Tuesday, June 01, 2021

Making the Corn Right: Nixtamalization

"Nextli" is Nahautl for "ashes,"
"tamalli" for corn meal dough.
"Nixtamalization" is soaking the corn
in a wood-ash solution.

Everyone did it:
if you lived on maize, you prepped it
with wood ash. Otherwise
you were courting deficiencies

of niacin or amino acids.
And yes, right now, yes
I could do with a tamal.
But the point is

No one knew why they did it
Or they believed they did it
for some other reason:
it made the corn right.

And this is why I say
to storytellers, 
great and small:
just make it right.

Don't worry about niacin.
You don't have to know what the fuck 
the ashes are doing. 
You can be wrong

and still be right.
Write
the goddamn
story.

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