Alejandro Jimenez’s poetry exists beyond borders
The border is a false division, a line on a piece of paper or a map.
Look across it and you’ll see that the earth is still in one piece, the same from one side to the next, where one should be able to move back and forth with ease, like our ancestors did, and theirs, and theirs too. The good writers straddle the lines, searching across the two worlds, while the great ones destroy and decimate them, reshape them.
Here, I have a home. Where I am.
Looking out onto the backyard there is the kitchen.
There I am quiet. There I am loud.
There we dance. Tilt our heads back, wide mouth open accepting the communion of spices in the air.There I do not know gender. No roles to fill.
Excerpt from “Garden, Kitchen, & Memories” by Alejandro Jimenez
Alejandro Jimenez exists beyond borders, beyond binaries. He speaks English, breathes Spanish, and wields words and weaves worlds. Alejandro is magic with the pen, spitting hot fire, forging and creating spaces, taking you and me to worlds that we’ve never imagined, taking us to places that we know all too well, taking us in a time machine; taking us to a place called home. He is the color of life that refuses to be confined by any man-made boundary.
The words flow from Alejandro like the wind on a fall morning, flow from him like the earth, water, the air. It’s the same way when he runs, he moves across mountains, across borders, across waves, peaks and valleys. He moves, fast as lightning, feet like the ancestors, paisa poder1; he moves across borders and mother tongues. Borders bend, and move, and weave, and are rendered irrelevant. Alejandro’s words on the page, from his mouth, into my heart, remind me, wherever I go, I belong, that I am home.
Listen to his poetry, and you’d actually believe that you could do whatever you wanted to, that you could be more than that construction worker that your third-grade teacher told you that you would grow up to be; that you can be more than a stereotype, more than the fears of white imagination.
He is a lover of language, his heart overflowing with a passion for the power of words. He writes with a dedication and persistence that is both inspiring and humbling, never giving up on his dream of sharing his art with the world.
I used to see Alejandro daily, each of us on our morning run. Like his writing, Alejandro in motion is effortless, is humble, is bold, is athletic, is peace; seeing him could make you believe that you could be a great runner.
Brown runners, these streets used to be full of us, before there were streets, valleys and peaks, and roads that had been carved by the feet of the elders. In that way, Alejandro is like the land, ageless; in that way, Alejandro is like the wind, free and wild, and cool and calming.
His poetry reminds me of who we used to be, of who we are, of Latine pasts and Latinx Futures.
Our families were forced to assimilate, were stripped of mother tongue, as we moved north, with each progressive generation, before we settled, in Denver, Chicago, Oregon, before we became Mexican-American, before we became Chicano, Hispanic, Latinx and Latine. We still gather and tell stories aloud, laugh, lloramos, y gritamos, and feel it deep in our souls.
The universal, the things that connect across times, across boundaries, across borders, is specific. It’s deeply personal, but reveals a truth that multitudes can feel. Such is the same with the work of Alejandro, my favorite paisa poet.
He has a language love affair, and when I read his work, I, too, remember what it is to be in love with lengua, remember what it’s like to see and hear and feel in another language, remember what it is like for my grandparents and my parents and my tios and tias and mis primas y primos y primxs to be seen. No roles to fill; here I have a home.
“Brown Boy Run Club”
by Manuel Aragon
For Alejandro Jimenez, on a morning run, when we run into each other
We lace up our shoes, a double knot for extra
protection.
We of the morning, noon, and late evenings, adorned in
Running costumes
All the colors of the rainbow
Skittles,
We of all shapes, all sizes,
but still,
scary.
We have been running, our whole lives, since elementary school, since I was a boy, since
the white neighbors moved in and questioned my existence.
We have been running, because it’s the only place where I can see and be me,
We have been running, because they have been running after me.
We of the names Alejandro, Felipe, and multitudes,
Don’t call us ghosts, just because you fear us.
We step out that door,
We float on air, our times faster
A reflective blue jacket, illuminating me in the dark
I see you and
I nod, a little extra hard
You are fire, streaking across the ground, through the air, the Flash
I am, too
I nod, harder, just hard enough for you to
See me
Like I see you
Acknowledge you and me
so that when our space is compromised
And we are forced to no longer exist
You and me
Remember that
we were seen.
Images from Alejandro Jimenez: The Ground I Stand On, a film by Raúl O. Paz-Pastrana & Alan Domínguez.
1Editor’s Note: #PaisaPoder is Alejandro Jimenez’s hashtag for his online presence, used as a celebratory phrase to celebrate and uplift fellow Mexican and Latinx voices.
