Dreaming a Flat Bridge between Juárez and El Paso

Since Luis Urrea's visit to El Paso, I got sidetracked and I find myself moving around the furniture in my imagination about El Paso and Juárez. That's how I found this postcard tucked into our digital files for David Romo's Ringside Seat to a Revolution. How charming and idyllic it is, so much so it drips with the real blood of irony in comparing to what we have now. It's true, back in the day, the bridge between El Paso and Juárez was flat [*see note], and the Rio Bravo (aka, Rio Grande) was a common resource, certainly not a fenced and heavily guarded dividing line between El Norte and El Sur. Then in the early 60s the Kennedy Administration brokered the Chamizal Treaty which diverted the river into a concrete ditch. It also moved the border at the downtown bridge a hundred yards or so north, over which some pendejo engineer designed, and the feds built, a three story tall bridge. It's meaning was simple--divide one city from the other. These decisions, made in DC and DF, radically altered not only the river, but also south downtown El Paso, especially around the Segundo Barrio and Chihuahuita Barrio. And over the years since the 60s the culture and the politics of the two cities has changed dramatically. It was slow change at first, but then in the mid-90s to now, the change became accelerated. The border on the U.S. side has become a military camp for a number of federal agencies, each elbowing more and more space for themselves, fewer and fewer people from the U.S. go back and forth to enjoy families and friends and entertainment to simply enjoy Mexico, and illegal drugs and immigration have become essential cash industries for the Mexican economy. And so how do we reverse this insanity? How do we make our bridge flat again?

First thought, best thought: Rewrite the U.S. drug laws; remove the capitalistic incentive from the sale of marijuana, heroin and cocaine; and treat addiction as a sickness, not as a crime. But you say this to the bureaucrats in D.C., they just talk gobbley-gook, then they turn around and show you their fat asses. I'm a poet and I should be able to say this better, but, damnit, as I write this, it's Friday afternoon, and I'm tired of the insanity I see.

Insanity like a three-story bridge that should be a flat bridge.

●●

[**NOTE: Thanks to Roberto Camp who a long time ago explained to me that the building of that monstrosity of a bridge was a tipping point in the history of these two sister cities.]

Round 1: Juárez / El Paso Riddle vs Luis Alberto Urrea

"Juárez No.1" A paper mache piñata by Abel Saucedo
In an exhibition of his work at the El Paso, Downtown Library
Juárez No.1 refers to ongoing drug war and murders.
For more information about Saucedo's work, see this article

Open up the El Paso Times most days--first section, page 6 or 7, you'll read an article like the one below about the on-going narco wars going on down the hill and across the river in Juárez from where Lee and I live.

Bodies of five men found in Juárez
By Daniel Borunda / El Paso Times
Posted: 08/05/2009 04:08:36 PM MDT

The bodies of five men, one of whom was decapitated, were found in a parked sport utility vehicle Wednesday morning in Juárez, Chihuahua state police said.

The man's severed head was in a plastic bag left atop the hood of a red Jeep Patriot found about 5:40 a.m. near Avenida Tecnologico and Avenida Vicente Guerrero. The men had not been identified and appeared to have been beaten.

There had been three additional homicides by Wednesday afternoon, adding to the nearly 1,200 people killed in Juárez this year due in part by a war among drug traffickers.

Here's the rub. El Paso is ranked the third safest in the country and Men's Health magazine ranked El Paso the second "happiest city" in the country. Weird shit. I haven't studied the statistics, and, in fact, they bore me. I leave that sort of stuff to my daughter Susie Byrd who sits on the El Paso Council. She loves the nuts and bolts of running a city. I'm a poet. I like thinking and writing about El Paso and Juárez, cities that I've come to love, two cities divided by a river and an international border but which made out of the same cloth, the same place, the same roots. All sorts of paradoxes and contradictions and, as Blake called them, contraries.

So I was delighted and curious when the editor at Playboy Magazine (yeah, yeah, that Playboy Magazine) hired Luis Alberto Urrea to come down here to write an article about El Paso. Writers usually parachute into El Paso, they talk to the usual suspects of reporters and so-called experts of various persuasions (politics, academia, etcetera) from both sides of the river and then they send back blood and guts dispatches. But the Playboy editor wanted a different look at a city that occupies such a contradictory and peculiarly romantic place in the American psyche. He chose Luis for obvious reasons. Luis is un fronterizo puro carrying all the appropriate baggage. He grew up in Tijuana and San Diego, his father is Mexican, his mother is from Boston, for God's sake, and he's recognized for his non-fiction about the border, more recently The Devil's Highway. Besides, he writes like a novelist because he is a novelist, eg the epic Hummingbird's Daughter about Teresa Urrea (yeah, a distant cousin whom all the Urreas call tia), aka Teresita, la Santa de Cabora. It's a long story. Read his books.

Luis was in town for a week talking with people and driving around and taking notes. He's been here a bunch of times before--to visit, to speak at the Border Book Festival or UTEP or NMSU, to do research in the archives at the downtown library and at UTEP re: his tia Teresita. This time he stayed at our house on Louisville in the Five Points neighborhood of El Paso. It was fun for Lee and me to have him around. We talked about our common obsessions--El Paso and writing and books and writer gossip and poetry. Benjamin Alire Saenz had us over to dinner one night, I drove him around, historian David Romo (Ringside Seat to a Revolution) drove him around, Susie drove him around and introduced him to all sorts of folks, he met with Border Patrol section chief Paul Wells, he ate at Papa Burgers and Chico's Tacos and Ardovino's Desert Crossing, he listened to and hung out with Ernie Tinajero and the band Radio la Chusma, etcetera. He certainly didn't get the Cook's Tour. He got the down-home tour. Which, as you'll see, included the Concordia and Smelter Town cemeteries. We got interesting ghosts wandering around.


"The Good & the Bad" A Found Poem in Concordia Cemetery.
Who knows if the rocks are the same rocks.
Concordia Cemetery is across the street from the L&J Restaurant, one of the great Mexican restaurants and watering holes in El Paso. I had taken Luis here years before and he wanted to go back to visit John Wesley Hardin's grave. Concordia is an old west graveyard--nameless and forgotten graves for the poor and not so poor; a barren Chinese graveyard enclosed by a stone fence with rectangular blocks of concrete sitting atop the bones; lots of tombs for the richer Catholic dead; a well manicured grassy section for the Jewish dead; a similar section for the Methodist. The dead are always dead no matter who they are. The dust and rocks and burrowing owls tell us this truth. Likewise the volunteer cactus and desert trees and weeds. We are all spectators of the dead. A very strange place on a hot day. Very strange thoughts.

