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Hernán Cortés said let there light & the temple of Huitzilopochtli burned
he said let there be a river of gold ripped from the skin of antique gods & Spanish spread
like wildfire like a plague of locust & there’s the story of half my blood’s
blood they awoke one day to an origin half-burning half-written in Spanish
language, after all, is inherited like history continually rewritten
by the sharpest sword my family determined to survive the blade travelled north
until they no longer recognized the sound of their own footsteps
Spanish is the smoke lining the trail the roadmap they’ve carried across countries
stacked atop countries Spanish is the house they built out of gravestones
a grayrot alchemy of course they did not wish their children’s children to mourn
the meadow our teeth grew from so I was taught English like a sharpened edge
like if I speak this way I can clean cut the distance between what my family was
& all the futures they’ve imagined for me but I know to trade Spanish for English
is to trade one hatchet for another please do not misunderstand me I am grateful
I have a voice at all what a gift it is to dictate how I am remembered
it’s just when I say my name for all it has inherited my lungs fill with soot I inhale
& am cooked alive by light if I am anything I am the afterglow of ash
that refuses to remain ash a child waiting outside a temple praying for the blood
to wash out of his clothes what future can I carve for myself knowing what I do
not know can I be more than the cinder that gifted me this tongue
is gift the right word or is it curse cure I wish I knew the names of every ancestor
that burned so that I could forget their names before learning them I wish
it were as easy as forgiveness as searching for smoke or following the border
only to find a jeweled river babbling untouched by blood
—
Brandon Melendez is a Mexican-American poet & the author of ‘Gold That Frames The Mirror’ (Write Bloody 2019). He is a National Poetry Slam finalist and two-time Berkeley Grand Slam Champion. A recipient of the the 2018 Djanikian Scholarship from The Adroit Journal, and the 2018 Academy of American Poets Award, his poems are in or forthcoming in Black Warrior Review, Muzzle Magazine, Ninth Letter, The Journal, Sixth Finch, and elsewhere. He is currently an MFA candidate at Emerson College.