JANUARY 28, 1918

Porvenir, Texas

Myth: In the Book of America, the desert cracked open once

the inquisitors coveted the questioned’s land. Livestock

fell diseased when the clamorous mob appeared

at the townspeople’s doors. Night-woven wings eclipsed

logic. That the mob visited twice, both times

unblinking stars measle-ing the sky, both times “prisoners”

taken. After the first taking, the “prisoners” returned.

After the second, torn from the Book of America,

the mob killed fifteen men and boys. And the irrigated water

from the Rio Grande leapt up, rejected the bloodied earth.

The crops dropped to the ground and crawled into

a decaying sleep. One hundred forty survivors packed their eggs and books

and escaped to Mexico. When they crossed the river, they turned

into hues of blue, the sound of an owl unspooling its prey.

Eutimio Gonzales (37), Longino Flores (44), Alberto García (35)

To poeticize could be and often is interpreted as “to make beautiful.”

What is the border between tragedy and beauty?

The tragedy is the Porvenir Massacre of 1918.

What now of beauty?

To poeticize could mean to view more deeply and invest in the risk of what is found, as in “to speculate.”

Speculate

Latin

specere

(to look)

specula

(watchtower)

speculari

→speculat-

(observed from a vantage point)

speculate

late sixteenth century

Spectacle

Latin

specere

(to look)

spectare

→spectaculum

(a public show)

Old French

spectacle

Middle English

To make, from one’s sight, a performance of what has been seen or a re-creation of the act of seeing.

Where to see means “to imagine.” To write truth or write torture?

With generosity or with a torch lit under history’s feet?

One could be speculative, as in:

The cavalry’s horses bow in the afterbirth

of clamor, blood in their hoofprints’ bowls,

blood imitating bush shade and widow skirt, blood

veining desert sand down the spiral staircase

of its seeping. And who descends the decline, soft grave,

footprints breeze-wiped from the map? Blood

in the mesquite, pyrrhuloxia singing bloodsong bush

to bush, a red flock burning the bush. Let God speak

of bullets painted fifteen shades of red and elders

taking turns returning their sleep to hollow houses

housing wind in their windowless skulls—

but in service to whom or what? A hoof

of the beast of beauty imprinted on the page,

but beauty’s hide hides the history.

Viviano Herrera (23), Pedro Jiménez (25), Serapio Jiménez (25)

Fiction: Fifteen men and boys of Mexican descent visited me in a dream on the anniversary of their murders.

Fact: Avoiding the constant onslaught of media concerned with a presidential candidate incapable of correctly pronouncing Iran, I made my way to Instagram in search of solace and found, instead, a photograph on the Zinn Education Project of Longino Flores, a resident of Porvenir and victim of the massacre. In the photo, he is surrounded by family.