The Rio Grande is seen from the International Bridge near the part of the US-Mexico border where a father and daughter drowned while trying to cross the US in 2019, in Matamoros, Tamaulipas. Oscar Alberto Martinez and his 23-month-old daughter Angie Valeria have emigrated from El Salvador and plan to seek political asylum in the US when they die.
Photo Verónica G. Cárdenas / Getty
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Photo Verónica G. Cárdenas / Getty
The Rio Grande is seen from the International Bridge near the part of the US-Mexico border where a father and daughter drowned while trying to cross the US in 2019, in Matamoros, Tamaulipas. Oscar Alberto Martinez and his 23-month-old daughter Angie Valeria have emigrated from El Salvador and plan to seek political asylum in the US when they die.
Photo Verónica G. Cárdenas / Getty
Editor’s Note: This story contains images that some readers may find disturbing.
Floating, a collection of poems that explore bigotry, resistance and love by Martín Espada, is the winner of the 2021 National Book Prize for Poetry. The theme poem is about a tragedy: the death of Óscar Alberto Martínez Ramírez, 25 years old and his young daughter, Angie Valeria, bodies were found underwater along the Rio Grande River.
Pictures of the couple spread in 2019, highlighting the deadly risks of the immigration crisis along the US-Mexico border. In the image, Valeria’s arm is wrapped around her father’s neck; she tucked into his shirt, an obvious attempt by her father to keep her safe. NS Poetry title comes from a term some US law enforcement officers use to describe a corpse in the water.
“This is an important collection for our time and will be very important to those of the future who are trying to make sense of what it is today,” the National Book Award is quoted as saying. .
The poem of the same name begins with a quote from a Facebook group devoted to US Border Patrol agents, in which one commenter expressed suspicion that The photo of the father and son may have been faked. The commenter asked, “have you ever seen such clean floats.”
The entire first stanza of “Floaters” is set on the border between Mexico and the United States:
Like a beer bottle thrown into the river by a drunken boy crying,
like the shards of a styrofoam cup flowing out coffee brown like a river,
like the plank of a fishing boat is broken in half by the river, and people are drowned.
And the dead have a name: floating people, say Border Patrol men,
watch all night by the river, heart pumping coffee as they speak
floating, soft as a bubble, hard as a shoe when it hits the body,
to see if it breathes, to see if it groans, to see if it sits up and speaks.
(You can read the entire poem below.)
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“I am speechless,” Espada said after being named the winner. “Mostly because I didn’t prepare a speech. But also because I was honored to be selected.”
Other poems in Espada’s book include meditating on his wife’s concussion and imagining love songs from the perspective of a kraken and a Galápagos tortoise.
Publisher WW Norton said: “The collection ranges from historical epics to heart-wrenching personal lyrics about growing up, the baseball falling from the sky and striking Espada in the eye as he ponders his thoughts. think about a girl’s mildly racist question.” “Whether honoring the visionaries – dreamers, rebels and poets – or condemning the government’s outrageous neglect of Puerto Rico by his father in the wake of Hurricane María, Espadas all invoke hot, ferocious spirits.”
Photos of the bodies of migrants Óscar Alberto Martínez Ramírez and his daughter, Angie Valeria, who drowned trying to cross the Rio Grande, have brought renewed attention to immigration and inspired for a poem by Martín Espada.
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STR/AFP via Getty Images
Photos of the bodies of migrants Óscar Alberto Martínez Ramírez and his daughter, Angie Valeria, who drowned trying to cross the Rio Grande, have brought renewed attention to immigration and inspired for a poem by Martín Espada.
STR/AFP via Getty Images
‘Floaters’ of Martin Espada
Okay, I’ll go ahead and ask… have you ever seen clean floats like these. I’m not trying to be a $$ but I have NEVER seen pictures like this, this could be another edited photo. We’ve all seen libertarians and libertarians do some pretty sick things.—Anonymous post, Border Patrol Facebook group “I’m 10-15”
Like a beer bottle thrown into the river by a drunken boy crying,
like the shards of a styrofoam cup flowing out coffee brown like a river,
like the plank of a fishing boat is broken in half by the river, and people are drowned.