The Concordia's main claim to fame is that John Wesley Hardin is buried there. A jail surrounds his grave--not for any symbolic reason, but because several years ago citizens of his birthplace tried to steal his bones. They wanted to transport the murderer back to East Texas for purely monetary reasons. JWH is a tourist draw. Such is the weird El Paso news.


John Wesley Hardin's Gravesite

Chinese Grave, Concordia Cemetery

Child's Grave, Concordia Cemetery>


Luis and Johnny Byrd in the shade of a big mesquite.
It was at least 104 that day.

Before you check out, make sure you watch Radio la Chusma playing "Cruising"--it's pure El Paso sound, all those Mexican vibes mixed in oldie radio and very hip chicanismo. You get to ride around in a two-tone Chevy through El Chuco. Watchalo!

Round 2 will be Monument Marker 1 and the Smelter Town Cemetery. It'll be up in a few days.

Death Rider on Texas Avenue

Death Rider on Texas Avenue.
He needed 70-cents to catch a bus.
He told me I wouldn’t believe him why.
I didn’t. It’s the luck of the draw.
I wish it made sense but it doesn’t make sense.
August and we can almost taste the cooler weather.
Bright tomatoes. A cantaloupe.
I gave him $5.

The Creators of INCANTATIONS

I live a couple of professional lives. I'm a poet and a publisher. It's a peculiar and very interesting dilemma. Lee (she's a novelist and short-story writer) and i got into the publishing life so we could try to make a living at something we loved--putting language on the page. Our company Cinco Puntos Press doesn't publish much poetry. Why? Because very few people buy poetry books. But sometimes we go out on a limb and publish a book that crosses the terrain. In this instance, it's INCANTATIONS: SONGS, SPELLS AND IMAGES BY MAYAN WOMEN. This magical book (I use the term "magical" in the literal sense) was edited and curated by poet Ambar Past. More about Ambar later. But for now I'm pasting below a blognote that appeared on our Cinco Puntos Press blogspot. Because a different crowd of readers come to this blog, I thought it would be good to put this here too. This is one of those times when I get the chance to wear my poet hat and my publisher hat stacked atop one another.

OVER A HUNDRED AND FIFTY PEOPLE COLLABORATED to write, illustrate, and create this book, among them singers, seers, witchwives, washer women, sugar beer brewers, conjurers, native bearers, prayer makers, soothsayers, sorceresses, dyers, diviners, hired mourners, spinners, shepherdesses, babysitters, millers, maids, bookbinders, spellbinders, cornharvesters, great-grandmothers, sharecroppers, necromancers, exorcists, coffee pickers, potters, crazy women, midwives, planters, woodlanders, bonesetters, troublemakers, spiritualists, mothers-in-law, peddlers, gravediggers, fireworks makers, drinkers, hags, beggars, bakers, basket weavers, shamanesses, liars, computers, comagres, sculptresses, muses, and even men. We have made this book “as we make our children,” in the words of Petú Xantis, “with the strength of our flesh and the birds of our heart.”


In the land of Som Chi, the Eloquent Conjurer,
In the land of Som Chi, Spinner of Incantations.

—Ritual de los Bacabes

So Ambar Past begins her essay "Notes on the Creators" in the anthology INCANTATIONS: SONGS, SPELLS AND IMAGES BY MAYAN WOMEN. Below, in this video, Ambar and Maruch Méndes Péres celebrate the book, making offering to the Gods, with candles, poetry and a reading.

[NOTES: Ambar's daughter, the videographer Tila Rodriguez Past filmed, edited and produced this video. It was originally published on the web on Blip TV here. By the way, if you're on facebook reading this, you might not be able to watch the video in the blognote. It will, however, be posted on facebook in videos and on the wall separately.]

Maruch is a shepherdess and poet. This is what she chants to the Gods:

"I AM GIVING YOU YOUR FOOD
I AM FEEDING YOU WITH CANDLES AND POETRY"

The Tzotzil Maya of the Chiapas Highlands say that the Gods need to have poetry in order to survive and so they created humans to make that poetry, that feast. Thus, Maruch and Ambar are celebrating the publication of our U.S. edition of INCANTATIONS. Maruch chants poetry and lights the candles for the altar and later in the video Ambar reads a poem. This magical book--edited and curated by Ambar--was originally created by el Taller Leñateros (Woodlanders Workshop), a self-governing collective of mostly Mayan women. A member of the taller, Maruch was one of the book’s creators.

In her essay "Notes on the Creators,"Ambar tells this story about Maruch--

Shepherdess Maruch Méndes Péres is the author of Songs of the Drunken Woman. Maruch is not much of a drinker, however, and claims she never married because she can’t stand drunks. She lives in Catixtik, Chamula with two little girls she adopted, Xvel and Marta Méndes. Now it seems that Maruch has also adopted Xvel and Marta’s three siblings and also their birth mother, Dominga. All of them have changed their last names to Méndes. The Leñateros were trying to get in touch with Maruch last year to pay her royalties from the sales of the Spanish version of this book, but were told that she had died, and would be buried that very day. All of us from the Workshop piled into a hired van packed full of flowers and we headed off sadly to Maruch’s hamlet. There were hundreds of people in mourning outside of her house, including Maruch herself, who was so overjoyed to witness our arrival at the funeral that she forgot for a moment her sadness over the death of her elder sister—also named Maruch Méndes.

Here, then, is a couple of Maruch's incantations:

THE DRUNKEN WOMAN’S SONG

Saint Mother,
Godmother, I am drunk.

I caught the drops that fall from your roof
I drank your shadow.

Now I am getting drunk.
Anyway, my Saint Mother,
anyway, my Godmother,

look after me
so I won’t trip over something.

I am drunk; I have drunk,
my Saint Mother, my Godmother,
Saint Maruch, Niña Maruch.

I want all your pretty ones to overwhelm me.
I want to sing,

Virgin Maruch,
Niña Maruch.

