WEBVTT

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Good evening, everyone.

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I'm very, very happy to be
returning to the University

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of Arizona as a reader.

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When I left the
University of Arizona

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because I had completed my
Master of Fine Arts degree

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in poetry, I asked
myself, will I ever

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return to read in the
Modern Language auditorium

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because I've been invited,
because I am then a published

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author?

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And so in a sense, this is
a dream come true to me,

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and something that meant a lot
to me when I earned my degree

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and left town.

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I'm going to begin
by first saying,

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thank you to the University
of Arizona Poetry

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Center and their
wonderful, wonderful staff

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for inviting me to
read here this evening.

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And I would also
like to say hello

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to my former faculty who
played such an important role

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in my development as a
young writer, particularly

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my workshop leaders, who were
Richard Shelton, who taught me

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the importance of learning
how to use a comma

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and the importance of
understanding sentence

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structure and grammar.

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Those things are
very, very important.

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And to Steve Orlen,
who taught me

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about the importance of
coming to class prepared.

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And to Jon Anderson
as well, who taught me

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about the importance of having
a certain sense of kindness when

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you sit down at the table
and talk about poetry.

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So I'm going to begin the
evening with a poem called

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"Mi Historia."

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"My red pickup choked on burnt
oil as I drove down Highway 99.

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In wind-tattered garbage bags,
I had packed my whole life.

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Two pairs of jeans, a
few t-shirts, and a pair

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of work boots.

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My truck needed work.

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And through the blue smoke
rising from under the hood,

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I saw almond orchards,
plums, the raisins spread out

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on paper trays, and
acres of Mendota cotton

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that my mother
picked as a child.

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My mother crawled through those
furrows and plucked cotton

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balls that filled the
burlap sack she dragged,

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shoulder-slung, through
dried-up bolls, husks, weevils,

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dirt clods, and dust that
filled the air with thirst.

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But when she grew tired, she
slept on her mother's burlap

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stuffed thick as a mattress.

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And grandma dragged
her over the land

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where time was told
by the setting sun.

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History cried out
to me from the Earth

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in the scream of starling
flight and pounded at the hulls

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of seeds to be set free.

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History licked the
asphalt with rubber,

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sighed in the windows
of abandoned barns,

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slumped in the wind-blasted
palms, groaned in the heat,

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and whispered its soft curses.

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I wanted my own history,
not the Earth's,

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nor the history of
blood, nor of memory,

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and not the job found for
me at Galdini Sausage.

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I sought my own, a
new bruise to throb

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hard as the asphalt that pounded
the chassis of my truck."

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That's the first
poem of section one

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in my book, which is a
sequence of narrative poems.

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