Notes from El Mundo
César L. de León presents ten poems
Great-tailed grackle or Mexican grackle (Quiscalus mexicanus), Jim May Park, Santa Maria, CA, 2017. Photo: Jamie Chavez
POET’S NOTE
The idea of writing as a way of healing or as medicine has gained momentum in recent years, but many writers—poets, in particular—will tell you that the practice is not new. For me, writing has always been a way of dealing with, or making sense of, what is going on around me or within me. Sometimes, it is an experience arriving as a memory that is stirred up by something I see, hear, smell, or touch: a picture, a news story, a house I drive by on my way home; a cloud in the sky; a bright ribbon in a store or any other quotidian object I come across during the day. In the poem “El Mundo,” for example, the catalyst is a Mexican Lotería card. The poem, of course, is not about the card, but about the speaker in the poem coming to terms with and understanding his nature, among other things.
At other times, as I mentioned, what I need to process and sort out are events that are presently happening in the world or the area I call home, the Borderlands of South Texas. Poems like “Notes from My ‘Hood…” and “Sugar Skull” are examples of this. The first, I wrote to document and contextualize the surreal experience of living through a pandemic lockdown. The latter poem was written after news broke about human remains belonging to immigrants were found in mass graves near Falfurias, Texas, many of them in shopping bags. With events like these, there is a need in me to write things down, not with the intent of it necessarily becoming a poem or getting published but just for me. Writing is my therapy or medicine, which may, in time, become something I can share and perhaps also help others understand themselves, a particular situation, or their surroundings. There is also the possibility that my medicine might not be for others, and that is okay, too.
In tandem with writing, I have also always been drawn to the natural world. I firmly believe in the curative powers that it holds and offers. Communing with the wildlife and landscapes of my homelands always sets my mind at peace, whether it is a walk on the beach, a trail at a local nature park, or just sitting outside and listening to birds or the wind. It is no surprise, then, that many of my poems feature natural elements, as they, too, contribute to the healing that writing provides me. As you read these poems that HTI Open Plaza is so graciously making available, I hope you find something that inspires you to go outside and listen to the birds or to sit for a moment and write what needs to be written.
—César L. de León, December 2023
2022 Philosophical Society of Texas Best Book of Poetry Awardee
2021 Texas Institute of Letters John A. Robertson Awardee
Somewhere South of the Río Bravo
In an old photo, Brígida,
great grandmother. Right hand clenched
across your flat stomach, pushing in.
The left in the pocket of a dress you likely sewed
yourself. Every pleat of dark fabric
precise like your lips, rose vine brocade
collar and cuffs pressed tight
like your black trenza, like your leveling gaze
constrained like porcelain.
Was this your best dress, bisabuela?
reserved for bautizos y bodas?
Are you buried in it?
And Nestor, great grandfather, to your right,
all sinew, jaw and eyebrows
like thunderstorms about to break
over the dusty plains of his slate suit.
¿Qué mira, usted,
straight-spined against your farmhouse
somewhere south of the Río Bravo? ¿Qué mira
with your disciplined eyes, Don Nestor,
across the sepia horizon,
beyond the river your retoños bridged?
My hefty face?
My limp hands?
The matching tilt of our shoulders?
Loteria cards, introduced into Mexico in 1887 by French businessman Don Clemente “Gallo” Jacques. Photo: Susan von Struensee
El Mundo
from an early age I was told
flowers and florals
were for girls
I liked them anyway
my eyes secretly tracing
roses, hyacinths, sunflowers
blooming on mamá's blouses
‘buela's skirts
when we played Lotería
I was expected to like La Sirena
the roundness of breasts rendered on cardboard
should’ve lured me
into the depths of manhood
I liked El Mundo instead
his chest wide, his back ample
the world balancing on the mounds of his shoulders
the authority of his thighs governing my gaze
when I played outside
I was taught
birds were supposed to be shot
with a sling, a rock, or a BB gun
I preferred to watch them hop
from branch to branch
hoping they would turn to me and say
we know you, florecita,
we know you
Notes from My ‘Hood in the Time of COVID-19
1.
we are told that constantine witnessed a cross
in the heavens above the tiber on the eve of battle, and then christendom
was born.
or was it just a cloud and now children are evil
until their sins have been rinsed down the drain and out into the ocean?
today through my window the gulf of mexico and the laguna madre send me clouds shaped like babies in the afternoon breeze. some will mature into war-scarred locusts, some into lavender thunder.