I am a drinker of drink.
I drank your wine.

It has gone to my head.
My heart is spinning

I know how to drink.
I know how to drink everything.

—Maruch Méndes Péres

●

TO KAXAIL

I step and walk
on your flowering face,

Holy Mother, Holy Wildwood,
Sacred Earth, Sacred Ground.

Show me the way, Mother,
put me on the right track.

Rise up, Holy Rock!
Rise up, Holy Tree!

Come with me on the way up.
Be with me on the way down.

Sacred Mother,
Holy Breast,

Holy Kaxail,
Sacred Earth,

Holy Ground,
Holy Soil,

Sacred Ahau,
Holy Snake,

Holy Thunderbolt:
Protect me with your shadow.

—Maruch Méndes Péres

The Death of Dr. Manuel Arroyo Galvan

“Truth is the first casualty in a war.”

Aeschylus (525 BC - 456 BC), that old Greek bastard who wrote plays, said something like that 2500 years ago. Nothing has changed much since then. Especially in Ciudad Juárez a few minutes across the river from where I live . The Juarez Cartel is battling the Sinaloa Cartel for the right to use that city as its place of business. Since January 2008 more that 2200 people have been assassinated mob-style in La Ciudad Juárez. Felipe Calderon, the president of Mexico, has sent 10,000 federal troops to the city. His rationale was that the city police are dirty. They’re at the trough slopping up the mordida. For a while, the murders abated, but now they have returned with heart-numbing regularity. All the rich people, the powerful people, have fled the city. They live in El Paso or elsewhere. Even the mayor lives on this side of the river. The poor, the working class and the lower middle-class are bearing the brunt of the carnage. On the streets the people don’t trust the troops. They don’t trust the police. They worry that the authorities, whatever badge they are wearing, are working for either Juárez Cartel (the city police) or the Sinaloa Cartel (the army). These are the rumors. And rumors are as good as place as any for news. The newspapers aren’t trusted either. Juárez is not a safe place to write real news, hard news. Nosey journalists are killed with impunity. And now it seems the cartels and their collaborators are stepping into the academic and intellectual communities.

Listen here.

It’s May 29th, just a few weeks ago. A 44-year-old man is driving back to work on a hot afternoon. He lives in a desert city on the U.S./Mexico border, so he has the AC humming away at full blast and his window is open. Why? Because he likes the AC and he likes the smell of the air in his city, even if it is dirty. This man loves his car. It’s a 1992 Chrysler New Yorker, a huge boat of a car, una ranfla grande, with deep leather seats and lots of bells and whistles. A big roomy space good for all sorts of things—talk and laughter and kids and love-making. It’s the kind of car he dreamed about when he was kid. His parents were migrants from the state of Durango. They worked in the maquilas. They never crossed over to the United States, aka Gringolandia, so he grew up south of that little bit of a river that separates us from them. Back then his mother was an advocate of the Catholic Church’s Theology of Liberation, so at an early age he sat in living rooms listening to workers talking about organizing and creating better lives for their families and their people. He had listened to the anger, he had listened to the sorrow, he had seen how the poverty can grind into a family’s heart and he had hoped that something could be done. He too had gone to work in a maquiladora. $30 to $35 a week was probably the high end of his wage scale. But somehow—through a combination of happy karma and good luck, his and his city’s—he had entered the university and studied and worked himself up the ladder from a bachelor’s degree to a master’s and finally a PhD. He became a professor of social studies and education. So this man, this driver of the Chrysler New Yorker, is an academic, a well-respected leader in the local intellectual community. He is not afraid to butt heads with the jefes at the university, and he is working on a book about social movements in his city and the problems they confronted. He didn’t make much money, but that was not what his life was about. His life reflected who he was.

What I want to say is this: if I lived in this man’s city, then I would know him. He would be an acquaintance, a guy I'd talk to at parties or at a coffee shop, maybe at a poetry reading or an art gallery. He’s the kind of guy who I cross paths with all the time. He has the same intellectual, civic and emotional interests that I have. His world is like my world, his life is not unlike my life.

So he is driving his car and daydreaming. Like any of us on a sunny afternoon he’s distracted by this or that. Who knows what he is thinking about? He has both hands on the steering wheel, he has his seat belt on, he’s approaching an intersection, the light is turning yellow and a white panel van pulls up next to him on the driver’s side. The van comes too close, so much so the man looks over to see who it is. He’s pissed. Why doesn’t that vato look out where he’s going? The window of the van rolls down and a man he does not know points a gun at him. This unknown man shoots six times and the Chrysler New Yorker swerves into a telephone pole.

The driver is dead.

The dead man was Dr. Manuel Arroyo Galvan, a professor at the Universidad Autónoma de Ciudad Juárez just 10 or 15 minutes across the river from where I live. He was 44 years old, an intellectual who cared about the community from which he came. He was a sociology and education professor and researcher for the Autonomous University of Ciudad Juarez (UACJ). He was a social activist, a divorced father of a son whom he loved and cared for. His murder will not be solved, and even if it is “solved,” no one will believe what the authorities say. There are lots of theories-—he was the victim of a revenge attack for a legal complaint he reportedly filed over a stolen truck, the victim’s stumbling across sensitive information in the course of his research, maybe it was a simple case of mistaken identity, or maybe Manny was dirty. That’s the first idea that pops up into people’s minds when someone is killed--what was he doing wrong? A good friend of mine, a juarense, told me that in Juárez, everybody is an expert. It’s like being at a soccer game. One opinion is as valid as the next. We are, he said, scared for our own lives but at the same time we must explain what is happening. We don’t trust the news, we don’t trust the cops so we must explain it ourselves.

The day after I heard about Manuel Arroyo’s death I got the email below from my friend. Excuse the awkward translation. It is mine. Also, I want to say I will no longer give the names of any of my friends in Juarez. The shadow crosses the river. I have inserted the video inside his email which documents the march—

Comp@as,

The death of Manuel Arroyo is lamentable, not only for the insidious way he was assassinated, but also because he was a generous man and a active participant in our community, besides being a controversial and brave academic who on various occasions had to assume the political costs of his beliefs.

