My House Is Your House (Mi Casa Es Tu Casa)

Author(s): Natalia Toledo Paz, Aura Estrada and Francisco Goldman

Source: BOMB, No. 98, The Americas Issue: Border Crossing: Mexico & the U.S. (Winter,
2007), p. 100
Published by: New Art Publications
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40427399
Accessed: 06-06-2017 16:07 UTC

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted
digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about
JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at
http://about.jstor.org/terms

New Art Publications is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to BOMB

This content downloaded from 132.248.90.74 on Tue, 06 Jun 2017 16:07:51 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
 fkzfahh
I was abandoned

alongside a crab filled with red ants

later they were powder to make paint with nopal juice.
On the table scratched by the gouger: xilographia furrowing the silence
upon bilingual and brown skins.
Back then there was distance
Natalia Toledo Paz And geography didn't benefit the word.
Translated by Aura Estrada and Francisco Goldman Beneath the tiger's hill
I searched for a treasure to tame fear
Natalia Toledo Paz lives and works in Juchitn, Oaxaca, and an igneous liquid erased from my left eye
Mexico. Internationally recognized for her work as a
all the flowers I've seen in May.
bilingual poet, she writes in both Spanish and Zapotee,
the native language of the state of Oaxaca. She has
been awarded multiple fellowships for her poetry and
her study of indigenous languages, including two by the
National Foundation for Arts and Culture in Mexico. She
has published six books of poetry, including Gui Yaas
(Black Olive), which received the Nezahualcyotl Award
for Literature in 2004, Mexico's only national award for
contemporary indigenous literature. ^jAuujtk <lMti
Francisco Goldman's award-winning novels include The I have a sepia photo
Long Night of White Chickens (Grove Press, 1992) and The with watery eyes and a flower between the lips
Divine Husband (Atlantic Monthly, 2004).
someone came into this photo

Aura Estrada's fiction and nonfiction have appeared in and tore out the flower by the roots
Let res Libres, Book forum, Words Without Borders, and the
anthology El gringo a travs d el espejo.

Cfa. Q. M (ml exujjL tL tub emu)

Red flowers, enormous and beautiful, A Greek key pattern is woven over your head
grew from my hands, Death is a cricket that keeps watch
as if to ward off the fear of being robbed of all certainty. From a leaf over your door.
I walked on my hands
and buried my body where there was mud
and my eyes filled with fine sand.
They called me the waterlily girl
because my roots were the water's surface.
But I was also bitten by a snake mating in the stream
and was blinded, I was Tiresias traveling his story without a cane.
What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow out of this strong rubbish?
maybe I'll be the last branch that speaks Zapotee
my children will have to whistle their language
and they'll be homeless birds in the jungle of forgetting.
In all seasons I am in the south

a rusted ship dreamed by my black jicaco eyes:

when I smell my land I'll go, to dance a song alone beneath woven branches,
to eat two things, I'll go.
I'll cross the plaza, the North wind won't stop me, I'll get there on time
to hug my grandmother before the last star falls.
I'll be the girl again who wears a yellow petal in her right eyelid,
the girl who cries the milk of flowers
1 to cure my eyes, I'll go.
0

This content downloaded from 132.248.90.74 on Tue, 06 Jun 2017 16:07:51 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms