Nuestra Frontera & El Amor de mi Nombre
Poetry about the borderlands and the power of naming by Mónica Sánchez.
Nuestra Frontera—Our Border
They say we have a border
A border that divides souls
Souls that thirst for dreams.
They only see it as a border
one that can solve problems
My eyes have seen the countless fear of
hardworking mothers, fathers, brothers and sisters
Who can’t go back
Don’t go back
Te extraño
Te amo
Dios te bendiga
They don’t want to hear stories
They don’t want to listen
The border will not break the
bonds that places like El Paso, Texas
have been built as a bridge between both worlds.
Your border will not divide everything.
It will open up voices and yells
It will bring about change
Your border will not solve your problems
But only build and build
Strength, strength from within
Your border only divides the South from the North
But not the dreams held on tight
By a child learning to steer a kite
My grandma came right through your border
To pick the fruit you drink your juice with
And take care of your children
Your border broke the boundary between
English-America and created
A space for Spanish class
Your people are learning our language
While my mamá was scolded at her seat
Branded by the Southern Sunshine Belles
Drilling english words into her head
You’ve always had a border
You’ve always wanted to push us out
Your border may clog us but
we burst through and flood your
ears, eyes, and mouth
We are everywhere
Butterflies that you can never shake off
Your border feels our push and yells at you to fall
Your border doesn’t want you!
Your border tells lies
Your border creates chaos
Our border is not visible
But tasted through
the flavors of the Southwest
Our Border is a museum
With 1,989 miles of
Blended cultures, creating new identities that unites our people
Our border from Tijuana to Brownsville
rivers its way, slithering each state,
Recognizing sister cities
Our border is naturally our family
Passing on recipes
Trading chismes and clothes
From every generation
Painting the sky with Spanish
Our border is one that we are proud of
Your border is one that doesn’t exist
Our border will live on to tell our children its history of its bond
Your border will disintegrate into the ground.
Your border is not our border.
El Amor de mi Nombre—The Love of my Name
I’ve always struggled with the pronunciation of my name.
My name that held the voices of my antepasados
Who wore their names with pride.
Where I turned red
At any chance my mamá
Called my name with her
Vibrant Spanish accent
That shakes walls when you hear her voice
My name was the key to my heritage, my home and
I’ve been misplacing it
My name became a white sheet of paper
Uniformed to conform
Isolated from my colored raíces
My name holds the history of New Mexico and the city of El Paso.
The name I know
Sing songs off your tongue
And holds memories of my infant Spanish-speaking self
My name laid out my identity
My name calls me everyday with a desire to be heard
And spoken with dignity
My name is hurting with its pronunciation to be rung
My name is written beneath the brown desert sand
That blows between your hair on a hot afternoon with the sun beaming on your face
I see my name now
It’s flying between your lips
And tickling your ears with its accented ó
A name that traces the ranges of mountains yet chokes at your throat
Like a protective cactus
For years, my name has waited.
It has been hidden under my bed like
The pair of old welcoming slippers you lost
But could never find
I chopped my name off from your tongue
Because I was scared of being different
Now my name and I meet again
Together we cry from our old times-long ago
16 years of heartache and pain
It tells me it has been waiting for me
Deep in my closet craving its dance
Melody and story.
I look at my name with shame,
For not speaking up
When it was hidden and traded
For the english Monica from Friends
My names arms open wide and hugs my soul
Sifting through old memories and forgetting the
Shame.
I received the warmest hug from my name
The hug of generations of family who came before me
The hug that loved me from the beginning
The hug that felt right
My name is dancing in the desert soaking up the sun
My name is bursting with color with relentless passion from within
My name is my home that I run to with pride
My name is Mónica.
