WEBVTT

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So in the series of
poems that come after,

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there are a series of
research-based poems

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about the history of
lynchings against Mexican

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and Mexican-Americans in the
Southwest following the Treaty

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of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848.

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One of the first people to
be lynched in California

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was Josefa Segovia,
who for many years

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was also known as Juana,
who simply had the audacity

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to own property
and defend herself

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shortly after the 4th of July,
and what follows is this poem.

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La Sirena, a Mexican lynching
after the hanging death

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of Josefa Segovia, Danville,
California, July 5th, 1851.

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Guilt is not guilty, is
not free, is not noose,

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is not not jury, is not
self, is not a defense,

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is not judge, is not
verdict, is not appeal,

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is not the ways in
which a miner pans

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and pans and pans and
pans and pans and pans

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until a flick appears.

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Eventually, something
must be found.

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Eventually, someone must let
the blade taste to make, tear,

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a seam, a seam uncooked as the
point in which a man spills

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red from the white heat
glowing and heaving

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until she stops him, until
the towns claims capital,

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claims siren.

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Josefa is not Juana,
is not Juanita,

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is not an assembled bridge
of independence atop the Yuba

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river now court,
now kangaroo, now

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noose and song left to walk
through, left to float above,

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left to the Treaty
of Guadalupe Hidalgo

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and how all men are created
equal until a border born,

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and there is money to be made
until a man is not labor,

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is not woman, is not
Mexican, is not white,

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is not the moment a
town stops to watch

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a person face the crowd and
wrap a rope around the neck,

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claims leap.

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In the air, flight
is real, is probable,

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is the moment of
weightlessness before the snap,

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before the eye decides to
entangle the dark, the other,

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the unknown, before
the river parts,

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and she kicks and
kicks below until they

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say she is consumed until
they accept silences,

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until she dies with a
deep breath of water,

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and the people accept her
body thrashes beneath surface.

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But this is not a burial,
this is a defiance, a kicking,

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singing, kicking,
singing, chant.

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