On “The Gods Created Humans from Maize
and Some Other Things I Know About Corn” by Miguel Morales
By Huascar Medina
Hello friends, I’m Huascar Medina, Former Poet Laureate of Kansas, here for Poets on the Plains. I hope you are well and finding joy. I’m excited to share some wonderful poetry from Kansas poets. Today, I will be sharing the poem “The Gods Created Humans from Maize and Some Other Things I Know About Corn” by Miguel Morales.
Miguel M. Morales grew up working as a migrant/seasonal farmworker. He is a Lambda Literary Fellow and a Macondo Writers Workshop alum. He is a member of the Latino Writers Collective, a founding member of Brown Voices/Brown Pulse and of La Resistencia. His work appears in Imaniman: Poets Writing in the Anzaldúan Borderlands, Acentos Review, Duende Journal, Pilgrimage and Raspa magazines, From Macho to Mariposa: New Gay Latino Fiction, Green Mountains Review, Hawaiʻi Review, Primera Página: Poetry from the Latino Heartland, Southwestern American Literature, Texas Poetry Review, and other print and online publications.
Miguel was asked to write a poem to match a selected recipe in Eat Your Words: A Kansas Poetry Cookbook published by Meadowlark Press and edited by the current Poet Laureate of Kansas Traci Brimhall. The anthology featured 20 regional poets and 20 chefs. Miguel chose a recipe created by indigenous chef Jason Champagne (owner of Native Chef LLC), and his recipe is for grilled corn tomato salad. Miguel stated” His ingredients spoke to me, they resonated with me, and they brought back memories of my culture and folktales.”
Here is Miguel Morales’ poem.
The Gods Created Humans from Maize
and Some Other Things I Know About Corn
There are generations of painful reasons why I don’t know
my indigenous tribe’s name or language or history.
But I know these ingredients: tomatoes, cilantro, onions, lime,
queso fresco. I know bell pepper. Most of all, I know corn.
I know the masa of mama’s tamales spread by spoon and rolled by hand.
I know the hominy in menudo served after mass in the church cafeteria.
I know Texas’ southern buttery grits. I know spicy pozole and warm tortillas.
I know the wonderfully savory elote from carnivals and fairs with my cousins.
I know atole and popcorn made by my sisters
on cold winter nights as we watched TV.
As farmworker children, we also knew of the Corn Woman
who lives in the cornfields waiting to snatch naughty children
and replace them with corn dolls, imbued with magic
and crafted so no one would ever know the difference.
I know that corn domesticated us and taught us how to bend, like its stalk,
without breaking, how to root ourselves deeply for stability against the wind.
How to grow, reach, and search for the sun, for the light.
How to use our canopy to provide shade and shelter.
Crops, like corn, gifted us early hunter gatherers with time
to nurture our families, develop our culture, our art, our language,
and to share story and meals.
Used with permission
The title “The Gods Created Humans from Maize and Some Other Things I Know About Corn” references Mesoamerican mythology written in the sacred Popol Vuh, a Mayan text full of knowledge about ancient Mayan mythology and culture. The Mayan region spanned Mexico and Central America. Their descendants are still alive today.According to the Popol Vuh, the gods created humans out of white and yellow corn dough.
The first line of the poem, “ There are generations of painful reasons why I don’t know/ my indigenous tribe's name or language or history” resonates with me. I find myself yearning for the knowledge and spirit of my own indigeneity, postcolonialism. What empowers this poem are things that are still known, like food.
The poem states: “But I know these ingredients: tomatoes, cilantro, onions, lime,
queso fresco. I know bell pepper. Most of all, I know corn.” If the Mayan were made from corn as written in the Popol Voh then we must consider that to know corn is to know the people and the descendants of the Mayan region. Food in this context is more than sustenance, it is a technology to communicate, reclaim, and understand. Food carries family lineage, history, culture and traditions.
Corn becomes a metaphor for resilience. Domesticated corn stalk bends, adapting to the everchanging wind and it roots itself deeply into the land for stability. The corn and its people are now part of other cultures. You can find corn in Texas buttery grits, the Spanish Pozole and Mexican corn tortillas. Corn becomes a unifying ingredient. It becomes an opportunity to share a meal and share stories about our families.
Thank you for listening. This is Poets on the Plains. I’m Huascar Medina, living artfully in Topeka, Kansas. I hope you are doing the same.
POETS ON THE PLAINS HOST
Huascar Medina, a poet, editor, essayist, and artist advocate. He served as the poet laureate of Kansas from 2019 to 2022 and was named an Academy of American Huascar Medina Poets Laureate Fellow in 2022. Medina is currently a senior editor at South Broadway Press and a contributing op-ed writer at the Kansas Reflector. Medina is the author of How to Hang the Moon (Spartan Press), Un Mango Grows in Kansas (Spartan Press), Protest as Love Poem (Meadowlark Press), and the forthcoming Prairie Fool (Plainspoken Books, 2027), a collection of lyrical essays addressing politics, class, and culture. His work has been published in the Flint Hills Review, Gasconade Review, Green Mountains Review, Kansas Magazine, Latino Book Review, and The New York Times, among other places.https://huascarmedina.com/
FEATURED POET
Miguel M. Morales grew up in Texas working as a migrant/seasonal farmworker and child laborer. He was a finalist for the 2023 Kansas Poet Laureate. He is a member of the Latino Writers Collective, a founding member of Brown Voices/Brown Pulse and of La Resistencia. His work appears in Imaniman: Poets Writing in the Anzaldúan Borderlands, Acentos Review, Duende Journal,Pilgrimage and Raspa magazines, From Macho to Mariposa: New Gay Latino Fiction, Green Mountains Review, Hawaiʻi Review, Primera Página: Poetry from the Latino Heartland, Southwestern American Literature, Texas Poetry Review, and other print and online publications. Miguel is a Lambda Literary Fellow and alum of VONA Voices and of the Macondo Writers Workshop. As a journalist, Miguel earned numerous awards including the Society of Professional Journalists' First Amendment Award.
