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A Mexican flag on a pole, with Mexico City in the background

Two Poems by Ángel García

March 8, 2023

On Visiting Mexico City

December, 2014

A girl jumps rope
uno, dos, el lobo feroz
arms flailing as if on fire

A man sings for pesos
on the corner, his hand
swarmed by a song of bees

A woman meditates 
cross-legged in a park
on a branch of a weeping willow

In a country I only
know second-hand
I visit the museo de la anthropología

I walk through
a church made of gold
once an aztec temple

I walk the zócalo
transformed into
a christmas wonderland

What I know
of the disappeared
and the discontent 

are graffitied letters
being washed away
from a government wall


My Country is Hard for Me

At a banquet
in my honor

I shake hands:
grip firmly
pump twice
loosen and release

repeat names and titles,
whisper them like a lover
when I walk away, blushed.

At a banquet
in my honor

my name is mispronounced,
gargled in the mouth
with too much wine.

At a banquet 
in my honor

I’m given certificate 
and plaque—the bronze,
the small of my back—
smeared in fingerprints.

At a banquet
in my honor

I’m asked to open 
my mouth and pledge 
allegiance to a county
now mine as the crowd
rises slowly, to take me.


Ángel García, a proud son of Mexican immigrants, is the author of Teeth Never Sleep (University of Arkansas Press), winner of a CantoMundo Poetry Prize, winner of an American Book Award, and finalist for a PEN America Open Book Award and Kate Tufts Discovery Award. He currently teaches in the MFA program at University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.

Photo by Ricardo Esquivel

In Print, Poetry Tags Poetry, 2017 spring vol. 10 issue 1, print, Throwback, BIPOC, BIPOC Poets, 2023 March
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