Sometimes being a writer, you can be a little perverse.
And this book has a book-length poem.
It's about, I don't know, 160 pages long.
And then the second part of the book
is one poem that's a page long.
And I like it.
It's just-- it's just warped, and it feels good.
But I was thinking about my family.
I was the first of my family to graduate from college.
And I'm a--
I was kidding with somebody the other day
that I'm probably the first Urrea young man--
I'm not that young anymore, but I was--
of my generation or younger who doesn't have
a cross tattooed on this part of our skin or a gang tattoo
somewhere.
And my family is a sad family in a lot of ways
because a lot of the young men are warriors.
And they have no war, so they kill each other.
My nephew Luis, who was named after me,
was burned to death, for example,
by a rival Chicano gang.
And not to gross you out, though grossness works, too,
but when he was burned, his body arched against the ground.
And the only thing left of him were his shoulder blades
and the soles of his feet.
And my brother Juan, again, the one
related to this young woman, he never came home.
And they filed a missing person's thing with the police.
And the police told them, we think we have your son's body.
Would you come identify it?
And he went to the morgue thinking
they were going to pull out a drawer.
And they sat him down and set out a metal tray
this big with a towel on it.
And he knew it was Ricardo, Luis Ricardo,
because on one shoulder blade, he
had a tattoo of the Virgin of Guadalupe,
and on the other shoulder blade, he had his girlfriend's name.
So that's what was left of him.
And many other stories like that.
And I started thinking about that generation of young men
that I care so much about and love so much.
And when I meet them at readings, they're so bright,
and they're so creative, and they're so intelligent,
and they're so powerful, and there's nowhere to go with it.
And one of the guys once told me, you know, they call me--
I was telling the class today, they call me the poet.
You know, hey, poet.
Go to all the high schools, hola, la poet.
It's a poet.
And my nephews call me "Tío Poet."
[FAINT LAUGHTER]
She'd kill me for telling you this, but many of you
probably know my wife.
And her name is Cinderella.
Everybody thinks her name is Cindy,
but her real name is Cinderella.
And she tries to keep that a secret, but I
keep outing her in all my books, dedicated to Cinderella.
But we were at supper one time with the homies, the Urrea
homies.
And this one guy could not remember
her name was Cinderella.
And he keeps calling her "Tía Snow White."
[LAUGHTER]
Hey, Tía Snow White, which I thought was pretty cool.
And it was one of those-- this awful scenes where
all the Mexican families all gathered,
and they're trying to make a good impression on this wife.
And then he calls her Tía Snow White.
And everybody's like, oh, stop that!
And he said-- his answer was, hey, it's a fairy tale,
she's white, what's the problem?
[LAUGHTER]
It's true.
But talking to those guys, they think
it's really amazing that I write books.
They don't read the books, but they really
love it that I write them.
And they show them to people.
And I'll come home, and you know what those guys are like,
the vatos.
And they've got the little tiny sunglasses.
And the dudes, "Hola, el tío," with a cigarette.
Que pasa, ese?
Tío Poet, write any new books, tío?
Yeah, check it out.
Oh, cool.
And that's about it.
[LAUGHTER]
But it makes them happy.
So anyway, one of the vatos said to me
once, nobody's ever going to write a poem about us, ese.
And I thought, oh man, nobody's ever going
to write a poem about you guys?
So I wrote this for them.
And it's sort of my prayer for them.
It's called "Hymn to Vatos Who Will Never Be in a Poem."
And it's all the same exact syllable count
all the way through, so it's just a column of stuff.
So this is for my homies, "Hymn to Vatos
Who Will Never Be in a Poem."
All the vatos sleeping in the hillsides;
all the vatos say goodnight forever;
all the vatos loving their menudo;
All the vatos faith in la tortilla;
all the vatos fearing the alarm clock;
all the vatos, Wino, Jefe, PeeWee; all the vatos,
even the cabrones, all the vatos down por vida homeboys;
all the vatos using words like "ranfla;"
All the vatos who woke up abandoned; all the vatos
not afraid of daughters; all the vatos talking to their women;
all the vatos arms around their sisters;
all the vatos granting their forgiveness;
all the vatos plotting wicked paybacks,
All the vatos sleeping under mota; all the vatos
with tequila visions; all the vatos
they call maricones; all the vatos bleeding in the alley;
all the vatos chased by helicopters;
all the vatos dissed by pinches white boys;
All the vatos bent to pick tomatoes, all the vatos smoked
by Agent Orange; all the vatos brave in deadly classrooms;
all the vatos pacing in the prisons;
all the vatos pierced by needle lightning;
all the vatos who were once our fathers,
All the vatos, even veteranos; all the vatos
and their abuelitos; all the vatos proud of tatuajes;
all the vatos carrying a lunch pail;
all of vatos graduating law school;
all the vatos grown up to be curas;
All the vatos who never been to misa; all the vatos, Jimmy,
Spider, Tito; all the vatos can't say shit in English;
all the vatos lost their tongues in Spanish,
all the vatos looking at her photo, all the vatos making
love till morning, all the vatos stroking their own hunger;
All the vatos faded clear as windows;
all the vatos needing something better,
all the vatos bold in strange horizons; all the vatos waiting
for tomorrow; all the vatos sure that no one loves them;
all the vatos sure that no one sees them;
all the vatos sure that no one hears them;
All the vatos never in a poem; all the vatos
told they don't belong here; all the vatos,
beautiful young Aztecs; all the vatos, warrior Apaches;
all the vatos, sons of Guadalupe;
all the vatos bad as la chingada;
All the vatos call themselves Chicanos;
all the vatos praying for their children;
all the vatos, even all you feos;
all the vatos filled with life eternal, all the vatos sacred
as the sun God; all the vatos, Flaco, Pepe, Gordo;
all the vatos rising from their mothers; all you vatos,
you are not forgotten.
Woo!
[APPLAUSE]
Thank you.
I had an interesting experience, by the way, with that poem.
I read it at a high school, and there were all these rucas,
with the hairdo, the exploded hairdo.
And one of them said, so what about la rucas?
And I thought, oh, man, what have I done?
I left out the women.
So I came up with some typically mexicano
as like the rucas are already poems.
And so they're like, all right, all right, the poet.
[LAUGHTER]
So I'm going to try to make up to the rucas with my Teresita
book.
I hope that'll do it.