And the dead have names: celebs, say the people of the Border Patrol,
watch all night by the river, heart pumping coffee as they speak
are from celebs, soft as a bubble, hard as a shoe when it hits the body,
to see if it breathes, to see if it groans, to see if it sits up and speaks.
And the dead have names, a holiday parade has names, those names
dressed all in red, names spinning their skirts, names blowing whistles,
fluttering names, names singing praises to the saints:
To speak Oscar Alberto Martínez Ramírez. To speak Angie Valeria Martínez Ávalos.
See how they rise from their tongues, birds singing somewhere
on the trees above our heads, into the dark hearts of the leaves.
Say what we know about them now they’re dead: Óscar slapped the dough
for pizza with oven-baked fingers. Daughter Valeria sings, beats
a toy guitar. He slipped off the apron he was wearing in the blast furnace,
sell the motorbike he’ll kick until it’s out in the world, count it all
pesos for the journey across the river, and the last of his twenty-five
year, and last of her twenty-three months. There is another name
flapping wings in the heart of trees: Say Tania Vanessa Ávalos,
Óscar’s wife and Valeria’s mother, the witness happened to crash along the river.
Now their names emerge from her tongue: Say Oscar y Valeria. He swam
from Matamoros to Brownsville, the girl put her neck around him,
standing her in the weeds by the Texas river, vowing to return
with their mother in their arms, with their backs turned as fathers would later say:
I turned around and she was gone. In the time it takes for a bird to hop on the hopscotch
From branch to branch, Valeria jumped the river after her father.
Maybe he called her name as he swept her out of the river;
perhaps the river drowned out his voice as it swept them away.
Tania called the saints, but the saints drowned
in the stupor of the birds in the dark, their cages covered with blankets.
Men on patrol will never hear their pleas for asylum, see
because the celebs, hearts pumping coffee all night by the Texas River.
They say no one has ever seen very clean float: Óscar’s black shirt
pulled to her armpit, Valeria’s arm wrapped around her father
neck even after the light left her eyes, both of them were facing the weeds,
back to the Mexican side of the river. Another edited photo: See how
Her head disappeared into his shirt, the wet diaper bunched up
in her pants, the blue of the blue can. The radio warned us about
NS crisis agents we see school after school shooting; man
Is called Óscar will breathe, sit up, talk, pull up the black shirt
his head, wash off the mud and shake hands with the photographer.
However, the floats do not float down the Río Grande like the Olympians
bragging about backstroke, their souls don’t fly to Dallas,
land of rumored jobs and a president was shot in the head as he waved
from his convoy. No bubbles rose from their breath in the mud,
Light like the iridescent circles of soap would fascinate a two-year-old.
And the dead still have names, names that praise the saints,
flower name in white flowers, a name in clothes
all black, followed the coffins to the cemetery. Engrave their names
in titles and tombstones they’ll never know in the kitchen
of this cacophonous world. Write their names in the name book.
To speak Óscar Alberto Martínez Ramírez; To speak Angie Valeria Martínez Ávalos.
Bury them in a corner of the cemetery named for the canonized archbishop
of the poor, shot in the heart of the public, bullets bought with taxes
I paid when I worked as a security guard and broke my arm for forty years
front and padding sticker that says: El Salvador is Spanish for Vietnam.
When the last breath leaves the body, the men can
people who talk about floaters, who have never seen such clean floats,
drifting through the clouds to the sky, where they steer the air
as they waited for the saint to turn the key on his ring
like a sleepy janitor, until he touches the key that turns the lock and turns off
gates on their babbling faces, and they rush back to earth,
A hailstorm fell into the river, by the river Mexico.
Reprinted from Floating. Copyright (c) 2021 by Martín Espada. Used with permission of publisher, WW Norton & Company, Inc. All rights reserved.
