete footing
I remember the confluence of river and Gulf at Boca Chica
And the fisherwomen, men, and children across
At Playa Bagdad, Matamoros

I remember wanting to plant and water roses
como las palabras de Gloria, como la gente
Del valle, como mexicanos in the borderlands

*

*

And when I wake up in the morning feeling love
And when I wake up in the morning with love
And when I wake up in the morning and feel love
And when I wake up in the morning already loving
How the body works to help us feel it

Artifacts on a Hanging Tree, Goliad, Texas (a series of 70 Mexican Lynchings, 1857)

“Site for court sessions at various times from 1846 to 1870. Capital sentences called for by the courts were carried out immediately, by means of a rope and a convenient limb. Hangings not called for by regular coursts occurred here during the 1857 “cart war”—a series of attacks made by Texas freighters against Mexican drivers along the Indianola-Goliad/San Antonion Road. 
About 70 men were killed, some of them on this tree, before the war was halted by Texas Rangers.”
—State Historical Survey Committee Texas Marker near the tree

Last 5 TripAdvisor Reviews of Goliad’s Hanging Tree, as of 6/23/18
          Title: Love old court houses (6/20/18)
          Review: This hanging tree was just a bonus on the court house square and the history that took place there was moving.

          Title: Spooky when you think of the tree’s use! (6/18/18)
          Review: One of the sites in Goliad is the hanging tree a beautiful tree which was used to mete out “justice” after trials.

          Title: Beauty of a tree (6/19/18)
          Review: Well the name sort of says it all, but that is a beautiful tree. The courthouse is a class Texas courthouse, so the day was great.

          Title: Interesting in a gruesome kind of way (5/27/18)
          Review: This is a huge oak tree outside of the courthouse in Goliad. You really can picture the sentences being carried out.

          Title: Huge old live oak tree (5/7/18)
          Review: The tree is located in the center of town on the grounds of the county courthouse. The tree has quiet the history.
          When convicted, the prisoner was walked outside and hanged from this magnificent live oak tree.


TalkToTheOakTree:AskTheCityTo TearYouDown.CityFortifiesWithStone.AskTownToGoIntoHiding.StateErectsMetalPlaque.AskTouriststoLeave.AndTheyTestYourStrengthToHoldTheirWeight.AskThemIfTheyNoticeYourShadow'sShapeIsAMassBurialOfTwitchingLegs.LetThemMemory.
 

El árbol, No. 10, as a series of narrowing translations:
El que a buen árbol se arrima, buena sombra le cobija. |...| He who nears a good tree, is blanketed by good shade. |...| The one that comes to a good tree, good shadow blankets them. |...| To near the tree, receive a blanket of shadow. |...| To near the tree is to blanket yourself in darkness.

Everyday We Get More Illegal

Yet the peach tree 
still rises
& falls with fruit & without
birds eat it the sparrows fight
our desert       

            burns with trash & drug
it also breathes & sprouts
vines & maguey

laws pass laws with scientific walls
detention cells   husband
                           with the son
                        the wife &
the daughter who
married a citizen   
they stay behind broken slashed

un-powdered in the apartment to
deal out the day
             & the puzzles
another law then   another
Mexican
          Indian
                      spirit exile

 

migration                     sky
the grass is mowed then blown
by a machine  sidewalks are empty
clean & the Red Shouldered Hawk
peers
down  — from
an abandoned wooden dome
                       an empty field

it is all in-between the light
every day this     changes a little

yesterday homeless &
w/o papers                  Alberto
left for Denver a Greyhound bus he said
where they don’t check you

walking working
under the silver darkness
            walking   working
with our mind
our life