JUANA, NIXORA
Juana, the inspiration for this poem, is listed in the mission documents of San Ignacio (just North of Magdalena de Kino, Sonora, Mexico) as Criada, a term which refers variously to a paid servant, foster child, and often to the Nijoras, child captives of warring indigenous groups, who were sold into wealthy households during the Spanish colonial period. Juana was born into the Seri tribe and succumbed to smallpox in April or May of 1764, in the household of Captain Juan Tomas de Beldarrain & Maria Teresa Prudhom Butron y Mujica, the poet’s 7th Great-Grandparents.
Maybe I’m an immigrant maybe I never was
any leveled hacienda’s
naked-taloned child
of the earth,
fleck of my skin who feeds
on ranch raid dust,
my own austere silk
graveside flowers of night
pasture snowing in the wake
of this Juana still a girl,
dragging her iron
in the wash,
overnight road
kicked up come morning
by some mules
Juana fled from the book
at Mission San Ignacio—
diary
a pervert keeps of names—
redacted, twisted up
by smoldering from underneath
the foot of the holy water basin,
toward the sound a torch cuts the Sea
of Cortez with,
to her sea,
Mother, is there any pulling in
of reins now to remember you,
where do I
file a claim
for one convulsion
swaddled like a tourniquet
comfortless
where
TYPO
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