Arizona Poets is a series featuring 20 poets from Arizona in honor of our 60th Anniversary. These poets have all visited the Poetry Center and recordings of those visits are available in our audiovisual archive, Voca. Click here to learn more about our anniversary and here to see the rest of this series. 

Eduardo Corral is the author of the poetry collections Guillotine, which was longlisted for the 2020 National Book Award, and Slow Lightning, which won the Yale Series of Younger Poets prize in 2011. His work has been recognized with a Whiting Award and a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship. A son of Mexican immigrants, Corral was born in Casa Grande and attended Arizona State University.

See more of Corral's work on Voca.

IN COLORADO MY FATHER SCOURED AND STACKED DISHES

 

in a Tex-Mex restaurant. His co-workers,

unable to utter his name, renamed him Jalapeño.

 

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 wasn’t 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. César Chávez

 

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.

 

From Slow Lightning. New Haven: Yale University Press, ©2012. Reproduced by permission of the author.