[Britt Bustos, Associate Editor: "Zulema Dominguez’s poem forces us to reconcile with our oppressive and erasing pasts through the story of Josefa Rodriguez, a Mexican-American woman lynched due to being framed for the murder of a white cotton merchant. This ode travels through Mexican-American history to hold us captive to our perceived senses of justice and reclamation, and through the pastoral imagery of the soils and the leaves asks: what are we truly guilty of?"]

In 1863, Josefa Rodriguez was the first Mexican-American woman legally hanged in Texas. She was framed for the axe murder of a white cotton merchant, John Savage, whose body was found at the edge of the Nueces River, near Josefa’s cabin. History presumes he was targeted for six hundred dollars’ worth of gold he carried—a small fortune. 

There is a “Hanging Tree” in Goliad

whose brown limbs never imagined 

holding the brown limbs of another being. 

 

Historians say there was a language to hangings—

Necktie party. Rope necklace. 

A short ride. Heels kicked up.

Dancing in the air. Trimming a tree.

Hung out to dry. 

 

Unwavering in the face of recreant poetics,

of silencing accusations, 

Josefa sought shelter in truth and anaphora, 

No soy culpable. 

No soy culpable. 

 

In this era of justice, death by hanging 

meant execution within the hour of the verdict.

Sixty minutes to stand rooted— 

a small fortune. 

 

Had the tree known what was to come,

it might have shed its own branches, 

its dirge of plummeting leaves wailing, 

No soy culpable. 

No soy culpable. 

 

Instead, the oak’s hulking branches remain

desperately gnarled. Rigid and unrested. 

An overgrown, lingering image

of suspended convulsion. 

 

From 1846 to 1870, hundreds of Mexican-Americans

were hanged across Texas. Trunks made thick 

with inflicted cruelty. Lives chronicled

in stunted growth rings. 

 

In 1985, the Texas Legislature absolved Josefa Rodriguez

of the murder. Posthumous pardon. 

History presumes our hands lie

outstretched in perpetual supplication. 

History makes nothing 

of our offshoots and tendrils. 

 

Beneath the soil, each tree reaches

for another. An intimate bearing

of each other’s burdens. A familiar grasp

of pained secrets. 

 

My father lovingly calls my mother “Josefa” 

as he enters our apartment. A term of endearment. 

An echo of remembrance. Each reiteration

an effort to expel the savagery shoveled

down our throats. To plant a sweeter balm. 

 

The essence of “haunt” is to reside,

to inhabit. I write this poem 

from a bruised tongue, an attempt

to let the blood out. To seek shelter

in reclamation. Uproot violence. 

The body rejects splinters. And yet, 

an x-ray revealed the lump in my breast

to be a mound of wood chips. 

 

You might have gone your whole life

without knowing this particular instance

of owed breath. I can’t say I beg 

your forgiveness. You see, 

Tu eres culpable. 

Tu eres culpable.