MITSU OVERSTREET

The River/El Rio: both Sides, No Sides

by Bobby Byrd and Sasha Pimental

El Paso is rooted like a thicket of salt cedar and cottonwood on the Rio Grande. El río cuts through mountains to make this place a natural passage. That’s what el paso means, the pass. For centuries many different peoples—like ourselves, right now, standing here—have passed through El Paso, going north, going south, going west, going east. On the other side is La Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua, México. Los mexicanos call this river “el Río Bravo,” and they know, like we know, that we are all brothers and sisters. We breathe the same air, we drink the same water. We are border people. Somos fronterizos. We are without end.

Begin from water, the great stillness of desert night and cooling air, our river violet and inky. La luz de la luna en las colinas. And a word rustles across the page, between mouths, at the edge of state and country. El Paso, sólo el Río Bravo tiembla entre tú y el rostro brillante de Juárez—and when the plane descends, both cities glisten in the window, a single ocean of light. Begin now, too, in ascent of flight—the altitude of shared breath, and how, below clouds, our land breaks through: like puddles of star.