in a Tex-Mex restaurant. His co-workers,
unable to utter his name, renamed him Jalapeño.
...
Eduardo C. Corral is an award-winning American poet and teacher. His first book Slow Lightning was published by Yale University Press in 2012 as the winner of the Yale Younger Series Poets Prize. Corral was born in Casa Grande, Arizona to Higinio and Socorro Corral. He currently lives in Rego Park, Queens, New York. Corral studied Chicano studies at Arizona State University. He received his Masters in Fine Arts from the Iowa Writer's Workshop. His poems have been published in various journals including Black Warrior Review, Colorado Review, Indiana Review, Meridian, MiPOesias, and The Nation. His collection "Slow Lightning" was chosen by Carl Phillips for the prestigious Yale Younger Series Poets Prize. Corral is the first Latino poet chosen for the prize.He has cited Robert Hayden and Federico García Lorca as influences.)
To The Angelbeast
All that glitters isn't music.
Once, hidden in tall grass,
I tossed fistfuls of dirt into the air:
doe after doe of leaping.
You said it was nothing
but a trick of the light. Gold
curves. Gold scarves.
Am I not your animal?
You'd wait in the orchard for hours
to watch a deer
break from the shadows.
You said it was like lifting a cello
out of its black case.