The streets in Mexico are built
upon the spines of the Aztecs.
The cobblestones and concrete
fusing into one another like the
bentback vertebrae of the poor.
Buildings give leeway to alleys
lined up like soldiers
where children play with a make-shift ball
from old linen scraps as I walk by.

I'm back in a church where
morning mass is being assembled,
and my best friend is whispering
the priest's homily in english,
telling me precisely when to kneel
and when to stand:
"Levántese", he lilts
(stand up)
"Siéntese"
(sit down).

On the streets we walk to her cousin's Quinceañera
and her father stops to buy us mangos frescos,
or fresh mangoes, as best the crude Mexican accent
of the street vendor can recite.
I still remember the man carefully choosing
a heavy, ripe mango as full of juice
as a mother's breast,
red as a nipple freshly suckled,
its nectar trickling down my chin
and sliding through my throat,
my tongue lapping my fingers for more;
I have never tasted a mango as sweet.

When I was sixteen I danced with my best friend
to the mariachi horns and guitars of Mexico
on the carpet in the middle of my room,
while my stepfather wondered why we
were listening to that "tacorena bullshit."
At night we rebelled and ate mango slices
with a drizzle of chile sauce on top,
just to spite his big, stupid, penile ideals.

We grew up in Houston
where the Confederate flag
flies as high as the American one,
and prejudice is as abundant as
pick-up trucks, country music and rednecks.
The wetbacks toil in the fields,
building the gringos bigger and better houses,
until their backs are not wet at all with
the waters of the Rio Grande, but sweat.
I remember a brown, plump Mexican woman
in a grocery store explaining to her daughter
as she shrugged shrivelled green mangoes into her cart:
"Miha, esto es el sueño Americano"
(My love, this is the American dream)

Back in the slums of inner-city Houston,
a Mexican girl is raped by thugs, crying:
"Soy sólo un gringa sucia!
(I'm only a dirty white girl!)
Soy sólo un gringa sucia!"
(I'm only a dirty white girl!)
but the only answer is her
virgin's blood shed on concrete;
when it is over she will hike up her skirt,
wipe away her tears and hope
the child conceived and birthed in blood
will not have to suffer the ripe,
red sweetness of mangoes in Mexico.

10/12/2008

Author's Note: Published in the Winter 2009-2010 Vol. 2, Num. 3 issue of The Tower Journal (published as Jasmine Mann).

Posted on 03/28/2010
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