The Acentos Review
 
Bio Emmy Pérez, originally from Santa Ana, California, is the author of Solstice (2nd edition 2011, Swan Scythe Press). Her recent work has appeared in Pilgrimage Magazine, The Laurel Review, PALABRA, A Broken Thing: Poets on the Line, and is forthcoming in Mandorla, NewBorder: Contemporary Voices from the Texas/Mexico Border, and Cuadernos de ALDEUU. She was an inaugural CantoMundo poetry fellow (2010-2012) and is a member of the Macondo Writers’ Workshop. Currently, she is an associate professor of English at the University of Texas-Pan American in the Rio Grande Valley, where she teaches creative writing and Mexican American Studies courses. She has lived on the Tejas-Mexico border for over a decade.
5 Poems by Emmy Pérez She Never Says Hello -title after Diane Gamboa’s painting She never says hello. Always looks pissed. If not pissed, then as if you do not exist. Once, she looked me up and down when I was wearing a modest- length skirt, not the minis I wore in high school, as we passed in the hall. I almost felt complimented. But she’s no whistle from a lowrider, and I'm no longer fourteen. I could’ve been her teenage pregnancy, her comadre, her homegirl. I always smile and say hello when we pass, but don’t look her in the eye. I still find myself in chola mode, too, muttering wtf you looking at when people I don’t know stare without reason. The Same Kind of Huecos Hot and cool springs, navels blend into earths – there is no exact point in the moving río grande where we could wade mid-river, step over an imagined police tape into the dark bright summer desert and prompt border patrol to force re-entry from an official crossing hundreds of miles away through la Sierra del Carmen back to the Chisos in Big Bend while Marathon, Texas sleeps and the near-empty town of Boquillas, México, abandoned after 9/11, sleeps. No more canoe taxis in waist-deep river allowed shuttling a few turistas back and forth to spend an hour and dollars (vending machine change) on walking sticks, wire scorpions, cerveza, bean and cabbage tacos. What is in a name, Río Bravo, Río Grande, when we are the ones certain that home is north or south or east or west of you, when Mexican black bears swim-walk across into the Chisos and froglets the size of sand flies pop up and down on river mud when our crossing remains a novelty and others lose wallets and family escaping patrol lights in the silk of water springs, all the entry and exit routes and navels where skin gathers and you, río, are real, in a canyon, not a metaphor, and not divided as objects are divided. What the Arizona SB 1070 copycat bills can’t abolish MASSES SATURDAY 4:00 PM ENGLISH 5:30 PM TEX MEX (Jan-Feb-Mar) 7:00 PM SPANISH SUNDAY 7:30 AM SPANISH 9:00-10:30 AM ENGLISH 12:30 PM TEX-MEX (MARIACHI) 5:30 PM TEX MEX Our Lady of Guadalupe Parish Mission, Texas Something awakened and killed off each time a teacher speaks As I sat in my parked car at the Río Rico bluffs, unwalled beautiful river, border patrol youth reached for his gun in his bronco, his sirens red rolling bleeps behind me He walked to my car with two other agents pointing only with questions scanning my seats and floor through windows Can I curse the speaking agent’s smile, el jefito de los otros, without cursing him? Can I curse the anxious one reaching for that gun – now hidden – without cursing him – I thought of the youth I taught in juvie responding to bootcamp officer insults, newly-shaved heads, orders to sweep the floor on hands and knees, their hands as broom and dust pan – How could I curse the anxious one’s anger I could’ve been his tía, their tía How did you know about this place? - asked the smiling jefito It’s on the world birding map but I didn’t bring tourist Tejas sporting groove-billed anis & green kingfishers taped to my bedroom wall He returned my driver’s license, still smiling and their tías likely not like me with time to visit the river, not a tía grande or a gravestone in the summer. Playa Bagdad~Boca Chica People on Playa None on Boca Chica beach (except us) To touch The river mouth Washed up Choco Lala Cartons, caguama Bottles, muddy Swirls Boca Chica Chica’s Boca Chiquita Boquita Boquita es muy chica Muy chiple Chica, boca Boca, chica Chica chica chica chica Boca boca boca boca Bocachica bocachica boca- Chica Use Carrizo Reed to measure How deep el Río Grande~ Bravo sinks before The confluence With the Gulf * * * How deep are we Before confluence? * * * Water has no age * * * When you said you read poetry like Bible verses I stopped being suspicious of the world