Poet Hector Son Of Hector reads his poem "Notes from the library."
Notes from the library
So graft this cactus pad onto my forehead
for I was not born with it.
I’m the wrong kind of Mexican.
Indoctrinated early with American folklore
gunpowder remnants rest on my fingertips.
That smoky smell is forever in my hair.
When pyramids are built above pyramids
parallel lines show the old support the new
but when a cathedral’s foundation is that
of a razed pyramid
I have to scrape the earth for allusions
dig through library books with foreign lenses
read what the neighbors wrote
live with unanswered questions
dirty fingernails
and anthropological conclusions.
The wall that separates me from then
is the wall I have to look over:
mirages on the horizon
distorted reflections
like a garage-sale textbook
with wet, broken,
and missing pages.
Born north of the border
I am still less Mexican
than the light skinned son of Bulgarians
who fled warfare
and grew up on the corner
of my father’s city,
my mother’s pueblo.
Cut off from indigenous knowledge
full of scars that always itch
I am the symptom of a failed revolution
and I've had to keep laboring for this:
thorns from nopales and pelos de elote stitch
Mestizo across my forehead.