Immigrant Geography
By Jennifer Patiño
This country is a spot in the river,
a calm, muddy spot
in the twice stolen river
where my father crossed,
pushing against a cold resistance
that has never been made of water.
It never stops being a river,
we never stop crossing.
The borders shift with our bodies,
around our bodies
and a rumbling hangs in the air
like a curse,
hangs over the windy city bungalow
my father bought on the Southwest Side
with dreams of recreating his rancho,
tending his grapevines, jalapeños, tomates
and sons-
but he had daughters.
And if he knows about
the white neighbors
who left their curses behind
when they spilled out of their houses
to throw rocks at MLK,
who spill out of their houses for good
when they see us coming,
the first Mexicans,
he doesn’t say anything.
and I don’t tell him
or my mother
who taught herself to read
with borrowed magazines
about the teachers
who think textbooks
are something Mexicans should hold,
arms extended
as weights,
as punishment
the fewer white faces they see.
And a country grows between us
a quiet wilderness
of the untranslatable,
what we absorb
to keep each other’s hearts
from breaking.
(Poem copyright: Jennifer Patiño© 2016 all rights reresved)