Hispanic Heritage Month
As Hispanic Heritage Month comes to a close we reflect on themes of family and community, featuring pieces by James K. Zimmerman, Gilbert Arzola, and Mark Harris.
TRANSCRIPT
Hispanic Heritage Month is observed each year from mid-September to mid-October. It’s an opportunity to celebrate the rich cultures, histories, contributions, and achievements of Hispanic and Latin American communities. On this episode of Burning Bright, some stories about how and why people from Latin American countries ended up in the United States.
James K. Zimmerman said that during a 36-year civil war in Guatemala, several hundred thousand people were killed or “disappeared,” massacred by drunken soldiers; many were buried in mass graves without identification. Recently, he said, the government has had remains exhumed and identified, and some have been returned to their families for proper burial. Here’s his poem “Juana Reunites with Her Family.”
Santiago Atitlán, Guatemala
now he would be eighty-four
my brother, my Juan, my brother
they took him in the war, left him
gone on the road, gone in a water
ditch full of blood, don’t know
don’t know if they took him
with brain bullet or machete heart
they beat my mother, ninety years
in this place, when she came to ask
for him, made her gone too
disappear, don’t know where
now they come, not with guns
in hands, no blades in belts, no fists
to beat me, beat my mother, make
my brother, make my mother gone
they swirl a stick of cotton in
my cheek, on my tongue, seek
my brother, my mother in me
find their blood in my blood
spit in my spit, my mother
my brother, my Juan, find them
in bodies torn from earth, in the road
the water ditch, place them in boxes
cut from boards of maquilishuat
bury them among the children
ones who starved, ones whose bodies
went away, so thin, so small, so full
of thirst for mother, for water
then I will set sacred stones in the earth
at my brother’s head, my mother’s heart
chant to Pachamama, to wind, to sky
kneel at the elders’ feet, pray, weep
with the ancestors for my mother
my brother, my Juan
I will not let them disappear again
From Passager’s 2019 Poetry Contest issue, James K. Zimmerman’s “Juana Reunites With Her Family.”
This isn’t about Hispanic Heritage Month, but it’s about something you won’t want to miss. Passager’s new issue, the 2026 Poetry Contest issue, just hit the stands, so to speak. We’re going to celebrate its publication with a Zoom reading featuring several poets from this issue. It’s Sunday, November 15th 2:00 Eastern time. You can register for the Zoom on Passager’s web site.
Gilbert Arzola was raised in Indiana, one generation removed from the back of a migrant truck, he says. He was the 2019 winner of the Passager Poetry Contest. From his book Prayers of Little Consequence, Gil’s poem “In the Fields.”
There was work to do so the Mexicans came. In 1964
I was twelve and it was Mexicans and poor white kids
in soiled shirts and torn blue jeans that pulled at weeds
like they were yanking at ropes. They made piles of things
and moved the pipes to irrigate the fields. The days were
hotter then and lasted longer. By midday the cool night
and morning dew melted away like butter left on kitchen
tables. We stood things then. We stood the heat and being
hungry. We stood the vacant stares of passengers in cars
passing by headed to town. We stood the pain in our
shoulders that you couldn’t wish away. We stood things not
because we were brave or strong but because there was no
choice. Sometimes if it hadn’t rained for days, the dust rose
with each breeze and each step and covered your arms like
a thin sheet and wrapped around your neck as if the hands
of god were choking you. It itched like a thousand insect
bites. But you didn’t scratch the itch. The old ones told you
when you came into the fields that scratching only made it
worse. It was best just to stand it.
“In the Fields,” Gilbert Arzola.
Mark Harris wrote a wonderful story “Chicken Soup” for Passager’s Winter 2021 issue. I only have time to read a few excerpts.
At 88, Rose has lived long enough. Amelia wonders how someone who’s lived so long, and with so much money, has turned out to be such a miserable vieja. Amelia has been attending to Rose three months now – five days a week, from eight in the morning to six at night – and finds her as hard-shelled and sharp-clawed as an armadillo…
Although she no longer drives the aged Cadillac, a car with almost as much mileage as her owner, Rose still gives directions. “Left. Turn left here.”
Amelia ignores the order and continues straight.
“Left! I said left. You’re going the wrong way.”
“No señora, this fastest,” Amelia replies.
“This is not the fastest. It is the slowest! I don’t know how they ever gave you a license.”
Amelia does not, in fact, have a driver’s license, though she didn’t reveal that to Rose’s son who hired her, because it was clear that driving was an essential part of the job. Undocumented, with a false ID bought for $100 on Alvarado Street, Amelia avoids all government offices. She knows the danger of an accident, or any traffic violation that might involve police; so she drives carefully, and very, very slowly…
Arnold had told Amelia. “Letting my mother drive is like being an accessory to a crime you know is going to happen. I had to take her license away before she killed someone,” the abogado said in his halting Spanish when he flew from San Francisco to Los Angeles to find a caretaker for his mother. Rose was a “mujer difícil,” he explained, and age hadn’t improved her disposition.
Although he didn’t say, Amelia guessed that Rose’s aides didn’t last long.
Excerpts from Mark Harris’s story “Chicken Soup.” Mark said he based the character Amelia on one of the many women from El Salvador he came to know in researching a film about undocumented domestic workers.
At the start of this podcast, I read James K. Zimmerman’s poem “Juana Reunites with Her Family” from Passager’s 2019 Poetry Contest issue. James also wrote a book, Little Miracles.
To buy Little Miracles or Gilbert Arzola’s book Prayers of Little Consequence, subscribe to, donate to, or learn more about Passager and its commitment to older writers, visit passagerbooks.com.
Passager offers a 25% discount on the books and journal issues featured here on Burning Bright. Visit our website to see what’s on sale this week.
For Christine, Rosanne, Mary, Johnny, and the rest of the Passager staff, I’m Jon Shorr.
Due to the limitations of online publishing, poems may not appear in their original formatting.
