Land of the Cranes
Page 1
Praise for The Moon Within
“A worthy successor to Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret set in present-day Oakland.… Salazar’s verse novel is sensitive and fresh.… An authentically middle school voice and diverse Latinx cast make this book a standout.”
—Kirkus Reviews, starred review
“An excellent addition for upper middle grade and middle school readers, especially for maturing tweens in the midst of puberty.”
—School Library Journal, starred review
“With sensitivity, Salazar purports that menstruation is a source of feminine strength, inexorably and beautifully connected to the moon cycle. The broader message is one of acceptance, celebration, and resistance: a period is just a period, Salazar suggests, but it’s also so much more.”
—Publishers Weekly, starred review
“Salazar’s use of verse in this story adds a layer of raw emotion and honesty that makes the reading experience all the more poignant.… Salazar handles this story with beauty and grace, giving young girls a picture of what it means to stand in your own power and reclaim your own story.”
—BookPage, starred review
“This story is told in beautiful poems.… A lovely, relatable story.… The author reveals cultural aspects of Latinx (especially Xicana) and Caribbean peoples in rich detail.”
—Booklist
“Lyrical.… The characters leap to life and eloquently evoke the passion and pain of a girl’s coming-of-age. Absolutely beautiful, reverent, and intensely personal.”
—School Library Connection
“This is a fascinating tale that blends ancestral traditions from two cultures, while portraying modern dilemmas. Salazar’s poetry is as lovely and graceful as the dance scenes.”
—Margarita Engle, National Young People’s Poet Laureate and Newbery Honor-winning author of The Surrender Tree
“With conga-pulsed lyrics, Aida Salazar pulls us into the coming of age of eleven year Celi. She initiates readers into the conversation of Bomba, the girl-woman circle, divine twin energies and the many moon-tide powers of a Latina pre-teen. This is a book whose form and content, vision and depth, I find revolutionary and culturally ecstatic. In these times, here is the liberation verse our youth and all have been waiting for—Brava-Bravo!”
—Juan Felipe Herrera, former US Poet Laureate and author of Jabberwalking
“Aida Salazar has reached deep into our indigenous past to explore in beautiful, poignant poetry what it means to become a woman at the intersection of community and self. Rooted in ancestral lore yet vibrantly modern, The Moon Within is a touching, powerful, and important novel in verse.”
—David Bowles, Pura Belpré Honor-winning author of They Call Me Güero
“In a vivid, magical debut, Aida Salazar’s lyrical poetry deftly pulls you into Celi’s vibrant world as she reluctantly dances towards womanhood, adjusting to the drumbeats of first love and true friendship while exploring her ancestral roots as she finds her role within family and community.”
—Naheed H. Senzai, award-winning author of Shooting Kabul and Escape from Aleppo
“Lovely and amazing … a heartbreaker, in every wonderful way. Salazar’s vivid and accessible verse brings us the coming-of-age story we’ve been longing for. Poignant, funny, and deeply moving, The Moon Within is a story told with an abundance of love and respect—a gift straight from the center of Salazar’s heart to readers everywhere.”
—Olugbemisola Rhuday-Perkovich, author of Eighth-Grade Superzero and co-author of Naomis Too
Praise for The Moon Within
Title Page
Dedication
Prologue
Aztlán
A Soft Memory
What I Know:
How I Learned to Fly
Where We Land
Crane Poem Gallery
We Planted Roses Too
Virgencita Angel
I Spell a Spell
Jelly Ranchera Strides
Sanctuary Breakfast
Los Quince De Tina
Cartel
The Amparo Globe
Waiting
6:15 P.M.
The Big House
Walls
A Papi in a Pillow
No One Puts Up
Questions
Two Days
Our Flock
Brown Crane = Tocuilcoyotl
A Muddy Nest
Egg
Learning Tears
Papi in a Jar
Broken Wings
Safe
Decisions
Cajita De Tesoros
Write Me!
Mail
Six-Month Scientist
A Song
Crane Poems to a Farm
Community Corn
A Secret for an Angel
Friendship Park
Border Beach
Faith Exit
Mouth Patrol
Chichimeca Warriors
Mictlan
Inside the SUV
They Drive Us Through
A Building Made of ICE
Silver Capes
It Must Be Almost My Bedtime When
Hunger
Our Place in a Cage
Right Next to Us
Think of Dulzura
Lights Out
Between Sleep
Josefina
Wilted Bugs
Offering
The Deepest Hurt
Frozen Food
Cardboard Play
A Hiss That Hides
Open Toilet
The Trash Near
One Hour a Day in the Light
Sounds of Sadness
Almost Solas
Almost Solas in Aztlán
What Appears and Fades
Yellow Hair Shower
Sick
The Shape of a Nest
I Was an Egg Once
Fake Feel Better
Maybe
An Itch So Bad
Bedhead Lice
I Blame the Claws
All About Cranes
Piojo Initiation
Mami Gathers a New Flock
Volamos
Twisting Tooth Shoe
Unbelievable to Sleep
At the Root
Throat School
Toilet Paper Songs
To the Offices
The Caller
Crowbar Blue
Armpit Band
The Dreamer
Anáhuac
Grounded
Marisel
Why, Mami?
That Night
The Wildest Crane
Don’t Mind Sharing
Gatekeeper
Fernanda
An Understanding
My Very Own
Hashtag Revolution!
Up Inside
Inside My Alas:
Without Hope
Strike!
Demands
How They Laughed
How Long?