2.
i keep returning
to the trestle and bullet
holes and words
bruising iron and concrete
where condom-flashing preachers
pray into the fog
—let me do unto you
and it never is
about you or them
but the silence
beading on the tips of grass blades
when they leave
3.
standing at my chain-link i hear los tigres blasting
around the corner of l street and jackson
where chucha and her wild granddaughters lived 20 years ago
in the “nice house” with cement floors that everyone envied
i don’t know who lives there now —some guy
his electric-blue tricked-out truck gleaming
under the late march sun
like a sunday miracle but today
is tuesday or maybe it’s thursday
and it really doesn’t matter
because the accordion is cutting
clean methodic lines across the empty
streets and through
the leafless soapberry trees
that decided to boycott spring
4.
the grackles know
summer
will arrive slanted
on the shoulders of fire
flies and then sugar
ash before green
and knowing they call
the setting sun father
the evening star traitor
the moon’s rim survivor
dawn’s lip hunger
and those of us left
to witness daybreak
sunflowers
Sugar Skull
i am that sugar skull you buy
chalk-outlined
in the aftermath of blue
against brown, ebony, red-throated
like hummingbird sheen peeled off in ribbons
tied around the blind spot under your golden corn-silk hair
i am that sugar skull you decorate
sterilized by cloudless dog days
dried and polished
by river-flavored santa ana sand storms
thirsting and pressed against concrete
walls, asphalt, iron bars
restless inside target and walmart
sacks half buried outside falfurias, texas
you offer a eucharist of ashes
call me martyr
proclaim yourself witness at the edge of town
my face on your child's face
painted by number
i am that sugar skull you proudly display on halloween
devoid of exit wounds and pesticide scented hair
don't you recognize me, america?
Waiting for the Bus at the Central De Autobuses in McAllen, Texas
the boy wants to be a cloud in the next life
pink nopal blossoms
a mariposa
to follow the gulf coast
breeze he wants to be
a crossroad a circumference
of twine the kind
that sheds
of himself
a draft
of wind the winding
himself the rushing
through mesquite thickets
him self
an oxbow lake arc
late october’s rim
that is a creek
that is a moth
that is a wing
that is a storm
that is a lengua
a chicharra
chant spiral cresting
whippoorwill calls
ball lightning
the amber healing of copal smoke
the caliche trail home
Making a statement in Mission District, San Francisco, CA, 2010. Photo: Ed Bierman
finding rasquache
—for Rodney and Isaac
the word rolls around my tongue
while i drive out of el valle
and i want to pin it down
put an x in it, or on it, or through it
like rasquaxe, raxquache, or raxquaxe,
but the pickles on the piccadilly raspa
i picked up at the drive-through on 5-mile line
might get stuck on it
so i leave it alone for now
tame it
drive on
cross streets that bend south
towards cracked-mud river banks
mexico,
la barda fronteriza like an iron ribcage,
fencing northern grey-eyed skies in
i drive east
then west
then east again
rasquache rattles
under the hood of my car
where dad once used a scrapped board
as a spacer in the motor
"nomás por mientras"
—how long is that?
i stop at the pulga in alamo
zigzag around the puestos
search
for the perfect corn in a cup
“preparado bien de aquellas”
find latas de sardinas for dad
and chucherías made to look
like brand-name toys for the nephews
under the same techo
where mr. chivo y su banda
will play after the sun sets
until everyone's shoes are covered
in polvo, recuerdos,
or midnight
before weaving my way out
i pick up a copy of the new star wars movie,
yes, the one playing at the theater
and a pixies cd with a black and white photocopy cover
to replace the one that got stolen
last year at the rest stop
past the falfurias checkpoint
today, on my way norte,
20 cameras will capture
the exact moment i clear my throat
before the agent whose last name
reminds me of desert flowers
asks for my origin and destination
and i will want to answer
“i’m from over there
while i point to a huizache in the campo
and from over there
pointing to the yuccas crowning the east
and from those mountains to the south you can’t see
but can feel in your huesos
and from here
like the herons and malachites
that glide back and forth
above the river you call border every day”
or
"to a conference where i will explain
‘rasquache aesthetics’ to a handful of people
who have known it all their lives
like you, like me”
or
"i just want to see
how far north rasquache goes
before it turns into
‘do it yourself’ or ‘recycled arts and crafts’”
instead i will give him
a safe answer
“san antonio, san marcos, houston”
because x never marks the spot
and rasquache is just por mientras.
Discount Wonderland
I scan for exits but find desolation instead, a landscape where Cortázar’s cronopios come to die to the crooning of Bing Crosby’s “White Christmas.” After a 10-hour shift, I certainly feel like one of those silly, mostly unseen, amorphous disembodied creatures floating above the crowd. I see women and girls try on vermin skins on their heads, hands, and shoulders —dusty mirrors approve the fit. Men wind their watches and play with the flies of their pants with sure fingers forward, backward, inward, and finally downward with a tug. The last motion is usually overdone like an executive adjusting his tie before a meeting. By the cash registers someone’s child coats his tongue with chocolate like a Maya warrior before a battle —a communion with the divine. The store will close in ten minutes. A plastic voice proclaims through the speakers like an angel over a slaughterhouse. The tinsel sharpens its silver talons and aims for the eyes. The crowd smells blood at a discount. No exits exist, only entrances breathing heavily like gluttony before The Last Supper.
