WEBVTT

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I'm going to read one poem from
my first full collection which

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is A Tongue in the
Mouth of the Dying.

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And this poem is called
"Sundays After Breakfast:

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a Lesson in Speech."

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But I was raised on
a property very south

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San Antonio, that was part of
the [? Dionicio ?] land grant.

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And Gumecindo Martinez
Guerrero, my grandfather,

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whom my second
collection was named for,

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is part of the Martinez
of the Martinez.

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Anyway Sundays after
breakfast, after we

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would eat our barbacoa-- you
all have barbacoa here, right?

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Yeah.

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So we would have our
barbacoa and Big Red.

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You don't have that here.

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That's soda that
we have in Texas.

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Barbacoa and Big Red.

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But after we would have
our barbacoa and Big Red,

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we would sit on the porch and
grandpa would tell stories.

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And so those-- I have a
couple of poems called

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"Sundays After Breakfast."

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This one's a "Lesson in Speech."

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"There were no names
for men like that.

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Gringos who stitched
up their rules.

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Their white garb laced
snug the issues of the day.

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Lord didn't make us to mix
with them folk, they said.

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But God's got nothing to do
with the Black boys dumped still

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alive into a restless river.

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God's got nothing to do with
having to tell their mamas.

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That bloody water ran through
each dark vein across Texas.

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Fed the Gulf, all its
Brown skinned people.

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This, grandpa could
name: los cuerpos--

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Bodies swaying above the
cotton like sheets on a line.

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No importaba que no eras
negro, pero que no eras gringo.

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No, it didn't matter that you
weren't Black, grandpa says.

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Pushing himself from the table.

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But that you weren't white.

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He lived his life this way.

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Silent like every man after him.

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Opening his mouth only to eat.

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Holding his head above the
cotton between white men

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and Black boys."

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