You know, as a high school student,
I'm kind of envious of you guys.
Because as a high school student,
I did not have access at all to any kind
of contemporary poetry.
We read a few poets, and even in my AP English classes
at Casa Grande, we read Dickinson, Whitman, and I think
a little bit of John Donne.
That's it.
So you guys have a head start.
And people think poetry is made of big ideas, big thoughts.
No, poetry is made of language.
And all of you have access to language.
The language spoken in your home, if you're bilingual.
Or weird sayings your father, your mother, your uncles,
aunts say, that you roll your eyes right now at.
That's the stuff of poetry, later on.
Even now.
And all of you who are involved in extracurricular activities--
sports, theater, et cetera, et cetera--
all those fields have a specialized vocabulary diction.
And that's also poetry.
Oops.
What I do a lot in my work is code switching,
where I shuttle back and forth from English and Spanish.
And I don't explain the Spanish.
I don't put it in context or italicize it.
I often say it's a political and aesthetic choice.
I refuse to privilege one way of seeing over
the world over another.
And also because this Spanish is my parents' Spanish,
is a working class kind of Spanish.
This is the kind of Spanish, if you spoke this Spanish
in a Mexican University, they're like-- they'll, kind of,
laugh at you a little bit.
But it's my Spanish, my family's Spanish.
This poem-- the title functions as a first line.
"In Colorado, my father scoured and stacked
dishes in a Tex-Mex restaurant.
His coworkers, unable to utter his name, renamed him jalapeno.
If I ask for a goldfish, he spits a glob of phlegm
into a jar of water.
The silver letters on his black belt spell "sangrón."
Once, borracho, at dinner, he said, Jesus was not a snowman.
Arriba Durango.
Arriba Orizaba.
Packed into a car trunk, he was smuggled into the States--
frijolero, greaser.
In Tucson, he branded cattle.
He slept in a stable, the horse blankets oddly fragrant-- wood
smoke, lilac.
He's an illegal.
I'm an illegal American.
Once, in a grove of saguaro, at dusk, I slept next to him.
I woke with his thumb in my mouth.
¿No qué no tronabas pistolita?
He learned English by listening to the radio.
The first four words he memorized--
"In God We Trust."
The fifth-- percolate.
Again and again, I borrow his clothes.
He calls me scarecrow.
In Oregon, he picked apples--
Braeburn, Jonagold, Cameo.
Nightly, to entertain his cuates around a campfire,
he strummed a guitarra, sang corridos.
Arriba Durango.
Arriba Orizaba.
Packed into a car trunk, he was smuggled into the States--
greaser, beaner.
Once, borracho, at breakfast, he said the heart can only
be broken once, like a window.
¡No mames!
His favorite belt buckle--
an águila perched on a nopal.
if he laughs out loud his hands tremble.
Bugs Bunny wants to deport him.
Cesar Chavez wants to deport him.
When I walk through the desert I wear his shirt.
The gaze of the moon stitches the buttons of his shirt
to my skin.
The snake hisses.
The snake is torn."