I would like to read one more poem.
And the poem that I'm going to read
is called "Encarnación," which is a very important poem
in this book because I wanted to having their reprieve from all
the grinding of the sausage on a daily basis.
Encarnación means is like incarnation.
Encarnación.
And with this being my last poem,
I would like to say again, thank you
to the University of Arizona Poetry Center
and thank you for being here this evening.
I've had a wonderful time me and my esteemed colleagues.
And also thank you to the University of Arizona
press and their staff who published
my first book of poems.
"Encarnación."
"My friend and I sat on the fine, white sands of the beach.
We built a small fire to roast nopales and jalapeno peppers
from the farmers' market.
I had a stack of corn tortillas wrapped in pink, butcher paper
and two ice cold bottles of horchata in a Styrofoam cooler.
Guillermo roasted the jalapeno peppers.
He talked about our work at Gardini Sausage.
He most liked grinding the meat, and he showed me
how to crack open the frozen boxes across my knee
and to push the trim through the grinder in one swift motion.
The nopales and the jalapenos hissed.
Their roasted skins looked as brittle as my scabbed knuckles
that cracked and burned at work each time
I pushed pork through the grinder.
Guillermo sliced the nopales into strips
that we put into the tortillas.
I added jalapenos.
We opened the horchata, we ate and the food was good.
A sweet jalapeno burn that burned nothing but our hunger
and our talk of work.
I leaned back on my elbows and stared at the blue waters
rolling gently.
I saw, only slowly at first, the white cloak
of healing afloat on the tops of the waves.
And that was when I told Guillermo,
"Let's swim," but Guillermo lay asleep in the sand.
I stood, unbuttoned my guayabera,
took off my boots, jeans, socks and charged the sea.
But the sea, as if to make me prove my faith,
knocked me down and I breathed, lifted my head from the sand
and then I was swimming.
The ocean touched my tongue and sank deep
as the pork in the paws of my skin.
I was alone between two waves, afloat on my back
in the palm of the Pacific.
And for a moment, because nothing else mattered,
I closed my eyes and listened.
Water under the birds.
The wind.
I heard myself breathe and in my knuckles
I smelled only the salt."
Thank you.