Twentynine Palms
two thousand eleven
a salty, old Marine
tried to tell me
the legend
of the Joshua Trees
he spat brown juice
from the shade into
the burning sand
muttered in his
midwest timbre:
the trees only grow
at the gates of heaven and hell,
and heaven is in Israel,
can I borrow like ten bucks?
looking back, though
California was heaven
and sometimes when
I’m drifting along
dusky Florida roads,
I imagine
the twisted silhouettes
of the Joshua Trees
extending their hands
in the place where
God could hear me
I
In Opposition of Poetic Tradition: A Poet’s Guide to Transcending Eurocentricity
Bianca Alyssa Pérez shows us in this essay how poets Laurie Ann Guerrero, Audre Lorde, and Gris Muñoz use free verse, personal experience, and linguistic subversion to challenge and transcend Eurocentric poetic traditions.
