Forthcoming Books of Poetry in 2008:
The Roswell Poems (WordFarm Press)
You can order the book now! Visit: http://www.wordfarm.net/books/160226001X/author.php
Coming out in February, this is a 7 year project of research and writing coming to fruition. It’s a book length sequence about that mysterious UFO crash in the desert by Roswell, New Mexico. How did such an obscure town become the center of a major contemporary myth or crime scene? See new book blurbs on The Press Kit page. From one of the poems:
A crash may happen
quickly but its wreckage is ours forever.
Same-Sex Séances (New Sins Press): pre-order (due end of February, start of March 08): www.newsinspress.com
This book coming out in April was born because my readers asked for it, for one book to just focus on gay identity as claimed by Latinos mostly far from New York City. Many of the poems have been published, but they have never been gathered together before. They are autobiographical, fictional, sexual, smart and funny (well, to me!). All money will go to New Sins Press whose mission is to publish poets who challenge us, seduce us. From one of the poems:
AIDS hadn’t yet upstaged
our youth the everlasting yes.
By one of my favorite artists, Jack Balas, whose work is at www.jackbalas.com
The Buried Sea: New & Selected Poems (University of Arizona Press)
The history of my 25 years as a poet is presented in this chronological collection. The reader follows my growth as a young writer to someone who finally falls in love with his second language, English. Here are poems about pop culture, identity, gay identity, personae arguing with me, and love poems. For me, the poet must live in his or her actual community and not merely an abstract version of it. This is a brave self-portrait available around November 2008. From one of the poems:
Instead of rabid paparazzi,
I’ve been shot at when mistaken for
a cocked cousin who died months earlier.
Where I come from, this is a comedy.
image is by Laurie from the site:
www.lh3.google.com/.../
Examples of my poetry available online:
Agni Review Online: “Tequila Country”
http://www.bu.edu/agni/poetry/online/2006/arroyo.html
Ahadada Press: online chapbook, free, Don Quixote Goes To The Moon
http://www.ahadadabooks.com/content/view/52/39/
Beloit Poetry Review: “For A Bitter Veteran Student Who Is 24 Years Old”
http://www.bpj.org/poems/arroyo_bitterveteran.html
42opus: My Sex Life”
http://42opus.com/v4n1/mysexlife
mini-MAG: featured poet, guest editor is Jesse Glass
http://www.theminimag.com/may04/jesse_glass.html
The Montserrat Review: “Soap Opera”
http://www.themontserratreview.com/issue-02-98/poem-02.html
The Pedestal Magazine: “Radio Evangelist”
http://www.thepedestalmagazine.com/Secure/content/cb.asp?cbid=3611
Plum Ruby Review: Three Poems
http://www.plumrubyreview.com/dec03/poetry/arroyo1.htm
Poetry Foundation: “Always”
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/archive/poem.html?id=179260
PoetryMagazine.com: featured poet
http://www.poetrymagazine.com/archives/2003/Summer2003/arroyo.htm
Poetry Midwest: “First Hint”
http://staff.jccc.edu/schmeer/pm/pdfs/PM_7.pdf
Rock Salt Plum Review: “Days Instead Of Etrenity”
http://www.rocksaltplum.com/RockSaltPlumFall2004/RaneArroyo-DaysInsteadofEternity.html
Strange Horizons: “The Wandering: A Triptych”
http://www.strangehorizons.com/2007/20070924/wandering-p.shtml
Verse Daily: “Blue Visits”
http://www.versedaily.org/2006/bluevisits.shtml
Seven Poems Posted Online:
Contemporary Theology
A giant tree has fallen
in front of a cemetery.
The tree of the knowledge
of good and evil and taxes?
A lynching tree? An unloved
maple? A young man
waves me to slow down.
The living go to the right.
A sign: men working.
It should read instead:
Cemetery is closed for
theological repairs.
Is frailty always a danger?
Johnny Appleseed was
a prophet who never saw
dull men with buzzsaws.
A horrible hymn is sung.
I turn right, I turn right.
*
Döppleganger Tryouts (Birthday Poem)
A male model whose hobby is
looking
for comets, go-go boy going nowhere,
a painter from my past life in Paris,
an angel disguised as a stand-up comic,
a Zorro wanna-be with a tragic red
mustache, the Taino Avenger who is
a superhero and a scary Republican,
an arms dealer who wants to embrace
the world—why isn't the next group ready?
A Latin lover in Russia, a webmaster
afraid of spiders—next, next, next, now—
a rock & roll star who bleaches his karma,
a detective who quotes W.B. Yeats,
I must have a twin, someone more me
that I can trust to be my stunt double,
my bodyguard, the tall mirror that lies.
*
Gene Autry Drunk At A Wedding
Public frontier love: horses
also RSVP. Praise the wild.
And the west. And the bride
in chaps, chapter and verse.
In the bunkhouse, the moonshine
of moonlight and some man.
I’m his saddle, his riddle, his.
As vows wear vowels, I ride
until civilization isn’t real.
*
The Miniaturist
for a bee. Empty bank plazas are
blue as if having just surfaced from
seas beyond the power of our sight.
There are chickens on shy rooftops
that could be Braille on many elevator
doors. Rented windows wear painted
curtains as if plain jewelry never to be
taken off and never to be polished.
Introduced this week: uncorked cars
unafraid of the slow evils of the four
directions. But then, their vague
drivers don’t fear falling off the Earth,
their wheels as still as all wheels of
fortune. I just stare: no bird shadows,
no clubs, no cemeteries, no questions.
*
When You Were Mine
after Prince
We meet at the Green Goose
to plot the fall of poetry by
the well-groomed. Yes, we're
doing shots of free verse inside
the submarine of a Midwest winter.
*
I need man-on-the moon boots,
something to nail me to hero status,
to get me bedded. An epic takes up
free time. Chicago, when are you
going to have ex-lover sex with me?
*
Nothing like a dark bar to make us
feel dark. We're in lifeboats as
the ice age returns after its second
wind. I'm happy we're sharing
verbs in public, for a little while.
*
Virtual Armada
The Internet offers sonnets, the naked, quotes
from the dead who won't shut up, sluggish
downloads acting like drug mules, Quixote
as Cervantes' superhero, the inherited
Chapel at Boalsburg PA now off-the-beaten
path and wrath, personal ads with thumbnails
waiting for click magic, competing soundtracks
to my life, Caribbean hopscotch cruise ships,
photos of me at readings in places that must
be real after all, Gay Republicans seeking
spankers, headline hijinks, soldier cell phone
videos of waning warfronts, Pinocchio's penis
enlargement ads, cowboys seeking cha-cha-cha
chatter, and more than that, much more than
cornucopia's lavishness, more than the Horn
of Plenty's horniness, more than that, and when
will this virtual armada full of grinning gold sink?
*
Visiting E. M. Forster
After Maurice, all boathouses
have become secret arks.
Men without clothes may
prove class wars can be
shed. Why am I nostalgic
for a British world happily
detonated (I hope)? Lovers
are tender tinder, sometimes.
*
To be oared home, the are
of it, the red of it: or rowed
far from what is owed to
everyone else. Until then,
we must improvise our
embassy. A boathouse isn't
the worst of choices: life
preservers dangling above us.
