I do a lot of code switching in the work.
I shuttle back and forth from English and Spanish.
And the English is never put it--
and the Spanish is never put it in context, italicized,
there's no glossary at the back of the book.
It's an aesthetic and also a political stance.
I refuse to-- language is one way we see the world,
and I refuse to privilege one way over the other.
This poem I want to read for the Tucson high school district,
for the Mexican-American students who have been--
whose classes have been taken away from them.
And this poem is also for all those Dreamers
across the United States, those undocumented
young men and women who have shown more bravery
the past year that I have ever have.
"In Colorado, my father scoured and stacked
dishes in a Tex-Mex restaurant.
His co-workers, unable to utter his name, renamed him jalapeno.
If I ask for a goldfish, he spits a glob of phlegm
into a jar of water.
The silver letters on his black belt spell "sangrón."
Once, borracho, at dinner he said, Jesus was not a snowman.
Arriba Durango.
Arriba Orizaba.
Packed into a car trunk, he was smuggled into the states--
frijolero, greaser.
In Tucson, he branded cattle.
He slept in a stable, the horse blankets oddly fragrant-- wood
smoke, lilac.
He's an illegal.
I'm an illegal American.
Once in a grove of saguaro, at dusk, I slept next to him.
I woke with a thumb in my mouth.
¿No qué no tronabas pistolita?
He learned English by listening to the radio.
The first four words he memorized--
"In God We Trust."
The fifth-- percolate.
Again and again, I borrow his clothes.
He calls me scarecrow.
In Oregon, he picked apples--
Braeburn, Jonagold, Cameo.
Nightly, to entertain his cuates around a campfire,
he strummed a guitarra, sang corridos.
Arriba Durango.
Arriba Orizaba.
Packed into a car trunk, he was smuggled into the States--
greaser, beaner.
Once, borracho, at breakfast, he said,
the heart can only be broken once, like a window.
¡No mames!
His favorite belt buckle--
an águila perched on a nopal.
If he laughs out loud, his hands tremble.
Bugs Bunny wants to deport him.
Cesar Chavez wants to deport him.
When I walk through the desert, I wear his shirt.
The gaze of the moon stitches the buttons of his shirt
to my skin.
The snake hisses.
The snake is torn."