His work has received a lot of acclaim (including the UC Berkeley Regents Fellowship, go bears!), and he continues to teach and do activist work. I am happy that a Latino poet laureate has been chosen, since the diversity of voices in writing and art is part of what makes the USA an interesting place in which to create.
Now on to some poems. Usually I reformat anything I cut and paste from websites, since they tend to transfer poorly, but I am leaving Everyday We Get More Illegal as I found it, because the spacing is important to the reading:
Yet the peach tree
still rises
& falls with fruit & without
birds eat it the sparrows fight
our desert
burns with trash & drug
it also breathes & sprouts
vines & maguey
laws pass laws with scientific walls
detention cells husband
with the son
the wife &
the daughter who
married a citizen
they stay behind broken slashed
un-powdered in the apartment to
deal out the day
& the puzzles
another law then another
Mexican
Indian
spirit exile
migration sky
the grass is mowed then blown
by a machine sidewalks are empty
clean & the Red Shouldered Hawk
peers
down — from
an abandoned wooden dome
an empty field
it is all in-between the light
every day this changes a little
yesterday homeless &
w/o papers Alberto
left for Denver a Greyhound bus he said
where they don’t check you
walking working
under the silver darkness
walking working
with our mind
our life
Half-Mexican
Odd to be a half-Mexican, let me put it this way
I am Mexican + Mexican, then there’s the question of the half
To say Mexican without the half, well it means another thing
One could say only Mexican
Then think of pyramids – obsidian flaw, flame etchings, goddesses with
Flayed visages claw feet & skulls as belts – these are not Mexican
They are existences, that is to say
Slavery, sinew, hearts shredded sacrifices for the continuum
Quarks & galaxies, the cosmic milk that flows into trees
Then darkness
What is the other – yes
It is Mexican too, yet it is formless, it is speckled with particles
European pieces? To say colony or power is incorrect
Better to think of Kant in his tiny room
Shuffling in his black socks seeking out the notion of time
Or Einstein re-working the erroneous equation
Concerning the way light bends – all this has to do with
The half, the half-thing when you are a half-being
Time
Light
How they stalk you & how you beseech them
All this becomes your life-long project, that is
You are Mexican. One half Mexican the other half
Mexican, then the half against itself
Herrera has a large body of work and there are many more to look through, I encourage you to explore his writings. Something I liked about both of these was the lack of punctuation at the final. It made me think that the work was continuing elsewhere. (Like they say, a poem is never unfinished, only abandoned, so this is perfect).
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