This past Friday, soon after we learned of his death, that congregated at la Megabandera [a park near the university over which is hoisted a giant flag of Mexico] and spontaneously marched to the Prosecutor General’s Office where we vigorously protested. It wasn't for nothing. Every one of us that joined this procession had shared with Manuel, in some moment or another, practices, spaces, discussions, arguments, desires and words, many words. Above all, we shared with him the determinations to transform the city.



With his death we have died a little, but this is the moment when we must walk into the street. We cannot stay in our homes waiting to see who will be the next victim nor can we permit that our first suspicion about the assassination rest with the victim.

It seems that the university has finally taken a position that is clear, definitive and articulate about the assassinations of Manuel, of professor Gerardo González and student Alejandro Irigoyen Flores y the disappearances of students Lidia Ramos Mancha and Mónica Janeth Alanís. This is an encouraging signal that things can change. We will gather today at six in the after at the Megabandera and march together.

In this way we can send a clear message that prevails in our city and in our country is untenable and that we demand a secure city, with respect to the human rights and individual guaranties for all. This is something very basic and elemental--that condition these rights prevail.

This is a critical moment and an extraordinary opportunity. We must make the effort and we must take to the streets.

A few days after that first spontaneous march, friends and comrades from the university held a larger, with speeches and reminiscences, sharing the life of Manuel Arroyo Galvan and his intellectual legacy in the city. It was a larger and more organized event, and it was covered in media in Juárez and El Paso. The two photos above, and also the photograph of the soldier in the Humvee at the top, were taken by border photographer Bruce Berman. Bruce, who has a daily blog documenting the border cities of El Paso and Juárez, attended the second march, his camera in his hand. At the event they organizers played the classic Mexican rock song by El Tri, “Rolling Stones,”—“Las Piedras rodantes.” Below is a video from youtube of Alex Lora of El Tri singing that song. Listen to it and learn the lyrics, which you can google and translate. It's a simple little way to mourn for Manuel Arroyo Galvan, to weep for him and to stand in solidarity with him and the citizens of La Ciudad Juarez.

Even if you are like me: You never knew him.

INCANTATIONS: Maya Earth Mother Book & el Taller Leñateros

We are the woodlanders who walk in the hills gathering dry branches and deadwood from fallen trees, collecting firewood without chopping down the forest. We come down from the mountains, carrying bundles of wood, of pitchpine and split encino, for the hearths of the Royal City of San Cristobal de Las Casas. We walk through the mist, leading our burros, selling firewood from house to house. We knock on people’s doors, offering pine needles as well, to spread on the floor, moss, flowers of bromeliads and orchids for manger scenes.

—from the website for Taller Leñateros

NOTE: I wrote this piece for the Cinco Puntos Press Blogspot but inadvertently put it up here on my personal blogspot. I went to delete it, but thought, hell, this belongs here as well. INCANTATIONS: Songs, Spells and Images by Mayan Women collected by the remarkable woman and poet Ambar Past is an important contribution to my work as a poet. That's how Lee and I got to be publishers in the first place--she is a novelist and I am a poet. Our first work of writing is the inspiration for our publishing. I'll put more up about Ambar and Incantations in the future. Enjoy.)

In 2002 Lee and I were lucky enough to visit San Cristobal de las Casas, Chiapas. San Cristobal is one of the spiritual capitals of the original people, los indigenas, the Tzotzil Maya and those who came before, the People the color of our Mother Earth. This is where in 1994 the Zapatistas came out of the hills and forests and made war against the Mexican government. Their war was in defense of their ancient homeland, their culture, their language, their vision. Ever since we published La Historia de las colores / The Story of Colors by Subcomandante Marcos and illustrated by Domitila Dominguez we have wanted to make this trip. It was a wonderful, haunting journey. Like a pilgrimage almost. So much of that old city on the southern edge of Mexico made us feel like we had found some sort of home. We were happy simply walking around the streets and visiting the outlying Mayan communities of San Juan Chamula and Zinacatan, listening to Tzotzil and Spanish rub up against one another not quite at ease, sitting in ancient churches and the plazas and feeling the cool highland breezes. Finally we were there, hesitant and awkward at first, but soon we felt at peace and happy.

On the morning of our last day in San Cristobal a friend told us that we needed without fail to visit el Taller Leñateros (“the Woodlanders Workshop), a paper-making collective owned and operated by Tzotzil women. So we followed directions and turned down a narrow cobble-stoned street and knocked on a door. A man opened the door for us. He didn’t speak English, and his Spanish was as bad as mine. He motioned us to come inside. We found ourselves in a quiet, magically real room filled with paper art--hand-made papers, cards, large images, small images, books, all made with indigenous hands and perspective. Their remarkable story of the Leñateros is best followed on their website and facebook pages, but here I want to speak of their mother Maya earth book, the creation of their minds and hearts and hands.

We were enthralled by all that we saw and so happy to be there. Then AMBAR PAST burst into the room full of energy and joy. Yes, she knew about Cinco Puntos Press; yes, she knew this person and that person; and yes, she especially knew about The Story of Colors. She was so happy to meet us. And she wanted to show us the jewel that the Taller had produced--INCANTATIONS. The book she showed us was truly a work of art. The original is such a wonderful book, such an important book. The thick cover is hand-sculpted--the brown face of a woman, the brown face of a mother-god, the brown face of Mother Earth. And inside on thick papers were stunning poems from the Tzotzil women. Chants and prophecy and incantations and curses--words to keep the spirit alive, words to keep evil at bay, words to ward off sickness and death, words to protect children and the sacred corn, words to protect women from drunken crazy men, words of love and love-making. Magic words. Sacred words. Ancient words. And dovetailed within the book are images from these women that speak to the same place in the heart.

Over the years of living and working with the Tzotzil women, Ambar had collected these poems, transcribing them first into Tzotzil which by then she had learned. Next she translated them into Spanish and finally into English. And she contributed two important essays--one that tells the history of the book and the other that discusses the poetics of the poets and their Tzotzil culture. The New York Times, recognizing the importance of Incantations as a work of language and as a work of art, published an extensive piece on the original Incantations and Ambar. The Taller was selling the books for $200 U.S. Still is, in fact. And they are available through Garcia Street Books in Santa Fe and probably elsewhere. (Again, please visit the website and facebook pages for Taller Leñateros for more information about the women, their goals and the various paper art they are selling.)

