On Visiting Mexico City
December, 2014
A girl jumps rope
uno, dos, el lobo feroz
arms flailing as if on fire
A man sings for pesos
on the corner, his hand
swarmed by a song of bees
A woman meditates
cross-legged in a park
on a branch of a weeping willow
In a country I only
know second-hand
I visit the museo de la anthropología
I walk through
a church made of gold
once an aztec temple
I walk the zócalo
transformed into
a christmas wonderland
What I know
of the disappeared
and the discontent
are graffitied letters
being washed away
from a government wall
My Country is Hard for Me
At a banquet
in my honor
I shake hands:
grip firmly
pump twice
loosen and release
repeat names and titles,
whisper them like a lover
when I walk away, blushed.
At a banquet
in my honor
my name is mispronounced,
gargled in the mouth
with too much wine.
At a banquet
in my honor
I’m given certificate
and plaque—the bronze,
the small of my back—
smeared in fingerprints.
At a banquet
in my honor
I’m asked to open
my mouth and pledge
allegiance to a county
now mine as the crowd
rises slowly, to take me.
Ángel García, a proud son of Mexican immigrants, is the author of Teeth Never Sleep (University of Arkansas Press), winner of a CantoMundo Poetry Prize, winner of an American Book Award, and finalist for a PEN America Open Book Award and Kate Tufts Discovery Award. He currently teaches in the MFA program at University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.
Photo by Ricardo Esquivel