They’d long forgotten to dance—
mis abuelos,
rigid as the simple white wooden screen door that snapped
open and shut into grandma’s kitchen
Apache and Mexican
they’d both long forgotten to dance—
long forgotten any songs
long forgotten the fire
On Christmas Eve
my grandpa and uncles would build a bonfire
from broken wooden pallets and jagged three-legged chairs or tables,
they’d douse them with lighter fluid and kerosene
tossing lit matches on top of the pile
“Háganse pa ‘trás!” someone would shout at the cluster of cousins
right before the whoosh
stoking angry flames that crackled
a spiral of thick black smoke
turning my face away
Next to the fire
the ice cooler
They’d get drunk
huddled out there in that relentless desert winter
cherry-nosed and clutching ice-cold Coors cans
red-eyed and laughing and then suddenly teary
moving slow and wiping their faces with sooty hands
silently watching the fire as it flickered
I’d observe with my child’s eyes;
the reflection of their wood pallet fire dancing in their watery pupils
and the palpable longing, a knot and twist in their throats
like an embedded thorn
I’ve never seen people watch a fire with as much sadness
as my father’s family
when they were celebrating
Their blaring music—
it sang for them all
blues, oldies, cumbias, rancheras
you could play the radio all night
and
nothing it offered
could re-root you to the land
no pop or rock or blues could ever compare
to the
loss of ritual
Their sacred songs
were just one generation over
they died inside of grandma
who herself only sang in her heart
She’d left Bisbee, Arizona, and never returned
but wherever she lived, she held that land
like a fist
and she smoked and offered tobacco to the earth
until the day she died
I wasn’t born with a song,
have never truly fallen in love with anyone who
did not innately know the silence of poverty
would not bring them to meet my family
unless the sound of music wafting over
all
of
the
unsaid
wasn’t somehow
familiar
I wasn’t born with a song.
I
inherited the rigid—
have been told by elders I should think less
and act more
Inherited the rigid
I
have had to earn
my own gracefulness
I build gentle fires;
copal
tobacco
lavender
rose petals
I wasn’t born with a song
but I have learned
to
sing
This poem first appeared in the Sanctuary Issue (vol. 28, no. 2: Summer 2022).
Gris Muñoz is a frontera poet and storyteller, and a Xicana of Apache descent. She is the author of the bilingual poetry and short story collection Coatlicue Girl, a finalist for the John A. Robertson Award for Best First Book of Poetry by the Texas Institute of Letters, and the cofounder of the digital map and storytelling project, “GeoTestimonios Transfronterizxs,” which aims to record the experiences of women living on the El Paso/Juarez border. Her work has been featured in Rumpus, Bitch Media, and the Smithsonian Latino Center, among others. She is currently writing a biography of acclaimed Los Angeles artist Fabian Debora.