I am a poet, and since the 1960s I have been a rabid fan of the pioneering work of Jerome Rothenberg in developing his understanding of ethno-poetics (in particular, his anthologies Shaking the Pumkin, Technicians of the Sacred and America a Prophecy). Reading the poems and Ambar’s essay, I knew immediately the importance of the book, and I yearned for Cinco Puntos to be able of produce a trade edition of the collection. Lee was as excited about the project as I was. We wanted a book that would retain a taste of the original but would make the work accessible to poets and scholars and students and readers. It would require compromises to the original book, but Lee and Ambar worked together over several years to bring about a book that we are all proud of.

Ambar Past is a remarkable woman. She grew up, ironically enough for us, in our hometown of El Paso and even went to the same high school as our three kids. But in 1968, when she graduated from high school, she left El Paso, never to return. First she went to Haight-Ashbury in San Francisco. It was time for the Summer of Love. But she wasn’t happy there either. She went to Mexico and eventually she found her home-place in the highlands of San Cristobal. She lived among the Tzotzil and studied their ways and their language and their medicines. It was not easy, but she has survived and has been honored by the Tzotzil. She became a naturalized Mexican citizen and has become an important Mexican poet. We, like the Tzotzil, are honored to have Ambar as a friend.

Lost (and Found) in the Rain of Juárez

Yesterday Joe Hayes and I went over to Juárez to walk around and to have dinner. It’s been a long-time ritual for us when he comes visiting from Santa Fe. It was just regular trip to the other side, so it feels odd writing about a three hour journey that has long been a habit of mine. But people keep asking me: Do you go to Juárez anymore? These people have been reading the news, hearing the continuing grisly murders along the border and especially in Juárez. I hadn’t been for a month or so, and everybody in El Paso knows that Juárez is suffering because so few people are crossing over the bridges and spending money in Mexico. People are on this side are scared. I don’t blame them. Last year over 2000 people, most of them involved in some way in the drug trade, were murdered. Among that number have been a few U.S. citizens, some the result of stray gunfire. It’s still going on but it’s not so bad now. El Presidente Felipe Calderón has sent 7,000 federal troops. Their job supposedly is to combat the two narco-traficante cartels who are doing battle to control the Juárez trade route. The Juárez Cartel is headed by Vicente Carrillo-Fuentes (the brother of the infamous and allegedly dead “Lord of the Skies” Amado Carillo Fuentes) which is battling to the death the Sinaloa Cartel and el Chapo Guzmán. If you listen to the gossip on the street you’ll discover that few people believe “the news” that the army or the local police are non-partisan protectors of the people. The street rumor has it that Calderón and the federales are on the side of el Chapo and the Juárez police are on the side of Vicente Carillo-Fuentes and the local cartel.

“Whatever,” as the kids say. It's just sad, sad stuff.

We crossed the Stanton Street Bridge. We were happy to be going to Juárez again. A quiet rain had begun to fall as soon as we topped the bridge. It came and went, sometime heavily, during our walk. It’s a month too early for the monsoons to begin saturating this part of the Chihuahua Desert, so the rain felt delicious and comforting. The desert, even in its cities, has a beautiful smell when it rains. It’s the smell of wet greasewood and sage bushes. Such dreamy cool weather for the end of May when in most years the thermometer is already climbing over 100. Now wonder Joe and I enjoyed walking in the rain and dancing among the puddles in the greasy streets. It was a great unexpected pleasure.

Just on the other side of the bridge we saw a covey of the Mexican army, seven men dressed in desert brown helmets and fatigues, packing automatic rifles and pistols. I wanted to take a photo but I didn’t dare. These seven unsmiling soldiers were dressed up to play Mexican Army but they didn’t inspire any confidence. Mostly 18 and 19 years old kids, they were loitering out of the rain under a big tree like malingering taxi drivers. Except these guys were carrying big guns.

We walked south down Avenida Lerdo—or as we call it, la Avendia de las Novias—where dress shops populate both sides of the street. The shops specialize in quinceañas and weddings, and the big windows are decorated with manikin dreams. The shops were empty of customers. Their incomes depend on the Mexican-Americans coming across and spending money. Nobody was crossing anymore. As far as they were concerned, nobody was getting married, nobody was celebrating a young girl’s 15th birthday. Maybe their world was drying up like an empty seed pod. The clerks peered at us through the drizzle, wondering where the two old gringos were going.

We walked down to Avenida Septiembre de la Diez y Seis and then west to the plaza and the cathedral and the mercados. At least people were wandering in the streets there. Except it didn’t feel like the border. The rain had changed the ambience. That and the absence of gringos and Mexican-Americans, folks with money in their pockets, folks to do business with. It could have been Veracruz or Hermosillo. Any place else further south. But the Mexicans were there at least. Juárez, like New York City, is a street city. It's vitality is out on the streets to watch and feet. A little band of of cristianos were singing corridos to Jesus in the gazebo of the plaza, women and children and men scurried back and forth, buying food for dinner, trying to make a peso somehow, laughing and screaming and chatting and singing. Music blared from loudspeakers. Behind the new mercados is Calle de Paz, a street of unbridaled laissez-faire capitalism. A few years ago Calle de Paz was packed with illegal vendors selling everything from song birds to rattlesnake rattles and herbs to ripped off DVDs (you can buy first run movies for $5) and any kind of dope if you knew who to ask, but after the city built the two new mercados the police ran all the street vendors away at gunpoint. One man, a leader of protesting vendors, was killed. Now, with the recession debilitating the street economies of Juárez, the puestos (stands) are creeping back into the streets. And of course the sad whores are still there. Calle de Paz is the last territory of the old whores, women in their 30s and 40s, fat and worn out, long past the hungry dreams of their late teens and 20s. They stood in the doorways of cheap bars, their eyes empty and lonely, watching the rain come down.

We went to the Villa del Mar for dinner. It’s long been one of my favorites but it’s been a year or so since I was there. A few of the tables had patrons, so that made us happy. At least it was still open. We sat at a booth and a young mesero brought us fresh made chips and two salsas and a bunch of limes. Joe doesn’t drink anymore, I don’t drink much, so we both had agua minerals con limon. I had the Sopa Marinera Grande and Joe had the filete de pescado mojo de ajo. It was very good. We watched the rain fall outside and we talked about all the many times we have crossed back and forth. When the rain slacked up some, we asked for the bill. It was $12.76 (1560 pesos). A little more that 8 pesos for a dollar. Like it was when we were kids. But now I’m 67 and Joe will be 64. Joe laughed. It was his time to pay, but how can it be so cheap? He gave the waiter $20 in ones, the young man smiled a very large smile and we walked back home to the other side.