Notes from El Valle Megamart
1.
Sister Juanita buys cherry-flavored
Lip gloss for the girls
Apple bubble gum for the boys
The lord's prayer
Smells like a fruit stand
Under the summer sun
Across the border in Progresso.
2.
I have wet dreams about the Brawny man.
He wipes everything clean when we are done.
3.
You buy your produce
At my checkout again
Pants bulging
In all the right places
$5.25 in change
One nickel
Two dimes
Four quarters
One, two, three
Four
One-dollar bills
Fingers touch fingers, touch
Ball of hand
Smile
Slide hand into tight jean pocket
Smile back.
4.
I think of Ginsberg when I see you.
"what peaches
and what penumbras!"
Do you know Ginsberg?
Can I read to you?
“aisles full of husbands!
wives in the avocados,
babies in the tomatoes!”
While you pound me?
“HOLY! HOLY! HOLY! HOLY! HOLY!
holy...”
While I pound you,
golden sunflower?
in the alley
behind the rusty yellow dumpster
after the store shuts off
its rows of arrogant lights,
But before
Los Locos and la chota start to cruise
Before the car with la movida
Claims the cracked cement.
5.
Rice and beans!
What a couple!
6.
I found an open box of condoms on aisle 4
I found a used pregnancy test in the ladies room
I guess the digital smiley face result meant yes.
I found a bag of green apples in the gardening department
I found two had been bitten once
I didn't find any rattlers or culebras hiding in the aisles today.
I found a boy with his hand down his pants in the lingerie department
I found his father with his hand down a cashier's pants in the restroom
The mother I found holding up a magazine at the checkout line
Her hands protected by green rubber gloves.
AUDIO: “Notes from El Valle Megamart” by César L. de León, read as part of the Zócalo Public Square 2022 Poetry Curator Series. IMAGE: Check-out line during a supermarket Fruit & Veggie Festival, Santa Ana, CA, 2008. Photo: heacphotos
Enormísimo Cronopio (2008) by Andrea Baretto
Self-Portrait of the Poet as a Christmas Ornament in Downtown McAllen, Texas
sometimes i wonder if i had been made in china how my name would be pronounced, and would the fingerprints of workers be imprinted on the tilde of my accent if it still had one.
on the bottom of a shelf at casa sharon there is a gold plastic bell with a red bow that hasn't sold in five years. i know it’s the same bell because year after year my reflection on it never ages. i should buy it. maybe next christmas.
silver milagritos and 24k-gold chains sold by the pound at the corner of fresno and 17th.
a homie flashes me a smile and winks at me on the down-low by the hierbería where they sell ojo de venado on red yarn to ward off evil eye and envidia.
santitos, santa muerte, and santa claus with a tasty candy cane in his pocket just for me wait in the alley.
across business 83 i can see the big hotel where they say a woman hung herself and now haunts the place by turning bathroom faucets on and off. nobody can give me her name, but she’s been seen on overcast nights looking down from the balcony tower. a silent llorona without a river.
walking down main always makes me hungry and my stomach snarls in unison with the diesel engines of the mexican buses down at the station on 15th and austin. i haven't been inside in a decade, but i remember the tired acrid smell of travel. i watch a bus exit. breaks bellow and wail a holiday tune i can’t put a name to but will remember years after it turns the corner, like the wreath on its dusty grill –a butterfly graveyard over white flock that swirls like ashes along the highway, an ofrenda for the living and the dead.
Delinquents
the plan was always to escape the ‘hood
through gaps in chain-link fences
slicing the horizon in rearview mirrors
and that house and that house and that house
and that yellow haze of decay like a sunflower halo
mellowing the edge of guilt but not regret
at deciding to become cardinal points
at the kitchen table delinquents
like the bills sprawling like kudzu
across vinyl placemats and floral tablecloths
bought “con sacrificio” at the dollar store
at the end of the day it didn’t matter
if a sunflower had a hundred eyes or a hundred mouths
if there was no more sun to suckle on
speaking with grackles by soapberry trees
by César L. de León
Flowersong Press, 2021
“speaking with grackles by soapberry trees is a masterpiece. César Leonardo De Leon's poetry here is a whole universe lit up by el sol and la luna at the same time.”
—Lupe Mendez
2022 Texas Poet Laureate
Author, Why I Am Like Tequila (Willow Books, 2019)
