Gary Soto

Photo credit: by Mark Crosse/Fresno Bee/Tribune News Service via Getty Images as posted on https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/gary-soto

"Gary Soto is known for a body of work that deals with the realities of growing up in Mexican American communities. In poems, novels, short stories, plays and over two dozen books for young people, Soto recreates the world of the barrio, the urban, Spanish-speaking neighborhood where he was raised, bringing the sights, sounds and smells vividly to life within the pages of his books. Soto’s poetry and prose focus on everyday experiences while evoking the harsh forces that often shape life for Chicanos, including racism, poverty, and crime. In his writing, as Raymund Paredes noted in the Rocky Mountain Review, 'Soto establishes his acute sense of ethnicity and, simultaneously, his belief that certain emotions, values, and experiences transcend ethnic boundaries and allegiances.' Soto himself has said that 'as a writer, my duty is not to make people perfect, particularly Mexican Americans. I’m not a cheerleader. I’m one who provides portraits of people in the rush of life.'"

Source: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/gary-soto

Live Readings

Poems

After Tonight

Because there are avenues

Of traffic lights, a phone book

Of brothers and lawyers,

Why should you think your purse

Will not be tugged from your arm

Or the screen door

Will remain latched

Against the man

Who hugs and kisses

His pillow

In the corridor of loneliness?

There is a window of light

A sprinkler turning

As the earth turns,

And you do not think of the hills

And of the splintered wrists it takes

To give you

The heat rising toward the ceiling.

You expect your daughter

To be at the door any moment

And your husband to arrive

With the night

That is suddenly all around.

You expect the stove to burst

A collar of fire

When you want it,

The siamese cats

To move against your legs, purring.

But remember this:

Because blood revolves from one lung to the next,

Why think it will

After tonight?

- from The Elements of San Joaquin (1977)

Teaching English from an Old Composition Book

My chalk is no longer than a chip of fingernail,

Chip by which I must explain this Monday

Night the verbs “to get;” “to wear,” “to cut.”

I’m not given much, these tired students,

Knuckle-wrapped from work as roofers,

Sour from scrubbing toilets and pedestal sinks.

I’m given this room with five windows,

A coffee machine, a piano with busted strings,

The music of how we feel as the sun falls,

Exhausted from keeping up.

I stand at

The blackboard. The chalk is worn to a hangnail,

Nearly gone, the dust of some educational bone.

By and by I’m Cantiflas, the comic

Busybody in front. I say, “I get the coffee.”

I pick up a coffee cup and sip.

I click my heels and say, “I wear my shoes.”

I bring an invisible fork to my mouth

And say, “I eat the chicken.”

Suddenly the class is alive—

Each one putting on hats and shoes,

Drinking sodas and beers, cutting flowers

And steaks—a pantomime of sumptuous living.

At break I pass out cookies.

Augustine, the Guatemalan, asks in Spanish,

“Teacher, what is ‘tally-ho’?”

I look at the word in the composition book.

I raise my face to the bare bulb for a blind answer.

I stutter, then say, “Es como adelante.”

Augustine smiles, then nudges a friend

In the next desk, now smarter by one word.

After the cookies are eaten,

We move ahead to prepositions—

“Under,” “over,” and “between,”

Useful words when la migra opens the doors

Of their idling vans.

At ten to nine, I’m tired of acting,

And they’re tired of their roles.

When class ends, I clap my hands of chalk dust,

And two students applaud, thinking it’s a new verb.

I tell them adelante,

And they pick up their old books.

They smile and, in return, cry, “Tally-ho.”

As they head for the door.

-from Gary Soto: New and Selected Poems (1995)

Kearney Park

True Mexicans or not, let’s open our shirts

And dance, a spark of heels

Chipping at the dusty cement. The people

Are shiny as the sea. They turn

To the clockwork of rancheras,

The accordion wheezing, the drum-tap

Of work rising and falling.

Let’s dance with our hats in hand.

The sun is behind the trees,

Behind my stutter of awkward steps

With a woman who is a brilliant arc of smiles,

An armful of falling water. Her skirt

Flares. My arms flop, and we spin, dip,

And laugh into each other’s faces –

Faces that could be famous

On the coffee table of my abuelita.

But, I see, Grandma is here, at the park,

With a soda at her feet, clapping and shouting,

“Baile, hijo, baile!” Laughing, I bend, slide,

And throw up a great cloud of dust,

Until, like magic, the girl and I are no more.

Oranges

The first time I went out

With a girl, I was thirteen,

Cold, and weighted down

With two oranges in my jacket.

December. Frost cracked

Beneath my steps, my breath

Before me, then gone,

As I walked toward

This girl’s house, the one whose

Porch light burned yellow

Night and day, in any weather.

A dog barked at me, until

She came out pulling

At her gloves, face bright

With makeup. I smiled,

Touched her shoulder, and led

Her down the street, across

A used car lot and a line

Of newly planted trees,

Until we were standing

In front of a drugstore.

We entered, the tiny bell

Bringing a saleslady

Down a narrow aisle of goods.

I turned to the candies

Tiered like bleachers,

And asked what she wanted -

Light in her eyes, a smile

Starting at the corners

Of her mouth. I fingered

A nickel in my pocket,

And when she lifted a chocolate

That cost a dime,

I didn’t say anything.

I took the nickel from

My pocket, then an orange,

And set them quietly on

The counter. When I looked up,

The lady’s eyes met mine,

And held them, knowing

Very well what it was all about.

Love, I mean.

Outside the drugstore,

A few cars racing past,

Fog hanging like old

Coats between the wintry trees.

I took my girl’s hand

In mine for two short blocks,

Then released it to let

Her unwrap the chocolate.

I peeled my orange

That was so bright against

The gray of December

That, from some distance,

Someone might have thought

I was making a fire in my hands.

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