■■

This morning I woke up at 5am. I had stomach cramps. I had the runs on and off during the day. Oh well. A little memory from our journey. That happens on this side or that side. It happens everywhere. That’s how the Buddha died. He didn’t complain. People have a bad day, they make a mistake. That’s what my friend Art Lewis the famous sax player told me once. I'm still trying to learn.

■■

Here are a couple of poems of mine from my book The Price of Doing Business in Mexico (1998). They are both poems about Juárez and how I feel about that city that’s five minutes from where I write this. Both poems are the same poem differently, but that’s okay. (By the way, I've still not taken the time to figure how to put indents in the blogger, so if you want to see the poems the way they supposed to look on the page, buy the book.) And, oh yeah, the photograph of Lee and me is a favorite of mine, and I’ve used it numerous other places. It was taken in 1977 in Martino’s Restaurant on Avenida Juárez a few blocks from the bridge. Pedro Ruelas Alvarez, a street photographer, took the photograph. We were sitting in the corner booth by the front window. We were living in Las Cruces at the time, and we had no idea that we would ever move to El Paso. Ruelas, who charged us three dollars for the photograph, is now dead, but many of the waiters are still there. Martino’s is having a difficult time. If you have a chance, go by and eat there too.

■■


The Gavachos in the Photograph

They’ll tell you when you’re growing up
that water goes under the bridge,
but they don’t tell you about the bridge
that goes over to Avenida Juárez
where Martino’s Restaurant is
two doors down from the Kentucky Club.
The imagination opens those doors,
and there I am,
the big bearded gavacho in the straw hat,
the coral necklace,
drinking Dos XX Oscura
and thinking I will have enough riches in my pocket
to nourish my heart in case of love.
It’s Lee’s 32nd birthday, 1977,
a year before we moved to El Paso.
Isn’t she beautiful?
I am 35.
We sit in the corner booth by the windows
where the tiny Tarahumara children stand forever
with their outstretched hands
reaching into the emptiness of the 20th Century,
and a kaleidoscope of people walk
back and forth
looking for ways to lose themselves
in the dwindling twilight.
Glittering mirrors.
Hard-crusted bolillo rolls.
French onion soup.
Chateaubriand for two fried in butter French-style.
We become stuffed and drunk and happy.
We wander the streets holding hands,
we climb a rickety staircase
to a small $10 room with clean sheets,
we make love like resplendent wild beasts
in search of something Jesus said,
and then we walk back into
the jingle-jangle of Avenida Juárez.

That was twenty-one years ago now.
Nothing has really changed except us.
Pedro Ruelas Alvarez,
the street photographer who took this picture
is dead now.
Like my mother is dead.
My sister Patsy.
My brother Bill.
Like Lee’s mother and father.

“Water under the bridge, ¿verdad?”

Another gavacho couple is sitting in that booth tonight.
They are looking out the window
at the Indian children with the large black eyes,
and they are afraid
of what they see in that confusion.
Give them a quarter, mister,
give them a dollar,
give them back the secret places
in the mountains where their spirit thrives.
That’s what I always want to do,
to give away something to make myself whole,
but it seems so impossible,
even to give something to myself.
At least I feel like I am at home now,
here in El Paso,
walking back and forth across the bridge,
and I’m hoping to find enough riches in my pocket
to cure some of the ache in my heart.
This is my prayer—
May God grant us all love
and a little bit of peace on Avenida Juárez.
Amen.

■■

How to Eat Stuffed Fish in Juárez

Jesus died for the sins of us all.
So I walked across the bridge to Mexico
with my friend Rus the basketball coach,
and we ate fish at the Villa del Mar
which seemed like
the natural thing to do.
It was Lent in a Catholic country.
The waiter was a pro, thank God.
Two Bohemias apiece,
chips and fresh pico de gallo,
bolillos (on the soft side)
a good and simple caldo,
the pescado was rellenado
con tiny shrimp and crabmeat—

the bill was 16 bucks and we added a four dollar tip,
becoming heroes because we had money in our pockets.
Outside the afternoon had become night.
The glass doors opened,
and like always
there was the river
of dark fleshy people
who walked up and down
like they knew where they were going.
Hallowed be their names.
Hallowed be all of our names.
We went and said Hello to Benito Juárez,
stern el Presidente Indigeno
gloriously astride a marble and bronze pedestal
in the exact center of a plaza
that carried his name like secret ammunition.
Pancho Villa and Emilio Zapata
were somewhere in the shadows of the flimsy trees,
happy to be the guardians of a pair of lovers
who were snuggled up on a green park bench.
The man had his hand inside the woman’s white blouse.
We turned back into the clutter of human beings,
the clanging traffic,
and a little Tarahumara brother and sister who found us
like lost pieces of a puzzle, blessed us
with their sad hunger, their black watery eyes
blinking with the memory of

the Sierra Madre,
hunger,
narcotraficantes,
dead babies,
lost Gods.

All that we had to give was money.
50¢ for each of them.
Enough so that they fled back to their mother,
a tiny woman who sat on the curb with another baby
wrapped in a rebozo that was becoming the color of night.

It would have been nice
to have had my wife along beside me,
friend and lover, a woman
to touch my hand crossing the confused streets.
But Rus was okay—
he listened to the disturbances in my sentences
like a friend is supposed to do,
at least until he ran into a British travel-writer-novelist-acquaintance
who towed along a wife and a blonde couple from Baltimore,
all of them younger than me, all of them
delighted with who they were and who
they were going to be.
I should have told them about my brother Bill,
59-years-old,
whose heart burst open one morning
two months before
after he had bagged his limit one last time
of beautiful mallard ducks
from the cold Mississippi sky.
The Holy Trinity—

God the Holy Blood,
God the Holy Dead,
God the Holy Food.

I didn’t because
this was Mexico and Mississippi is Mississippi
and my brother was dead now
forever.
So there we all were
five gavachos on the other side
with nothing to talk about
except ourselves.
We avoided the subject for the most part.
At least we didn’t talk about basketball.
Thank you, Jesus.
I bought a bottle of Tequila and went home.

