Llano Vaqueros
Padilla unloads mangy herd of Mexican
cattle in the field.
Meaner, horns long and sharp
for bloody battle, lean from a diet
of prairie weed, looking more
like cattle did years ago
on the plains
than cattle now–
sluggish, pampered globs
stalled year round
for State Fair Judges to admire,
stall-salon dolls, hooves manicured
and polished, hide-hair blow-dried, lips
and lashes waxed.
I ride down the dirt road
on Sunshine (my bay mare)
and she smarts
away from their disdainful glare–
come in, try to lasso us,
try to comb our hair.
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poem by Jimmy Santiago Baca
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Too Much of a Good Thing
Snow’s been melting too soon—
passing the Río Grande every day, I note
water level is high,
all flowing down river.
What happens
when I need to irrigate pastures
in summer
and there is no water?
Farmers get edgy.
Start cursing neighbors under their breath
for using too much water.
Crops stunted,
only one alfalfa cutting
instead of three,
no feed for cows,
no money to buy feed . . .
and then like it happened a few years ago,
Mr. Gonzales goes out
and you hear rifle shots blister
cold morning air,
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poem by Jimmy Santiago Baca
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Main Character
I went to see
How the West Was Won
at the Sunshine Theater.
Five years old,
deep in a plush seat,
light turned off,
bright screen lit up
with MGM roaring lion-
in front of me
a drunk Indian rose,
cursed
the western violins
and hurled his uncapped bagged bottle
of wine
at the rocket roaring to the moon.
His dark angry body
convulsed with his obscene gestures
at the screen,
and then ushers escorted him
up the aisle,
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poem by Jimmy Santiago Baca
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I Am Offering This Poem
I am offering this poem to you,
since I have nothing else to give.
Keep it like a warm coat,
when winter comes to cover you,
or like a pair of thick socks
the cold cannot bite through,
I love you,
I have nothing else to give you,
so it is a pot full of yellow corn
to warm your belly in the winter,
it is a scarf for your head, to wear
over your hair, to tie up around your face,
I love you,
Keep it, treasure it as you would
if you were lost, needing direction,
in the wilderness life becomes when mature;
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poem by Jimmy Santiago Baca
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IX. Part 6
We bought a small house
along the river, in Southside barrio.
A shack I pried boards from the front door to get in-
half-acre of land in the back
heaped with decades of scrap-rusted wire fencing, creosote
railroad ties, tumbleweeds, a mountain of decaying
harvest never picked, weaving itself
slowly into the dirt again.
I gutted the plaster frame house,
nailed, puttied, roofed, plumbed,
poured cement, sheet-rocked, tiled, carpeted,
tore-out, re-set,
piled, burned, cleaned, cemented, installed,
washed and painted,
trimmed, pruned, shoveled, raked,
sawed, hammered, measured, stuccoed,
until,
calloused handed, muscle-firmed, sleek hard bodied,
our small house rose
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poem by Jimmy Santiago Baca
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A Daily Joy to be Alive
No matter how serene things
may be in my life,
how well things are going,
my body and soul
are two cliff peaks
from which a dream of who I can be
falls, and I must learn
to fly again each day,
or die.
Death draws respect
and fear from the living.
Death offers
no false starts. It is not
a referee with a pop-gun
at the startling
of a hundred yard dash.
I do not live to retrieve
or multiply what my father lost
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poem by Jimmy Santiago Baca
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The Day Brushes It's Curtains Aside
to a dark stage.
I lie there awake in my prison bunk,
in the eye-catching silence
of prison night.
I study the moon out my grilled window.
I figure this and that,
not out, just figure, figuring more,
the inner I go, through illimitable tunnels,
roaring great, myself back back back.
I lie still, listening to water drops
clink and pap pap pap
in the shower stall next to my cell.
In that airy place we call the heart,
I move like a magician
in the colorful stage lights of my moods,
my bright dreams, and blue light
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poem by Jimmy Santiago Baca
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Choices
An acquaintance at Los Alamos Labs
who engineers weapons
black x’d a mark where I live
on his office map.
Star-wars humor….
He exchanged muddy boots
and patched jeans
for a white intern’s coat
and black polished shoes.
A month ago, after butchering a gouged bull,
we stood on a pasture hill,
and he wondered with pained features
where money would come from
to finish his shed, plan alfalfa,
and fix his tractor.
Now his fingers
yank horsetail grass
he crimps herringbone tail-seed
between teeth, and grits out words,
“Om gonna buy another tractor
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poem by Jimmy Santiago Baca
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It would be neat if with the New Year
for Miguel
It would be neat if with the New Year
I could leave my loneliness behind with the old year.
My leathery loneliness an old pair of work boots
my dog vigorously head-shakes back and forth in its jaws,
chews on for hours every day in my front yard—
rain, sun, snow, or wind
in bare feet, pondering my poem,
I’d look out my window and see that dirty pair of boots in the yard.
But my happiness depends so much on wearing those boots.
At the end of my day
while I’m in a chair listening to a Mexican corrido
I stare at my boots appreciating:
all the wrong roads we’ve taken, all the drug and whiskey houses
we’ve visited, and as the Mexican singer wails his pain,
I smile at my boots, understanding every note in his voice,
and strangers, when they see my boots rocking back and forth on my
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poem by Jimmy Santiago Baca
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As Children Know
Elm branches radiate green heat,
blackbirds stiffly strut across fields.
Beneath bedroom wood floor, I feel earth—
bread in an oven that slowly swells,
simmering my Navajo blanket thread-crust
as white-feathered and corn-tasseled
Corn Dancers rise in a line, follow my calf,
vanish in a rumple and surface at my knee-cliff,
chanting. Wearing shagged buffalo headgear,
Buffalo Dancer chases Deer Woman across
Sleeping Leg mountain. Branches of wild rose
trees rattle seeds. Deer Woman fades into hills
of beige background. Red Bird
of my heart thrashes wildly after her.
What a stupid man I have been!
How good to let imagination go,
step over worrisome events,
those hacked logs
tumbled about
in the driveway.
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poem by Jimmy Santiago Baca
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