He was born with no shoes. Breastfed with no shoes. Took his first bath with no shoes. When he
began to crawl, he had no shoes. When he took his first steps, he had no shoes. No shoes, were his first
words. And at night, as he listened to the cascade of waterfalls, he had no shoes. He slept with no shoes.
He dreamt that night and every night with no shoes. As the sun rose, he had no shoes. He was lonely with no shoes. He was hungry with no shoes. When his brother was born and he fed him what little
he had to eat, he had no shoes. When he began to work, he cut sugarcane with no shoes.
When his father told him he was not his son, he had no shoes. When his father ran him from their home, and he ran through the jungle, he had no shoes. When he hid in the trees, he had no shoes.
When he heard his mother calling, he had no shoes. On his first day of school, he had no shoes. He
didn’t think twice about it until another student asked him, why are you barefoot? The next day and every
day after, he felt ashamed with no shoes.
SIN ZAPATOS (1948)
Ciudad Vallez, San Luis Potosi
◆
THOSE FLOWERS
• Follow the sources.
I search through hundreds of documents: birth certificates: baptismal records: marriage licenses:
church records: death certificates: to find who you are: who we are: where we are: where we’ve been:
where we’ve come from: what we’ve come through:
• What sources can you trust?
I hunch over the good light:
squint & distance documents
:days: months: years: decipher
details: I don’t know I can trust:
19th century script: colloquialisms
:regional procedure: 1851 or 1857:
a or an o: your name misspelled:
procerpina: proserpina: the one:
I mourn. the other: I remember:
• What is your relationship to this research?
I struggle to understand
:how history speaks
days: months: years:
of strangers: stranger places:
:their names in my mouth like foil
• What gaps exist? What silences?
[no results found] [400 Bad Request] [no entries found]
[503 Service Unavailable] [refine search] [502 Bad Gate-way]
• What variables have you not considered?
Los documentos
que busca: son
demasiado viejos:
nuestros archivos
solo datan a 1920:
si desea acceder a
esos documentos:
deberá ir al
archivo [ ]:
en la cuidad: [
]: estás en el
lugar equivocado
• What is your relationship to this research?
you: alive: the early morning haloing: from one side: to the other: until we: meet: in light:
• What gaps exist? What silences?
Twenty years after your passing: I read you:
:inside a repurposed 5 subject:
spiral bound notebook:
:I can’t be certain the year
[xxxxxxxxxxxxx]:
:[xxxxxxxxxxxxx]
you put pen to paper:
:how long it took to handwrite:
an entire lifetime:
:inside 11in x 8½in
struggled print:
scrawled:
blue ink, black ink
:41 college-ruled pages
• What sources can contribute?
every photograph: of you: I find: I collect it: sort it: match it: to
place: match to year: a page number: peer through the loop: to
decipher: I stare: into: your eyes: so long: you begin to fade: into
the stacks of photos: you: and you: and you: and you: the myriad
versions: of meaning: repeated until meaning: is lost: abuelita:
abuelita: abuelita: abuelita: so many: possibilities: left behind:
• What sources can contribute?
artifacts: possible: postcards: possible: ticket stubs: possible: wedding cake: possible: automobiles:
possible: lies: possible: metaphor: possible: albums: possible: lyrics: possible: letters: possible: song
titles: possible: names: possible: parents: possible: prayer cards: possible: translations: possible: a
crucifix: possible: a map: possible: a name: possible: a child: possible: a gift: possible: a two-dollar
bill: possible: a recipe cards: possible: a carrot cake: possible: a love: possible: a life: possible: a love
story: possible: alive: possible: a love: possible: regret: possible: a denial: possible: a confession:
• What gaps exist? What silences?
how much do you remember: how much can you
trust that memory: what is memory: what is made
up: when did you first make believe: imagine: when
did you know: how did you trust yourself to tell
your story: when did it happen: how long ago was
it: why does it feel fresh still: is this trauma: a close
call: a retelling: a rumor: did you make it up along
the way: exaggerate facts: did you call yourself out
on it: did you remember: didn’t you: how much did
you remember: are we back at the beginning:
• What sources can you trust?
not that one:
that one there:
no one listens:
except the dead:
no one: listening:
the dead: the dead:
no one mourning:
• What is your relationship to these sources?
the simplest way of doing this: write what we miss:
• What are your sources?
I : imagine
• How do you organize those sources?
organize: loneliness :: sort: one absence: after another :: stack: one dearth: onto another dearth:
dearth on death :: collate: the unmarked graves: arrange: my hands: around your heart: pumping ::
compile: her father: there at her grave: crying out for her: lips wet with regret :: organize: a father:
organize: another father: organize: them all: and tell them: what they matter:
• What other sources might you use?
candlelight: in abundance: the flickers: the dead: murmuring: we sing:
• What other sources might you use?
a chorus
• What sources still need translating:
: a step through your doorway
: a home
: jacaranda blossoms
: purpling your front yard
: the red and pink rose bushes
: bright
: the night blooming jasmine
: each flower: a star
: falling backward
◆
Ángel García on Craft
With so much and so little access to familial lineage and history, many of the poems
from Indifferent Cities (forthcoming from Tupelo Press in December of 2025) (re)claim
fragments of narrative I have heard, overheard, misunderstood, or imagined to explore
realms between the past, present, and future.
When creating poems, I’m equally interested in what I know and what I don’t know. I
try to hone a poem invested in memory and imagination to arrive at some deeper
question of truth. Or, to put it another way, I attempt to create threads that feel familiar,
nostalgic even, but that still long for something speculative.
The poems in Indifferent Cities utilize various approaches. “Sin Zapatos (1948)” takes
two words from an interview I conducted with my father and makes those two words (no
shoes) the refrain of the poem. But because I am not a trained historian, ethnographer,
or archivist, so much of my “research” has been done haphazardly. And “Those Flowers”
leans into that haphazard approach of research to create an alternative methodology, so
to speak, that honors instinct, intuition, and imagination.
Undoubtedly, these poems have been heavily influenced by Black poets, namely Rita
Dove and Natasha Trethewey. Through and against the consequences of forced
migration and the ravages of colonial history their work forges a pathway to honor
familial narratives and inherited counternarratives that reconcile and remedy the
impacts of intergenerational trauma.
