My Mother in Her Being—Photograph: ca. 1947

El Calaboz Ranchería, trans. ‘eathen dug-out prison’, Apache country, South Texas-Tamaulipas, 31 years after the 1910-1916 lynchings, burnings of Indians and mixed-bloods, and the militarized occupation of the lands, and the documentation 5000 dead community members, the forced removals, some named and some never found…

You are the muddy river on the moon No one imagines Before me Few know Your lunar-ice flows Thick wet ash of mis-directed potential From ancient fires You were born from those

The flow in your heart rolls wild Humming river secrets Of three-year old girls wrestling Milky caramel candies Only given on Sundays Sticky in their oil-dark hair

On December mornings Rainstorms and chorizo with tortillas Can’t fill your soul—you yearn For imaginary second helpings Of fideos cominos As raindrops shimmy Down the window by the sink You’re directed to collect the cactus Along the shoulder of the levee For a balance of greens—to watch out for rangers

This is the photo your Basque-Jew-Apache mother Hoarded from me Kept captive to her shriveled heart This is the one I secretly sneak out When I stayed in exile with her That one long summer dodging Her bitter widow’s suspicion of your dark Wide-footed, untrusting kid

Just to see you In your being I risked being shamed from Brownsville to El Calaboz La Paloma to El Ranchito—

her tined tongue Dissected my reputation All the way up to San Antonio And speared me through Harlingen

So what Anything For the chance to look for you In the moth piles From her Sacred Box of the Past

My deceitful cunning heart of longing She’d just as soon drown out For I’m crying to get the hell out And go north to San Antonio

I sneak the photo When she’s fixing her blue-dyed hair in a pile On top of her head Wrapped in toilet paper To keep its conical shape

In the photo that charms me… Your legs stretch in front of you On the grass Shining with some grease culled

Your toes are small Kissable and Want to curl into a mother’s body Beneath covers

But she never allowed you To touch her

Dark girl Grandpa’s Lipan-Nde’ blood ripening The irises of your eyes

There are children Sitting on the grass in your circle And you show them what You hold inside the pomegranate Of your being—

A tiny tiara of thought at the top of your head Lightning girl, thunder girl Crested with fine gold hairs of your cattail pollen Intellect cracking open

The thick red skin Pulls back Presenting the juicy diamonds Of your answers—

Songs, maps spheres eddies eyes—

I will always love you But you won’t hear You won’t hear it

Clan mother You appointed the Chief of Boundaries Policing the barbed fences

Between us

Where you are the one Outshining resentments

Where you are the one With sweaty fists of flowers

Where you are the one With small toes I would kiss