Migraciones: A Triptych
Triptych I: Apologetic
Bandidos
There is something
innocent about the
apologetic bandido,
that over-told story of
machismo.
It’s the desire to return
people to earlier forms,
to nudge him gently with a
broom into the past
Boy fooling his mother
discovers she’d never love
him
the way she loved
America:
without a mask.
His mother is America. All
of it.
How funny that this truth
can never be proven?
Proof is seven years,
seventy years, seven
hundred, the migrations
apartment numbers,
countries, languages
bandido’s wasteful life
spent on the backs of stars,
the thrum of trains wait
and wait for that cunning
temptress
he recites her enchantment
sabes volar sabes volar
The neck of the cactus
blossoms
pink petals now glowing
blue
and we the high aimless
are shadows
forever flying
toward America, under
moonlight,
over broken glass. We are
bleeding hypnotized
elation is the food of
suffering
the thrum of the train
promises,
again and again.
The revolution they could
hear
The gunshots as they were
crossing
the Rio Grande river
America hammers his face
on a boat in the gulf
after feeding him whip
cream filled with ants.
America takes him to a
store where screams echo
and she screams too.
From afar, she looked just
like a lady bug on an apple
stem.
She looked like good luck.
Triptych II: Phoenix
Metro News
What level do you have?
What is your tolerance for
heat?
She was not dying
just burning
the skin on
her legs
fell off
immediately
when touched.
she smelled of ash and
burned hair.
the woman was trying
to phoenix herself,
the news anchor told me
over the thrum of the train
I watched from behind
my black shades
as we
licked our dripping
ice cream cones
under a large
palm tree.
Triptych III:
Apoplectic Bandidos
My dad’s friend, Mr.
Cuevas
mows the lawn, cuts trees
in 100 degree weather.
He asks for no pay as long
as he can drink
my dad’s beer while he
works.
I guess that’s what it’s like
to need a drink, to have no
true friend,
to have no true country.
Mini-interview with Yvette Saenz
HFR: Can you share a moment that has shaped you as a writer (or continues to)?
YS: Reading “Annabel Lee” by Edgar Allan Poe and Stephen King’s book of short stories, Night Shift; listening to my sister read Kathleen Krull’s Lives of the Artists when I was a child; encountering Shakespeare’s poetry in my brother’s college textbook and memorizing “Sonnet 18” because it struck me as the most perfect thing ever written; watching my mom draw; hearing my dad play trumpet; sitting with my abuela in the backyard. Cool books and my cool family inspire me to write.
HFR: What are you reading?
YS: I just finished reading The Rule That Liberates by Richard Moore, which I enjoyed. I’m starting A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens.
HFR: Can you tell us what prompted “Migraciones: A Triptych”?
YS: It’s an ekphrastic poem. I was working with two very gifted visual artists, Vanessa Saavedra and Andrés Caballero, on a piece for a collaborative art exhibit at University of Arizona. They decided to create a three-panel piece, or a triptych. Their amazing artwork was the inspiration for my poem. I had a very short time frame to send the poem for the exhibit, so, from many pages of old poetry, I put together this poem.
HFR: What’s next? What are you working on?
YS: Diversifying my portfolio. A little bit of everything—poems, stories, essays.
HFR: Take the floor. Be political. Be fanatical. Be anything. What do you want to share?
YS: Having a job that has (almost) nothing to do with writing has freed me creatively. When I was younger, I thought that I needed some committee’s approval to be a writer, and this necessitated having a job in the literary world. But, for me, I’ve found the situation to be the opposite. I write much more now because I know that all I need is pen and paper.
Originally from Alice, Texas, Yvette Saenz is a teacher who lives in the desert with her husband. More of her writing can be found at The Rising Phoenix Review, Memory Vending Machine, and in the Red Sands Writers Circle poetry anthology, What is This? A Conversation Between 10 Poets.
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