Poetry Magazine, Featured Poet: Rane Arroyo, Summer 2003

Poetry Magazine

Rane Arroyo

USA

Rane Arroyo is the author of Columbus's Orphan (JVC Press), Pale Ramón (Zoland Books), Home Movies of Narcissus (University of Arizona Press) and the chapbooks: The Naked Thief, The Red Bed, The Television Poems, and Death Cab for Cutie. Arroyo won the prestigious 1997 Carl Sandburg Poetry Prize for his poetry book The Singing Shark (Bilingual Press). He has also won a
1997 Pushcart Prize for the poem "Breathing Lessons." Other awards include the Stonewall Books National Chapbook Prize for The Naked Thief; The Sonora Review Chapbook Contest Award for The Red Bed; The George Houston Bass Award for the play, "The Amateur Virgin"; and the Hart Crane Memorial Award for the poem "Le Mal de Siam." He is currently the director of creative writing at the University of Toledo. He can be contacted at rane.arroyo@utoled.edu or RRArroyo@aol.com . His identity as a Latino, Gay and Midwest writer has taken him recently to readings and voyages to Montreal, Chapel Hill, Austin, Owensboro (Kentucky), Palm Springs, Chicago, London and many more places.

Rane Arroyo is a leading Puerto Rican poet and playwright who has also found readers and audiences outside of his ethnicity. He was born in Chicago, a first generation Latino who learned English as much in the world as he did at school. Arroyo received his Ph.D. from the University of Pittsburgh where he wrote his dissertation, Babel USA: A Writer of Color Rethinks the Chicago Renaissance.

He currently a professor at the University of Toledo where he is Director of Creative Writing. Previous work has included arts management, hospital billing, a variety of odd temporary assignments and factory work. Work seems to be an
important force in Arroyo’s life for he has been prolific in his writings in many genres.

Arroyo’s plays have been well received and have been featured in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Pittsburgh, Cleveland and other cities. They have been anthologized and published in such major magazines as Bellingham Review, Kenyon Review and Xavier Review. His plays have been showcased in many festivals, including the New Works Festivals in Pittsburgh, Cleveland and New
York City. He has completed a new work called Blood Never Rusts which was funded by the Greater Toledo Arts Council.

He is better known as a poet. Arroyo won the prestigious 1997 Carl Sandburg Poetry Prize for his book The Singing Shark (Bilingual Press). He has also won a 1997 Pushcart Prize for the poem “Breathing Lessons.” Other awards include the Stonewall Books National Chapbook Prize for The Naked Thief; The Sonora Review Chapbook Contest Award for The Red Bed; The George Houston Bass Award for the play, “The Amateur Virgin”; and the Hart Crane Memorial Award for the poem “Le Mal de Siam.” He is also the author of Columbus’s Orphan, Pale Ramón, and the chapbooks: The Naked Thief, The Red Bed, The Television Poems, and Death Cab for Cutie. A new poetry collection, Home Movies of Nacissus, has been published by the University of Arizona Press.

“The Rane Arroyo Papers” were established at El Centro de Estudios Puertorriqueños at Hunter College (CUNY) in 1992 and held there until 2002. He is also part of the Ohiana Library Association’s Ohio Author series. Arroyo has been writer in residence at Brown University and the Western Pennsylvania Writer’s project.

FOUR LATINOS, ONE CITY

Daniel, thrown out by your parents
and their puffed santos, you who thrived
secretly in a storage locker palace
after salsa clubs, handsome heartbreak:

have I missed your obituary?
*
Arturo, blind author, the one who says
"imagine-only a small part of this
continent has been graced by parrots,"
you're an Old Testament without

spin doctors, a wearer of lightning
and thunder without looking the elder.
Dismissed by some as an AIDS Chihuahua
junkyard dog, you laugh without permission.
*
Libaye, amigo, my New York has
always been about death: first,

the SIDA sideshows. Now, one by one,
writers are vanishing. For example,

Charles Henri Ford. This Boriqueño
had tea with him and Indira in the Dakota

of John Lennon's assassination. Charles
was a prophet still gossiping about Peggy

Guggenheim. He's gone, another urban
ghost. Even the buildings unthread,

yield to historical forces that will steal your
youth long before you can misspend it.
*
Illegal Impression

Riding in the back of Chaco's truck,
America is beautiful as it recedes,

winks back. I wish for the company
of any of my dead dogs, but the moon

will do. Look, the skyscrapers look
like fingers aching for a palm.

JULIO'S WRITER'S BLOCK

I'm Jude the Obscured with
his train wreck of suitcases,
books and gin. The hoopla

of my heretical arrival takes up
much space. The cuckolded can
use the correct salad fork, drink.

Eyeless potatoes wink at me and
jitterbug jello is out of breath.
We talk of big gun destroyers

named after beautiful women.
We agree to backyard our martinis
which are stronger with tree shadows

in them. Lightning bugs smuggle
the sun past twilight. Mosquito
bites rise on my arm like new

islands that thrive on lava spills.
When I'm back in my room-mine?-
I think of stainglasses in which

Christ pulls endless rubies from
His Heart. I sleep naked just
to remember life before literature.

ACCIDENTAL EXILES IN LONDON

Strolling through genteel
gardens contested by dogs,
abandoned old women and
peace activists in leather,

it's not America I miss, but
Puerto Rico. A passing truck
blasts Ricky Martin's "Living
La Vida Loca." I'm returned to

Bloomsbury where they sell
Virginia Woolf burgers. I'm
dizzy (do men faint?) but press
towards the British Museum.

A faceless stone mummy blocks
my path. Superstitions trump
advanced degrees. I retreat,
stumble into Virgin Records'

Superstore and here is Ricky
again! Amigo, we're sad
ambassadors from a country
that doesn't exist. Will it ever?

"I'M NOT A FEMINIST, BUT"
for Jamie Barlowe

Reading Ovid during a heat wave,
I wince at how many women are
punished for their beauty. This is

the era of the mini bikini, the only
gift the atomic bomb brought to
the darkening ages. These days,

we do not turn girls into cows,
trees or constellations-except
in Hollywood. We also airbrush

supermodels so they have no links
to apes, Christmas tree virgins or
witches with legs locked on brooms

that rivals turn into crosses. Instead
of transformations, we have daytime
makeovers. Instead of Jove and

his jealous wife, we have celebrity
scandals. Our silicone nuns wage
war against time and the mirror.

The heat index is 110° and we still
are worried about appearances, still
overdressed in myths without mercy.

MAYBERRY, RFD

Not even one illegal Mexican
in the body shop? No Guatemalan
maid at One Hour Motel? Not

a Puertorriqueña owning
a Tex-Mex restaurant? How
white is white? Poor Opie,

taught to fear jalapeños.
Even in imaginary America,
America has to be imagined.