The Border and Migrant Children on My Mind: New Song and Poems

Melinda Palacio

Somewhere in the Sonoran Desert

While I continue to revise my next novel, I am also writing poems and studying music. At first, my guitar practice was intermittent and relegated to when I remembered a song I wanted to learn. Two years ago, I became serious about learning how to play. That's when Steve bought me the beautiful guitar in the photo. I take it everywhere and practice whenever I get a chance, whether we are on the road or at home. I've given a handful of presentations along with my poetry readings, including earlier this year at Pueblo Community Community College, where I sang the Bird Forgiveness theme song, a song I wrote to accompany my latest poetry book, Bird Forgiveness. I never thought my interest in learning guitar would be accompanied by singing and writing songs. Learning music is a never ending rabbit hole because everything is connected and there is so much to learn. Steve used to urge me to write songs because I am a poet and he saw a natural fit. I was skeptical, thought the idea a joke, and laughed it off. Now that I've written several songs, I'm glad I have added another creative outlet to my repertoire.

Many of my recent poems have been about the situation at the border. I keep thinking about the children separated from their families, abused, and jailed. At this moment, I'll hold off on sharing the poems, but will have a follow up post once they are published. However, I can share the song that I wrote. An example of this rabbit hole is how learning the guitar led to learning how to read music and write it. My working title for my new song is All at the Border or When La Llorona Meets the Devil. I don't think I have to spell out who the devil is in this story.

For me songs are stories. La Bloga's own Michael Sedano calls songs Poems with Wings, a fitting description. This song about the border is my newest song. I wanted to wait to share it, but with the latest indignations which included shooting migrants in the legs and moats with alligators, along with current immigration atrocities, I couldn't wait to dress up the song with a more polished production. Let's just say this is a work in progress and very much a first draft. Last month, I sprained my broken ankle and was disabled for several weeks. The good news about being forced to slow down is that the experience produced new writing and a new song. My friend Lora suggested I write a new song during my convalescence, so this one is dedicated to her. I'm glad I didn't spend the entire time bent out of shape because I couldn't walk. I challenged myself with this latest song. I threw in some difficult bar chords. This isn't an easy song to sing either. The production is a video selfie with me singing and playing into the recorder on my iPad. I have yet to fall into the Garage Band black hole or into the art of movie or video making. If there's interest I will post polished versions of this and other songs.

For more information on why Immigration is such an important topic and why we need to celebrate creative contributions in moments of crisis, read about Reyna Grande's literary metamorphosis in her essay, Immigration and Transformation in World Literature Today. Although I am very familiar with Reyna Grande's work and her story, reading her essay inspired me to share this song. Grande says that as a writer she has learned to see writing the way James Baldwin saw it: as a tool to change the way people see the world. "As an artist, I've learned to hear the call to action, to be deeply aware of when our society is in distress, of when human rights are at risk. I've learned that artists do as Toni Morrison once said: 'We speak. We write. We do language and help our civilization heal'." Reyna Grande's words reminded me that the poems and songs pouring out of me lately are a response to our community's collective trauma.


Here's my latest song: All at the Border.

If video is not playing, view on my Youtube channel.

Chicanonautica: Mysteries of La Llorona

It's warming up in the Valley of Sun -- late Spring, but feeling like Summer. It still cools down as the sun sets, perfect weather for an evening walk through the purple sage under a lemonade sky. My wife and I were on such a walk not long ago, when suddenly we heard sirens, and an armada of emergency vehicles shrieked past us. The next day there was news of a child drowning. La Llorona has struck again.

About a week later, I met a writer from New Mexico, David J. Corwell y Chávez at LepreCon.We had both published in Tales of the Talisman. He had a story, “Susto,” in Día de los Muertos: A Day of the Dead Anthology edited by Anglea Charmaine Craig. He asked if La Llorona was known outside of New Mexico, and told him that my parents knew of her in East L.A.

Corwell y Chávez's story “Susto” brings La Llorona from traditional folktale into the modern horror story, and she thrives in the format, but then she tends to do well no matter where she goes.

I've blogged about La Llorona before, both here and on Mondo Ernesto. I'm amazed at how she's not intimidated by new media and technology. Google and Youtube searches bring an incredible amount of material.

Her origins are a bit hazy. Local Phoenix legends all tend to put her in a nearby body of water, though in East L.A. she took up residence in the trees in a park. In the movie La Venganza de La Llorona, the wrestler Santo and boxer Mantequilla Nápoles discover a Spanish origin. I've always seen a link between her and the Aztec skull-faced disease spirits, and the Cihuateotl, the spirits of women who died in childbirth.

Another mystery centers around my memory of a commercial in which she appeared. It was for Verizon, the “Can You Hear Me Now?” guys showed up and told her that she didn't have to cry in the night for her lost children, they could fix her up with cell phone deal. I only saw it once. Later, when trying to find it on the Internet, I find sites that mention it, others commercials starring La Llorona, but not that Verizon one.

Strange. Like the troubling fact that when it gets warm here in the Valley of the Sun, you hear more about children drowning in swimming pools than you do in California.

Are those more sirens under pinks clouds and a turquoise sky?

Ernest Hogan's story “Death and Dancing in New Las Vegas,” a sequel to “The Rise and Fall of Paco Cohen and the Mariachis of Mars,” is in the July/August 2011 issue of Analog Science Fiction and Fact.