Llantos de La Llorona:
by Pat Mora |
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Every family has one. Even as a child, I'd hide and cry, ay, ay, ay, when people sneered at my parents as if they were below them in some hole of quivering vermin. Oye: Agua santa can come from our eyes. Early the whispers begin, persistent as the buzz of litanies. Flickering tongues say my mother X–tabai and I, ay, ay, ay, though beautiful as flaming sunsets, are dangerous. We start fires in the heart, and below the heart. Nights we wander near sighing rivers and streams, our hair and voices rising. Oye: Sing to confuse the gossips. We hide, they say, in evening's thickshadows, convert ourselves into trees, ceibas perhaps, disguise our voices to sound like wives, ay, ay, ay, alter ourselves to lure innocence, our hair and limbs tangling round and round, like snakes hugging men to death. Oye: Know your own strength. After the Spaniard comes, rumor says I begin having babies, ay, ay, ay, conceptions, remember? I nestle them here when they finish nursing. My mother X–tabai strokes their round heads, soft as a ball of feathers. We whisper cuentos, sing rru–rru lullabies. Oye: Children are not bastards though sometimes their fathers are. They say I drown the babies, bend down with them heavy in my arms, rru–rru release them and their gur– glings into night water, or do I, ay, ay, ay, begin to like the feel of a dagger, long and thin, one day plunge the tongue into those corazoncitos to spare them other piquetitos, Maybe I grow the dagger gleaming like my nails in the moonlight. Oye: Be resourceful. Grow what you need. Perhaps I want to hurt the father who in his story finds a woman who makes his parents smile, fair like every princess, probably thinner and ay, ay, ay, silent too, and in those days, I'm sure a virgin, immaculate. Oye: Encourage any man looking for a virgin vessel to bear his own child. The story is a watery or bloody mess and says I wander wailing ay, ay, ay, near water, por las orillas del río, for the souls I've lost, "Hijas mías" I call like Malinche, mad woman, madbad ghostwoman roaming the dark. Oye: Sometimes raising the voice does get attention. Not all stabbings at the truth are fatal, as women will attest, you daughters of a long line of celestial and earthly women, knowers of serpent rumors, altars, silence, suppressed sighs. Don't think I wail every night. I'm a mother, not a martyr. But try it. I wear a gown, white, flowing for effect and walk by water. Desert women know about survival. Join me sometime for there's much to bewail, everywhere frail, lost souls. We'll cry, ay, ay, ay. Oye: Never underestimate the power of the voice. | ||||||||
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