ALWAYS
We met in proud Utah and wore opaque
vodka on those vague Sundays for the
unfaithful on your dangling back porch
while dreaming of the very New York
where we entangled for the last time.
Te quiero, you said there, my ears as
paths. You then vanished with a macho
because I had a lover, because we’d
never ride across Russia together in
that frozen train, because listening
to A Chorus Line all those weekends
didn’t teach us the foreign language
of our bodies, because of your career
as a model after years as a military
mannequin, because we never expected
adios to be our actual parting last word.
Because, because, and because. You
turned around to stare at me and I waved
back: I love you too. What an education:
poetry always demands all my ghosts.
Rane Arroyo
About Me
- Eduardo C. Corral
- Eduardo C. Corral is a CantoMundo fellow. He holds degrees from ASU and the Iowa Writers' Workshop. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Beloit Poetry Journal, jubilat, New England Review, Ploughshares, Poetry, and Post Road. His work has been honored with a "Discovery"/The Nation award and residencies from The MacDowell Colony and Yaddo. He has served as the Olive B. O'Connor Fellow in Creative Writing at Colgate University and as the Philip Roth Resident in Creative Writing at Bucknell University. He's the interview editor for Boxcar Poetry Review. He won the 2011 Yale Series of Younger Poets competition.
4 comments:
Oh my. Have we lost Rane Arroyo, too? When?
he died last thursday.
Although I never met Rane (I seem to remember communicating with him via email), I became an admirer of his work and posted a link to his website on my blog some time ago.
What a loss for poetry, and I can only imagine the loss those who knew him personally.
As our family wait for the memorial service today, I drink my coffee at MacDonalds reading such sites about my brother. These kind words chase away the ghosts of the past, give voice to the words never spoken, soften the loss shared by so many.
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