Ars Resistencia
Fish bottle caps from heaps
of distillery waste. Sift trash
for milk tin lids. Twist, crush, chain-
link them to each other
like thousands of small arms
locking. Drape them
into 15 x 30-foot seas
of kente cloth, tapestry, grass-
lands swagged in wind,
speckled with red wings,
blue-silver agama.
Do this in communion with others.
Urge them to reshape landscape,
shift peaks and folds.
Call it salvage, re-use, synergetic up-cycle.
Call it recover and reclaim.
Call it puro rasquache, guey.
Do this in memory of
net-work, warp and weft.
Twist and distort text-
ure. Strike the loom.
Do this in memory of
mesh fences we peer through
in a post-fence, wire-less world
blocked and barbed just for us.
Make yourself so small, the cuffs
fall from your wrists. Then thread
the warp. Climb, crawl.
Drag your dinner table a la frontera.
Set one end aca en México, el otro allá.
Prepare posole with all the fixings.
Invita tus amigos de ambos lados.
Claro, Adelita will ask Paul to pass
the heat—los jalapeños y rábanos,
por favor. Pero la migra will be waiting,
watchando. Y cuando Paul’s pinky
sneaks over the line,
they may not let him back
in, ese. He’ll have to sell his
American dream. The least you can do
is bring him some aguacate, un poquito
de cilantro. Show us your fancy footwork,
your disappearing act:
Now you’re here. Ahora ________.
Storm tomato fields, spitting
fricatives, snapping
toxic vines. Slingshot
plosives at orange groves
dropping citrus
into the blistered hands reaching
to pick it Up the anti.
Plant your syllables on picket lines.
Pace Plant your selves in public
space. Refuse to flinch. Plant
feet so firm, will takes root. Plant will
so wide, ears sprout ancestral maize.
Eat of this body, unengineered.
Do this in memory of
corn, potatoes, papaya, squash
tomatoes, cotton, canola, soy
beets, zucchini, cane.
Do this in memory of
milkweed’s monarchs, honey bees.
Do this in memory of
water your last sip.
Paint the winter white howl.
Inscribe the undivided o.
Sound the voiced and voiceless stops
of hunger strike
of boycott’s broken shackles
de calacas with their midnight carcajadas
waking us from sleep.
