Jennifer says after reading that corn comes in many colors that her new painting is gonna be on focusing on each kernel. Then she said,” Baby, you need to write just a kernel since you don’t have much time lately.” I thought to myself yeah corn comes in many colors. She said she loved especially how each kernel could be different colors or even two or more colors in just one kernel. I said oh yeah. That’s right. Corn is purdy.
I was talking to Ms Silva this morning via Facebook and I realized that part of the reason I’m writing about corn is that it’s my way of working on food and diabetes. Ms Silva is working on a series of Platicas on diabetes and also just finished a book of poems and other writing on Diabetes and RAZA. And I’m raza working on corn and my fear or probability of diabetes.
Diabetes reminds of the AIDS epidemic. Maybe its because in San Antonio I see so much effects of food and diabetes here. I can go for days and not see white folks in San Antonio where I live. My daily life is MEXICAN. I live in occupied Mexico or at least a large rez. I speak Spanish daily or at least Spanglish. DAMN there is even more diabetic shoe stores and dialysis centers here than I see anywhere else. That’s messed up.
Well this is what I wanted to be with..mi gente. San Antonio is a large cornfield. Jennifer says we are children of the corn for real. Have you noticed that in OCCUPIED Mexico we eat more flour tortillas than corn? But corn syrup is in coca cola and always corn chips. In Texas, corn chips are almost always free before your meal comes to you. There are as many ways to fry corn chips as there are colors of corn and kinds of corn. BUT nothing is as good as homemade corn tortillas….mmmmmmm good.
My sister Alice tells us the story of when she visited Guanajuto, where her husband, Jose and my daddy’s family are from that’s she tripped out when she woke up and smelled smoke. She said the women had gotten up early and started a fire outside. Damn she thought they up early! Then later she heard them grinding stone. When she finally woke up because it smelled good she said they were making tortillas from scratch. They had ground up the corn from the kernel to the masa to the tortilla. We all said DAMNMMMMMMMM! That there are some children of the corn for real.
