So in the series of poems that come after,
there are a series of research-based poems
about the history of lynchings against Mexican
and Mexican-Americans in the Southwest following the Treaty
of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848.
One of the first people to be lynched in California
was Josefa Segovia, who for many years
was also known as Juana, who simply had the audacity
to own property and defend herself
shortly after the 4th of July, and what follows is this poem.
La Sirena, a Mexican lynching after the hanging death
of Josefa Segovia, Danville, California, July 5th, 1851.
Guilt is not guilty, is not free, is not noose,
is not not jury, is not self, is not a defense,
is not judge, is not verdict, is not appeal,
is not the ways in which a miner pans
and pans and pans and pans and pans and pans
until a flick appears.
Eventually, something must be found.
Eventually, someone must let the blade taste to make, tear,
a seam, a seam uncooked as the point in which a man spills
red from the white heat glowing and heaving
until she stops him, until the towns claims capital,
claims siren.
Josefa is not Juana, is not Juanita,
is not an assembled bridge of independence atop the Yuba
river now court, now kangaroo, now
noose and song left to walk through, left to float above,
left to the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo
and how all men are created equal until a border born,
and there is money to be made until a man is not labor,
is not woman, is not Mexican, is not white,
is not the moment a town stops to watch
a person face the crowd and wrap a rope around the neck,
claims leap.
In the air, flight is real, is probable,
is the moment of weightlessness before the snap,
before the eye decides to entangle the dark, the other,
the unknown, before the river parts,
and she kicks and kicks below until they
say she is consumed until they accept silences,
until she dies with a deep breath of water,
and the people accept her body thrashes beneath surface.
But this is not a burial, this is a defiance, a kicking,
singing, kicking, singing, chant.