A Different Hunger
On the Third Day
Despair
I Cry One Hundred Miles
Solita
What Yellow Hair Found Out
I Draw and Spell in Alas
In Mami’s Outline
New Testimonies
How to Look Inside
They Draw and Spell
An Out-of-Paper Campaign
Times Table Songs
Paper Yellow Air
Finally, Fernanda
Marisel’s Fernanda
I Count
Request
Hope Like a Fallen Sky
When the Government Comes
We Did Something
A Mexican Gift
M
i Querida Betita Plumita, My Little Crane,
Papi Poems
Winged Words
I Find a Space
Cyclone Dust
A Silence
The Egg Has a Name
The Mountain Before Us
A Mechanical Crane
Author’s Note
Preview of The Moon Within
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Copyright
My papi says,
Long ago, our people came from a place
called Aztlán, the land of the cranes
which is now known as the Southwestern US.
They left Aztlán to fulfill their prophecy:
to build a great city
in the navel of the universe
a small mound in the middle of a lake
where they saw an eagle devour a serpent on a cactus.
They called that place Mexica-Tenochtitlán.
It was also prophesized
our people would return to Aztlán
to live among the cranes again.
I don’t remember the mountain
where I was born
or the place where I first crawled.
I remember Mami’s worried mouth
a whisper that she, Papi, and I
would follow
a flock of cranes going
home
El Norte, Los Angeles.
There, we could be birds too—brown grullas
where bad men could not harm us
like they did my Tío Pedro
and Abuelita would not worry.
Seven years later
I think I remember the soft wrinkles
on Abuelita Lola’s face.
I know my school’s shiny floors
a broken water fountain
and boxed chocolate milk
I buy for fifty cents.
I know Ms. Martinez
and her
happy handshakes
at her door
before each fourth-grade morning.
I know how to write
and draw the picture poems
Ms. Martinez taught us
to paint our feelings.
I know to never forget
to scribble my name and date
on the bottom.
I know recess on the blacktop
and the length of my golden
brown crane wings
in the desert sun.
I know my BFF, Amparo
climbs los columpios like wind.
I know aftercare until six p.m.
when Papi comes to get me
between
his two jobs
and carries me home
on his
strong shoulders
so high I find
flight.
Blue sky flight
began
with a ripple
of feathers
tickled by air
on the surface
of my dancing arms.
Sprouting wings stumbled
with the wind
pushed sideways
at first
I heard
Papi’s voice,
Encuentra la dulzura en tu lucha.
Find the sweetness in your struggle.
Then, a breath
a thought
to spell
my smiling name
with my wings
big circles to form
Roberta, Betita
my name like Papi’s
Roberto, Beto.
Then, a glide
a laugh so loud
looked down to see
las casas, las yardas,
and barking dogs
of our vecindad
become tiny
dots and squares
as I floated
above
with Papi flying beside me
ready to catch me
all the way home.
Papi and I land
on the front yarda
of our duplex
each day.
He shuffles in his pocket
for the keys to our rental
and in we go
to our one-bedroom casita
plus the laundry room
he turned
into a mini bedroom
with all-year Xmas lights
for me.
He puts down his so heavy
worker’s belt inside his cool gray
toolbox and fires up the comal.
We sit to eat beans and tortillas,
chile, with a sprinkle of cheese.
This is when he tells me
old stories about how we come
from the
people of the sun
and how long ago
we lived in Aztlán
among the cranes
and danced
and crooned like trumpets
about how we left
and built our great city
in the belly button of the universe.
He talks with cheeks full of food
from the side of his mouth,
The prophecy says
one day
we will fly back home
and croon, cry, and build
our nests in the place
we once left.
He says all of us cranes
are giving the prophecy life.
Then, he goes to curl into a nap
for half an hour while I fly
outside to play
with Amparo
in the tree-filled yarda
we share with her family
until
brown feathered-skin Mami
comes home
sometimes with
a bag of bright yellow lemons
like a gift in her tired hands
singing
a sweet song in Spanish
a swing
from her lips
and we crowd into
one another
with kisses
and hugs
and how-was-your-days
before Papi rushes off
to dip his hands
in suds
to make restaurant dishes
clean.
Before his nap today
Papi asks to see
my daily picture poem.
I pull it out from my backpack
and uncrumple the edges.
What marvel did you make today, Betita?
he asks in his Spanish-sounding English
warm soft round words
are air to me
but so strange to others they call it an accent
different, a little, from my own singsong East LA English
Principal Brown tries
to correct
but Ms. Martinez
never cared
one speck
about.
Papi smoothes the edges
raises the paper up to the light
to inspect it like an X-ray
studying first the drawing
with a wheel-like twist of his mouth.
He sees:
me perched up on the rocket t
ower
of our jungle gym at school
my eyes closed
wings out to my sides
the wind drawing
a wide grin across my face.
Then he reads the rhyming poem I scribbled below my picture:
Recess
Running, sliding, climbing to reach the sky
up so high, I almost fly.
He traces my signature with his finger.
It’s my best new cursive:
Betita-September 7
He kisses his pride right onto
my cheek with an extra-loving push
that makes my head wobble.
You sign just like an artist, mi Plumita.
I thought maybe like a poet, Papi, I say
because Ms. Martinez just taught us about
Juan Felipe Herrera, the poet of the nation
who is a crane like us.
Yes, like a poet too, amor.
I watch him hang
my crane poem
on what Mami calls
my “laundry line gallery”
she strung up across
the kitchen window
above the sink
while she whistled.
Papi planted trees
along the square edges
of our wrought iron fence
to leave some grass
in the middle
for Amparo and me
to run and for our families
to gather and
grill carne asada
on the weekend.
He planted
guamúchil
guayaba
chabacano
and plum
pruned trees
ripe with fruit
perfect branches
the best for climbing.
Then, Mami said,
Quiero rosas for my altar, por favor.
So, all of our hands planted
bald bushes at first
with knots for roots
that later burst into
bold green leaves
with big red flowers
carrying a smell so sweet
summer wind circles