Zen Priest BRAD WARNER in El Paso

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Poetry, Life and Barf—the Poetics of Eileen Myles

April 30th Eileen Myles was in town, and she gave a reading at the Percolator Coffee House on Stanton Street downtown El Paso. I read with her. It was a great event. To promote the reading I wrote the essay below about her poetics, riffing off her own essay "Everyday Barf" that concluded her recent book of poems SORRY, TREE (Wave Books, 2007). If you don't know Eileen's work work, you should. She wears many hats--poet, novelist, librettist, and former Presidential candidate. The New Mexico State Writing Program in Las Cruces sponsored her visit to the area, and The Dishonest Mailman Series (The UTEP Writing Program) hosted El Paso event. Thanks again to Connie Voisine (poet, NMSU) and Rosa Alcala (poet, UTEP) for their collaboration to make all this possible.

Life, Poetry and Barf--the Poetics of Eileen Myles

I bought a refrigerator the other day, the first refrigerator I have ever bought in my life and the man in the store, Gringer’s on First Avenue, asked me what I do and I said I’m a poet. Let’s hear one he said. I balked, maybe feeling a little cheesy, you know like I should entertain him while I’m buying a refrigerator, like those cab drivers or waiters who flirt with women while they work, so that you’re reminded that you’re never really a customer, you’re always just a women, or a poet. I recited one--not well--I kind of stuttered. It was short. He looked at me blankly. Do you want to hear it again, I asked. No. I think that one went over my head he said, and turned his attention to the next customer.

Her poems wander. They like to wander because her mind wanders. Her poems pay attention to her mind wandering. She gets up in the morning and goes outside. Just like the rest of us. Our bodies are working. We know because we are breathing the air. What kind of news is this? In one essay presumably about poetics but probably more about life Eileen insinuates that every day is like barf because it just happens. Like barf happens. We are not in control when we barf. That includes you, dear reader. You just sit back and suffer and watch or you enjoy and watch or you just don’t pay attention. Eileen pays attention. And she writes poems. She wants her poetics to reflect how her day happens. She wants her poetics to reflect how she pays attention. It’s a subversive message. How a day in her life, like every day in her life, can be like barf. She gets distracted. A poem can follow along. That’s its job, that’s the poet’s job. She is an open door. It shuts and closes. She is outside, she goes back inside. She is awake, she goes to sleep. She is a function of the universe. She breathes, she eats, she shits, she makes love, she writes poems, she gets happy, she gets sad, she lives in New York City, sometimes she lives elsewhere. We are all a piece of the universe. We are all a piece of the same cloth. It’s empty, it’s not empty. Yes, yes, I know she is a lesbian. Let me tell you--she was a lesbian before everybody else was a lesbian. Do you know what I mean? In 1992 she came to El Paso. She was running for President of the United States. She thought it was important that a lesbian poet who looked and talked like a Kennedy should run for President of the United States. It was the thing to do. It was the moment to do it. It just happened. Part of her platform was to celebrate her dog Rosie, a pit bull. Very un-PC, even in 1992. Rosie is dead now, but she was a wonderful happy dog, and Eileen loved her dearly. Eileen believed that a lesbian poet in the White House required a well-adjusted and contented pit bull. The world would be set straight. In a poetics sort of way. But I digress. Like Eileen digresses. So she and Debbie Nathan went across the river and walked down to the concrete ditch that people still call the Rio Grande. They carried with them a bucket of red paint and big brushes and they wrote in big red letters: WRITE IN MYLES FOR PRESIDENT. She was running against Bill Clinton, the first George Bush and Ross Perot. It was not even close.

See a poem is a tiny institution. I just write lots and lots of them, and it gives me a way to be in the world. It’s actually a very worldly job, there really isn’t a wrong place to be, a poet kind of goes with anything, any kind of decor, indoor, out. Presidents like to have poets next to them, we’re sort of like a speaking wreath, the kind of poet you pick tells the kind of president you are, the hell of dating or marrying a poet is that certainly we will write about you, so if you don’t want to be seen, don’t date a poet, anyone should know that. Because really a poet has nothing better to do than look at you. A poet’s best friend is her dog, because instantly the dog will take the poet on walks, the poet is like the earth’s shadow. The sun moves and the poet writes something down.

So when Eileen ran for President, I didn’t vote for her. I did feel guilty about not voting for her. I even wrote a poem about it ("November 18, 1992" which is in The Price of Doing Business in Mexico). Debbie voted for her, which surprised me, because I didn't think Debbie was a voter (either I heard something wrongly or my internal stereotyping system was wacko). I’m sure Eileen voted for herself. She’s solid and real that way. She’s a very substantial person. My growing up poet friend Harvey Goldner would have voted for her except I don’t think the Eileen Myles for President campaign knocked on many doors in Seattle. Like Rosie the dog, Harvey is dead now. He voted for Bill Clinton in 1992. He liked him because Bill was from the south like us. Harvey laughed when he thought about Bill’s white chubby thighs chugging down Pennsylvania Avenue in search of manhood or a MacDonald’s. Whatever came first. Back then Harvey was driving a cab and working some in the psych ward of the public hospital. He was busy becoming a legendary underground and unknown street poet. Ten years before that he turned himself into a detox unit and dried out. He had been an alcoholic since probably both of us were 15 together in 1957 listening to James Brown and Bobby Blue Bland and Jimmy Reed in Memphis, Tennessee. I told this to Eileen once. She said 1982 was the year she went on the wagon. She too had been an alcoholic. 1982 must have been a good year for poets, she said. Harvey told me about his terrible DTs that he suffered through. He was curled up in a corner of his room. He was afraid. The door was locked. It was really a cell. Every time he looked up and peered into the darkness he saw way out in the distance a giant wheel of light coming toward him. It was pure light, it was pure energy, it was terrifying. It chewed up everything--men, women, babies, high school basketball players, lovers, houses, automobiles, trees, mountains, even the sun. It mangled them up and swallowed them whole. It horrified him. He wanted to get drunk and forget all about the wheel of light. But Harvey knew it was over, his drinking, because he had been privileged to see the wheel of light churning toward him. He had been blessed. I thought about this story when I decided to write this piece about Eileen’s poetics. She doesn’t let us forget the wheel of light rumbling down the road toward us. Her poetics are subversive that way. I know I said that already but I don’t want you to forget. She does this in an off-hand fashion, a conversational way. You’re being had. Especially if you think you’re cool. Take me for instance. I think I’m cool. I read Eileen’s poem and her prose all the time and at first they taste like candy I’m enjoying them so much. I want to call up my friends. And then she pushes me into different places I’ve never been before, places I don’t want to be, thinking about things I’ve never thought about before. Places where maybe I don’t belong. She’s a woman, she’s a lesbian, I’m a man, I have a family, grandkids even. How can I understand? I am uncomfortable. Unsure of myself. But there I am listening and watching. It’s like she’s talking to me. That’s okay, she says. Sit there and watch and listen. You’ll be happy you did. And then she’ll say something offhand like that little story about buying the refrigerator. It seems so inconsequential, so silly even, but thinking about it I realize the story is very serious, very real and substantial, like she is, like her poetics (how could it be otherwise) and I understand perfectly. Like...like...

