Vincent Toro | Rattle: Poetry

Vincent Toro

ALL THE MEXICOS

Fox news recently reported that President Trump is threatening to cut off aid to three Mexican countries.

I want to live in all the Mexicos. The Mexico of Bolaño’s nostalgic fantasia.

The Mexico where Eliécer Gaitán served up his allocutions. Somewhere

I won’t be interrogated for taking a sick day. Where my neighbor stops

by to bring me caldo. I’ll live in any Mexico. The Mexico Rugama

and Gioconda Belli called home. Or even one of the Mexico’s where

everyone speaks French Creole. Any Mexico will do. So long as I don’t

lose any more digits to these Arctic gales. My lover once told me

of a Mexico where there are no advertisements and you’d swear

the café was made of gold. Sign me up for that Mexico. How about

the Mexico where Romero delivered his last sermon? Give me the ceiba

trees or dunes of the pampas, the cane fields of the Mexico that bred

my parents. My ankles are swelling from the sulfuric acid in these streets.

And if I’m going to be underpaid anyway, then why not take my coins to

the Mexico that houses the canal or one of the Mexicos the Orinoco runs

through. I’ll set up shop in any Mexico that will have me, so long as I can

weep on plots of earth that can say I’m so proud of you, mijo. So ship

me to Ana Cristina Cesar’s Mexico that also longs for the perhaps.

Box me up and leave me in Vallejo’s Mexico with its startling Volcanoes

of repentance. Give me all the Mexicos of the hemisphere, pistol

whipped by United Fruit and still making wisecracks. I’ll take root

in any Mexico that knows the difference between the gutter and stars.

—from Poets Respond
April 7, 2019

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Vincent Toro: “This poem is a response to Fox new’s reporting that President Trump is threatening to cut off aid to three Mexican countries. This kind of yellow journalism imposes ignorance about the people of Latin America that can have a violent impact. I wanted to respond to that kind of deliberate ignorance that dehumanizes entire populations while also celebrating the people that Fox news is demeaning with this reportage.” (web)

Vincent Toro

GRATUITOUS SUPER BOWL POEM

for Mike Webster, 1952-2002

Were math still a function

he could execute, he might

round it up to twenty five

thousand times that he dug

his cleats into the dirt

at the line of scrimmage.

He might recall that each

huddle was followed by two

snaps: the first as his wrists

flicked the pigskin through

his oak-like ankles, followed

half a second later by the other

snap when his helmet cudgeled

his pate. Less than a decade

after his retirement he could hold

no thought much longer than most

plays last from hike to down.

His frontal region abraded, scar

tissue piled up behind his ever-

widening glabella like an offensive

line working against the clock.

Buried beneath the lesions near

his parietal bone, hidden inside

the calcified creases of his motor

cortex gleams reflections

of the four rings he reaped

by mistaking his mug for ram’s

horns, his sons’ voices chipped

off and collected in muddy

pockets between eroding

sutures. Those last years of life

his sentences fell like fumbled

passes. Without any savings

or medical insurance he had

to set his own rotten teeth

into his gums with crazy glue,

used electrical tape to hold

together two ramshackle

femurs. Fans on the street

might brush by him, nudging

him to share a locker

room fable, until he halted

them by pleading for someone

to help him figure out where

he lived. Even shaving

and brewing coffee became

tasks as impenetrable

as his shoulders once were

whenever he aimed them

like howitzers toward the end

zone. Swathed in a jersey

that swayed him to believe

he was steel, he left the field

as a hobbling mausoleum

decimated from two hundred

Sundays spent sacrificing

his skull to the gridiron

for a job that paid him above

the going market rate

to delete himself.

—Poets Respond
February 1, 2015

[download audio]

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Vincent Toro: “I wrote this poem in response to the omnipresent advertising campaign for the Super Bowl that happens every year around this time, having just seen ‘The League of Denial,’ a documentary concerning the NFL’s multi-million dollar effort to suppress facts about the number of players and former players who have died as a result of concussions and other football-related injuries, either by having acquired the early onset of diseases such as dementia, as in the case of Mike Webster, or as a result of players having taken their own life because they can no longer bear the suffering their illnesses has caused them, as in the case of Junior Seau and countless others. I find it troubling to see so much collective anticipation for the event in light of the lawsuits players have filed against the NFL and the league’s effort to hush the diagnoses of numerous doctors. The poem is an attempt to shed light on the negative impact that playing football professionally has caused for many young men by spotlighting the story of one particular player, one considered a legend in the sport.” (website)

Note: This poem has been published exclusively online as part of a new project in which poets respond to current events. A poem written within the last week about an event that occurred within the last week will appear every Sunday at Rattle.com. Our only criterion for selection is the quality of the poem, not its editorial position; any opinions expressed are solely those of the poet and do not necessarily reflect those of Rattle’s editors. To read poems from past weeks, visit the Poets Respond page. Interact on our Facebook group. To have a poem considered for next week’s posting, submit it here before midnight Friday PST.