you think they kept records back then? en el rancho,
pues try googling your mom’s maiden name
plus Torreón más Coahuila plus Otto más 
historia.

de donde vinieron los Serranos?
even your dad wasn’t this difficult
to track down.
ancestory dot com wants your money 
but you wonder, can they even track down
your aventureros, nomads, small rancho living folks
or is it just an Anglo-driven service.

there’s ancestory dot mx, does that make you
feel closer to giving them your American pesos?
Coahuila grants you access to its online database
pero ni sirve porque anything before the year of 19-something-near
isn’t archived there.
your ma tells you that she tried 
getting your abuelo’s birth certificate 
back when she visited, años atrás
sin resolución.

you find little threads on free sites
surprised that the Church of Latter Day Saints
seemingly has a lot of Catholic Church records from
dot mx and somewhere among all the Antonio’s
you find abuelo.

abuelo introduces you to your bisabuelo in a dream
and now you’re searching for him
your ma tells you he wasn’t originally from Otto or Coahuila 
might’ve been from somewhere in Zacatecas 

pues now you google your mom’s maiden name
plus your bisabuelo’s first name más your abuelo’s name
plus Zacatecas más a guesstimate of year ranges that would make
sense. 

you switch between dot com and dot mx
dot com dot mx dot com dot mx dot mx mx mx mx

you try to google your abuela’s maiden name, too
that leads you to incongruent census documents
which Julia in which Carrillo family did she belong to?
you can just ask her, but sometimes
she can’t recall details
so you stick to el google, and the dot mx’s.
you keep pulling, un poco más un poco más
you start getting targeted ads for record services
you get asked if you’ve tried 23andMe
pero like that’s not the history you want

un poco más 
un poco más
http
://….