When I first read Borderlands/La Frontera four years ago for a seminar class, our assignment was to write an autobiographical poem similar in style to Anzaldúa’s poetry. Given one of the prompts, I thought it would be fun to post this here! It’s fairly self-explanatory, but I might add that in the final stanza, the “Mexican cowboy” is Guillermo Gómez-Peña, who I did a performance art workshop with that same year.

Vocal Cataclysm

My kin never done no foreign talk larnin’.

Hell, they barely knew the King’s English.

They all spoke country, see, the s-language of the Amer’can South.

Mama done tried to fix her tongue when she got that city job.

But she was all hat and no cattle. You could still spot that accent a mile away.

The song had diffrin’ lyrics, but the rhythm was all the same.

But Papa knew I was gonna be the first the leave this one-horse town.

Always said I was quicker than a steel trap. Spoke just like those stars in the picture shows.

His idol was Eastwood, mine was Hepburn. I had the Rain in Spain down by five.

But it was when the schoolhouse opened that I really learned how to talk.

 

 

I had just learned to write my name when Sandy Flores came to town.

She was the first one to tell us that there was a south below the South.

She talked funny, so we had to buy a whole new dictionary to understand her.

I found out her last name, Flores, meant “Flowers” in bordertongue,

Which made sense because we listened to her tongue grow each day.

And she twisted our tongues too, teaching us how to turn butter into borregos.

But then Sandy didn’t come around any more.

After giving up on trying to find her, she finally sent a brief letter:

“Gone to find Harriet T. Remember the condor.”

Suddenly the word “Flores” no longer symbolized an image of growth.

 

 

I spent all of secondary education trying to know the Other.

I read Lorca, listened to Jacques Brel, and watched del Toro.

I played around with a snow globe I called “North and South”.

I couldn’t really determine where I belonged in that globe.

Then I packed up for Yinzertown.

First to leave the valley, just like Papa always said.

“Kid, you’re no bigger than a minute,” he said, “Don’t let no horse buffalo ya.”

Advice I knew I’d come to partially neglect in the future.

It’s always a struggle, migrating from a flock of eagles to a flock of eagles and condors.

Like everyone else, I witnessed the removal of the “id” from the i-dentity.

 

 

That was when I met the Mexican cowboy.

He was a nomadic circus performer that dropped by to lead a cultural fusion workshop.

We would play this game where he would shout out a word and I would definite it.

Migration

A part natural, part man-made delta that universally alters the sense of belonging

Identity

Diamond teeth in a hog’s mouth

Community

The conscious awakening to a primal jungle

Art

The photographic memory of that one good trip

I finally understood the extent of the fluidity of all foreign, all common, all language.

As an American living among the Schwa once said,

“Words provide those extra incisors to bite the hand that feeds us.”

But as a French filmmaker once said,

“Words can lighten the shadows around the thing they designate.”

To-may-to, To-mah-to.

It’s up to us to give them a life of our own.

 

 

(Note to instructors: I am not assigned to post this week, so no need to grade this!)