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Filled with the nuanced beauty and complexity of the everyday—a pot of beans, a goat carcass, embroidered linens, a grandfather’s cancer—A Tongue in the Mouth of the Dying journeys through the inherited fear of creation and destruction. The histories of South Texas and its people unfold in Laurie Ann Guerrero’s stirring language, including the dehumanization of men and its consequences on women and children. Guerrero’s tongue becomes a palpable border, occupying those liminal spaces that both unite and divide, inviting readers to consider that which is known and unknown: the body. Guerrero explores not just the right, but the ability to speak and fight for oneself, one's children, one's community—in poems that testify how, too often, we fail to see the power reflected in the mirror.
"Guerrero’s poems weave in and out of light and shadow, good and evil, the sublime and the sorrowful, creating a tapestry that is wholly Texas. . . . A Tongue in the Mouth of the Dying evokes the mysteries of a people—Mexicans and Texas Mexicans alike—who have the power to astonish with their fortitude, or disillusion with their inexperience; the beauty of Guerrero’s collection is its ability to do both so fluidly." —Texas Books in Review
A native of South Texas, Laurie Ann Guerrero is the author of Babies under the Skin, which won the 2008 Panhandler Publishing Chapbook Award. Her poetry and criticism have appeared in a number of journals. She teaches for the MFA Program at the University of Texas at El Paso, University of the Incarnate Word, and Palo Alto College in San Antonio, Texas.
Acknowledgments
Introduction to the Poems by Francisco X. Alarcón
Preparing the Tongue
Part I
One Man’s Name: Colonization of the Poetic (i)
Sundays after Breakfast: A Lesson in Speech
Bluing the Linens
Las Lenguas
Summer
One Man’s Name: Colonization of the Poetic (ii)
A Meal for the Tribe
One Man’s Name: Colonization of the Poetic (iii)
Yellow Bird
Little Mexican Pot
Turnips
Babies under the House
One Man’s Name: Colonization of the Poetic (iv)
One Man’s Name: Colonization of the Poetic (v)
Roosters: Homecoming
Esperanza Tells Her Friends the Story of La Llorona
Ode to El Cabrito
Stray Cat
How I Put Myself through School
Morning Praise of Nightmares, one
Morning Praise of Nightmares, two
Part II
Sundays after Breakfast: A Lesson in Cotton Picking
Put Attention
One Man’s Name: Colonization of the Poetic (vi)
Breasts
Ode to My Boots
Ode to a Skein of Red Embroidery Thread
One Man’s Name: Colonization of the Poetic (vii)
Wooden Box
Black Hat
One Man’s Name: Colonization of the Poetic (viii)
Mr. G’s Collection
Cocooning
Babies under the Skin
Pinedale, CA
Like Jesus
When I Made Eggs This Morning
Stones
My Mother Woke a Rooster
My Mother Asks to Be Cremated
My Mother Will Take a Lover
Ancient Algebra
One Man’s Name: Colonization of the Poetic (ix)
The Alchemy of Mothering
Early Words for My Son
On Blinding
Birth Day
Notes