"Today We Read Anzaldua"

“Today We Read Anzaldúa”

Today we read Anzaldúa.

Shakespeare and Chaucer sat

quietly in the back of the room

ceding the stage to the New Mestiza

and her wild, untamed tongue.

New vocabulary words were posted

on the board: Nepantla, Nahuatl,

Latinx, and intersectionality,

instead of iambic pentameter or alliteration.

We traveled through her borderlands,

with me as an untrained guide.

with my students walking beside me,

not in front or behind, coaching me

Spanish as I coached them with English.

Teaching is throwing seeds as widely as

you can and hoping some take root. Today

I taught not for the front row, but

for the quiet girl in the back

with the Bowie T-shirt,

and the rainbow suspenders.

Messages come in strange vessels:

a glass bottle may contain an ancient cry fir help,

 a burning bush may be aflame with

the word of God, an angel in a beam of light

may tell a virgin she is with child,

or a middle-aged white man

may be the first to say to these seniors,

“Today we will read Anzaldúa.”