WHAT HAPPENED TO THE STUDENTS?

WHAT HAPPENED WHEN JUAN FELIPE HERRERA

U.S. POET LAUREATE CAME TO THE CAPITOL THEATRE

 “What happened to the students?”

Juan Felipe Herrera,

U.S. Poet Laureate of the United States asks,

speaking to the pueblo in Yakima

at the Capitol Theatre on Monday

in May, after spending the day

with students at the college,

“…and you’re smart, you write

from the heart…” This is a pueblo

right here, and Juan Felipe Herrera,

…they were going to be teachers,

and he asks them about the 43,

What happened? Do you know?

What happened in Ayotzinapa?

We wanted funds for our rural school

…queríamos fondos para nuestra escuela rural.

…to say to the mayor that we wanted funds

for our rural school for teachers

No/somos/desechables//We are/not disposable…

The idea of the Poet Laureate in Yakima.

The reality of his presence at the Capitol,

the community gem.

I leave a Little League game

in the second inning, my grandson pitching,

walk into a row and sit beside a father and son.

Angelica and Alex, mother and son,

walk in and sit with me, minutes later.

We ski together, the three of us.

Yesterday, Angelica brought ensalada de nopales

to our home, a celebration for the young.

Notes on the Assemblage opens

with a three-poem section called Ayotzinapa

and an epigraph from Phil Levine,

beginning, From the ferocity of pig…

for all the dead, for all of us, for the 43 murdered

students with their dream of teaching

to Michael Brown and Officer Liu and Officer Ramos,

naming names, asking, “Why does the street divide

as we pass by…why do we not speak?”

Starting there with context,

our laughter from here on out

connected by tenuous thread to outrage,

Juan Felipe Herrera coaxes each of us

in our seats at the Capitol Theatre to speak

each word after him, 187 reason why Mexicans

can’t cross the border. Our word being,

“because.” Because, because, because,

and now we’ve heard Juan Felipe read

and we’ve responded and we can go online

and read the poem to ourselves out loud

in our living rooms and gardens,

and read the reasons Juan Felipe didn’t get to

last night with the time allowed

and pretend we hear him responding to us,

because, because, because, because, because,

five times in a row like that the way Shakespeare

wrote never never never never never

five times in a row in King Lear…

We can do that. We had so much fun

at the reading, we laughed so much,

and we followed along doing everything

Juan Felipe asked, and now it’s the day after

and looking back, it all seems so much

more serious, the words, the fragments,

and I ask myself, What happened to the man

in the blue derby wrapped with a black ribbon,

the man in the blue plaid shirt and the glasses

with white rims? What happened?

What happened in that moment?

What happened in Ayotzinapa?

We were having so much fun

we almost forget the journey we’ve been on,

traveling like this, with the poet.

After the reading I get two books,

Half of the World in Light, his new & selected,

Lotería Cards and Fortune Poems:

A Book of Lives, and the big book falls on my head

in bed when I can’t read any more

and I don’t know how long I held it after I could no longer read.

“I didn’t want to be condemned to history

or condemned to anything I felt I had to say.”

In the morning I look at my notes,

remembering the students from the night before,

at attention, blossoming in inspiration.

“A round dance, up and down the rows,”

Juan Felipe called it as it happened,

“I want to become you, you want to become me.”

He tells us of his brother Bobby battling cancer

and things he puts in his poems pineapples, corn,

wooden masks, prickly eyes and ocean liners.

“Everybody say, ‘Calabaza skin.’”

Going in and out of poems and talk,

talking, “If we mistreat animals we’re going to find them

a little later in the crossing…I can’t believe how brave

our families are…We were all super bilingual,

we wore bilingual capes. My hair was bilingual.”

Juan Felipe tells us of a poem made

in an unoccupied water tank that police

were using for stolen bikes.

He recounts the joy of our struggles.

“In the middle of the book

we’re going to find yellow flan on our shoulders.”

And finally he says to all,

“Go back and find your seed voices.”

I’m alone with his books on the porch

and open A Book of Lives, fortune poems

from Lotería Cards, linocuts by Artemio Rodríguez

news cuts for our time, and the poems by Juan Felipe.

They break open the chances for today.

I’m gambling now, and  this is my life.

Who thirsts? El Brujo asks. “Here is the water.”

Adam and Eve naked in the corn field.

Adam’s right hand covers his cock,

El Brujo holding up the water,

a row of hands emerging from corn, waving.

The cuts by Rodríguez swing dangerously

close to my eye and Juan Felipe matches them,

“…so many bodies in butter sauce.”

Jim Bodeen

April-May 2016