Scene, with Etymologies
By Shook
They say we name what
we value.
And the act of naming tends to be,
if not the first, the foundational of violences.
They say we map what
we care to find.
✷
And they need not even say that the inverse is also true. ✷
They say that the name Texas comes from the Hasinai language:
from the word táysha’, which means “friend.”
They say it was used as a greeting between friends.
And the Hasinai were expelled from the State of Texas in 1859.
And of the tongues that still greet táysha’
there remain just twenty-five.
✷
They say that the US Border Patrol recorded more migrant deaths in the
fiscal year 2021 than in any prior year on record.
And of the states along this country’s southern border, not one
maintains a comprehensive registry of the deceased.
And in just one of the four
does anyone devote themself
to the cartography of the forgotten.
✷
They say that the name New Mexico was first declared on July 12th, 1598, at
the confluence of the Chama and the Rio Grande.
They say that Juan de Oñate y Salazar, who declared it, hoped to find other
riches—others’ riches—greater than those of the Mexica to the south.
And one year later, his soldiers demanded from the Acoma the supplies
necessary to survive the winter.
And when they resisted because ceding to the demand would mean
accepting their own death, Oñate decreed the murder of 800 of the
Acoma, the enslavement of the remaining 500 women and children,
and the amputation of the right foot of the 80 surviving men.
They say that the wounded antelope will keep walking until it collapses in
the sand.
And in 1997 in the city of Alcalde, the Friends of Acoma amputated
Oñate’s bronze foot, still adorned with spur and stirrup.
They say that the name Arizona comes from the O’odham language:
from the word alĭ ṣonak, which means “small spring.”
And almost half of the remains scattered across the immense
barrier of the desert are found in the territory of the Tohono
O’odham Nation.
They say that it originally referred to the Bolas de Plata region, brief pride
of the Spaniards during the first half of the eighteenth century, today a few
kilometers south of the border.
And the majority of their deaths are caused by exposure to
the elements, exhaustion, and lack of drinkable water.
They say that it’s an official strategy to push migrants into the most
unforgiving territories.
And agents are taught to trample the caches of water stashed
there by volunteers.
✷ ✷
✷
They say that the name California comes from the Arabic:
.خلیفھ.
They say that it came to us by means of a poet, Garci Rodríguez de Mantalvo,
who in the sixteenth century coined a variant of the world khalīfa to name
an island he invented in one of his novels:
Sabed que ala diestra mano de las Indias ouo una Isla llamada California
mucho llegada ala parte ✷del paraiso terrenal la qual sue poblada de
mugeres negras sin que algun varó entre ellas ouiesse: que casi como las
amazonas.
They say that the Spanish, at seeing it for the first time, thought that the
peninsula of Baja California was an island brimming with riches and
infidels.
And though it’s not an island, children still drown attempting to cross
✷ the hungry furrow that divides it in two. ✷
✷ ✷
✷
They say that it’s the most dangerous body of water in the entire country:
The All-American Canal.
They say that not even an Olympic swimmer could beat the current.
And the canal is a cemetery
too ephemeral to map.
In Imperial County’s common grave
hundreds of bricks commemorate
its defeated pilgrims,
each Doe a fallen domino,
each buried dream
a snuffed-out star,
the parched sky ✷
their only witness. ✷
✷ ✷
✷
Source: Poetry (June 2022)