...like this:

Once my girlfriend moved to Paris, like 1986, and I took her to the airport. Then I got on the train and went home. It was a big deal but I wasn’t upset. I walked into the bathroom and began shitting and puking at once. I felt like a worm. Like there was no difference between me—and anything. It was just this force flowing through me. Loss. I must be feeling bad I thought, sitting on the can leaning into the sink.

▲▲▲

The excerpts in this piece are from a commencement address that Eileen gave at Hamshire College, 1998, which you can find on her website here. Billy Sullivan did the portrait of Eileen. You can learn more about Eileen and her work and listen to her read poems at her two websites at www.eileenmyles.com and www.eileenmyles.net

By the way, I wrote this essay and posted it quickly (4/27) to make sure something was up here and Facebook and Newspaper Tree to promote the reading, and so since the reading I found out that I had gotten a number of things wrong. I heard from Debbie Nathan (see comments). I had wrongly assumed that she hadn't voted in the 1992 presidential election, so I've edited the piece here a bit (5/15/09). But doing this reminds me of back in the day, 1992, when Debbie and Morton Naess and their kids Sophy and Willie in the Sunset Heights neighborhood overlooking the Rio Grande and Juarez. Debbie was an important part of the intellectual and political landscape of the city and a good friend. The first non-fiction book that Cinco Puntos Press published was hers--Women and Other Aliens, which is now out of print. It was an important book, and it opened doors for us in so many ways. Someday soon I will write about all of that on our Cinco Puntos Press Blog. But for now I simply want to say that we miss Debbie--her writing, her intellect and especially her friendship--here in El Paso. She and Morton now live in New York City and you can follow her writing on her blog DEBBIE NATHAN: Sex pol, borders, Mexico, Yiddish, my camera. It's good stuff.

May Day! May Day! Poet Eileen Myles in El Paso and Las Cruces

May Day! May Day! Poet Eileen Myles will be in El Paso and Las Cruces next week. She will be reading with me on Thursday, night April 30, 7pm, at the Percolator downtown. and in Las Cruces the next night at 730 pm. I'm honored to reading with Eileen. She's truly one of the most interesting ("savviest" is a word I read) poets writing. I get all her books. And I read them too. The El Paso event is hosted by the Dishonest Mailman Series of the UTEP Writing Department, and the Las Cruces event is hosted by the NMSU writing program. It's so nice that the two writing departments are collaborating these days. It means good things for the writing community along the border. Kudos to Connie Voisine (NMSU) and Rosa Alcala (UTEP) for greasing the wheels so this can happen.




EL PASO: Thursday, April 30th, 7pm
The Percolator Cafe, Stanton Street downtown

LAS CRUCES: Friday, May 1, 730pm
Corbett Center, NMSU, Las Cruces, NM
2pm a talk about writing in the NMSU English Bldg
For more information, call Connie Voisine, (575) 646-2027

Connie Voisine Book of Poems a Finalist for LA Times Book Award

Congratulations to poet and good friend Connie Voisine. Her book book of poems Rare High Meadow of Which I Might Dream (University of Chicago Press) has been chosen as a finalist for the very prestigious Los Angeles Times Book Award. Connie lives 40 miles up the road from us in Las Cruces, NM, and teaches in the Creative Writing Department at NMSU.

She's a wonderful colleague and citizen in our world of letters in piece of the desert along the border. She's full of curiosity about language and poetry and diverse poetics. Her poetry, of course, is remarkable. But for me as a poet her friendship has been invaluable. She's always there to listen to my distracted riffs of whatever oddball idea I have about poetics. She lets me wander. When I was putting together White Panties, Dead Friends & Other Bits and Pieces of Love I was unsure of a number of the poems. I hadn't yet read them many of them aloud to an audience. I asked her to look at the manuscript. Instead, she invited me to join her on Friday afternoons when she and two other poets--Sheila Black and Carmen Geminez-Rosello Smith--got together and shared and critically discussed their work. It was a great time for me. I'm not a workshopper, I've didn't do Creative Writing School, so I was a bit nervous. Especially the old man poet among three women poets. But they, especially Connie, welcomed me and helped greatly to improve the book. I wouldn't have had that experience without Connie's presence, so I thank her and wish her good luck on Friday night. That's when the winners are announced with lots of pomp and ceremony. My fingers are crossed. Good luck, Connie.

(By the way, son John Byrd will be in LA for the book fair representing Cinco Puntos Press. He's in booth #347 in the lawn on top of the staircase this time. Primo real estate we hope. Go by and visit with him. He'll be delighted to see you.)

Below is a poem is cut and pasted off the University of Chicago Press website. Being technically inept, I can't figure out how to put in all the line indents via blogger. Forgive me, Connie. To see the poem properly scattered across the screen, go here.

The Bird is Her Reason

There are some bodies that emerge
into desire as a god
rises from the sea, emotion and
memory hang like dripping clothes—this
want is like
entering that heated red

on the mouth of a Delacroix lion,
stalwart, always that red
which makes
my teeth ache and my skin feel
a hand that has never touched me,
the tree groaning outside becomes
a man who knocks on my bedroom window,
edge of red on gold fur,
the horse, the wild
flip of its head, the rake of claws
across its back, the unfocussed,
swallowed eye.