Cenzontle Poems

Castillo's lyrically rich and cinematic debut compresses the emotional resonances of lived experience into poetic narratives of devotion, eroticism, family, labor, and migration. The poems make displays of fragility and power by turn, a duality drawn into relief by the precarious condition of the undocumented immigrant. In "Immigration Interview with Don Francisco," the interviewee conjectures that "Perhaps the butterflies are mute because/ no one would believe their terrible stories." But Castillo resists resignation to silence; his poems embody a belief in art's transformative ability. Lush musicality renders agricultural labor, corporeal punishment, and romantic difficulties beautiful. Forged in Keatsian negative capability, Castillo's poetics often involve finding the description that will lift the painful or unjust into music: "The bird's beak twisted/ into a small circle of awe// You called it cutting apart/ I called it song." In certain moments that turn toward song becomes a survival tactic ("After the first boy called me a wetback,/ I opened his mouth and fed him a spoonful of honey") and in other moments a way of relating to what one loves. Thus, Castillo's poems become objects of community and gratitude: "I leaned into you,/ all of you,/ as if in chorus." (Apr.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

Cenzontle Because the bird flew before there was a word for flight years from now there will be a name for what you and I are doing. I licked the mango of the sun-- between its bone and its name between its color and its weight, the night was heavier than the light it hushed. Pockets of unsteady light. The bone-- the seed inside the bone-- the echo and its echo and its shape. Can you wash me without my body coming apart in your hands? Call it wound-- call it beginning-- The bird's beak twisted into a small circle of awe. You called it cutting apart, I called it song. Esparto, California Each pepper field is the same. In each one I am a failed anthem. I don't know English but there is so little that needs translated out here. For twelve hours I have picked the same colored pepper. Still I don't know what country does death belong to. My skin is peeling. Cual dios quisiera ser fuente? If only I could choose what hurt. An inheritance. Those lost mothers bound to the future of their blood. I am walking again through the footage where the white dress loses its shape. Even moving my hands to sort the peppers is a kind of running. Hold still. The child will sing because I was once her flag. She will take my picture --both groom and bride-- a country she has never seen. I will give her the knife to make her own camera. The gift of shade and water-- the likeness of a star to possess. And I am only half sick if being sick is just a bone waiting to harden. I could be a saint since there exists no pleasure that wasn't first abandoned to us out of boredom. We traffic in the leftovers of ecstasy. How lonely and inventive those angels were. If I could speak their language, I would tell them all my real name -- Antonia -- And with my curved knife, I would rid them of all their failures. First Wedding Dance The music stopped playing years ago but we're still dancing. There's your bright skirt scissoring through the crowd-- our hips tipping the instruments over. You open me up and walk inside until you reach a river where a child is washing her feet. You aren't sure if I am the child or if I am the river. You throw a stone and the child wades in to find it. This is memory. Let's say the river is too deep so you turn around and leave the same way you entered-- spent and unwashed. It's ok. We are young, and our gowns are as long as the room. I told you I always wanted a silk train. We can both be the bride, we can both empty our lover. And there's nothing different about you-- about me--about any of this. Only that we wish it still hurt, just once. Like the belts our fathers whipped us with, not to hurt us but just to make sure we remembered. Like the cotton ball, dipped in alcohol, rubbed gently on your arm moments before the doctor asks you to breathe. Excerpted from Cenzantle by Marcelo Hernandez Castillo All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.