On This Side of the Desert

Alfredo Aguilar

• Publisher: The Kent State University Press
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9781606354063
• eBook ISBN: 9781631014239
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Poetry
• Index: Literature

Winner of the 2019 Stan and Tom Wick Poetry Prize

Natalie Diaz, judge

i say / my mother's name, / cristina & desert marigolds / crack through a boulder. / i say my father's name, martin / & all the novena candles / in the bed of the truck are aglow.

These lines from the book's titular poem "On This Side of the Desert" encapsulate the dominant themes of the collection: the power and meaning derived from the act of naming; the deep interconnectedness of Latinx cultures, a product of strong family traditions and an intimate relationship with the natural world; and a profound spirituality rooted in the sacraments of Catholic orthodoxy.

This poem, like many of those in Aguilar's collection is written from the perspective of a young boy growing up along the Mexican border. As Aguilar chronicles the unique challenges faced by border communities where surviving the desert is a perpetual struggle, and the distress of finding "an entire skeleton in torn clothes" is muted by frequency, he also modernizes the traditional pastoral form to encompass both beauty and trauma.

This debut book of poetry describes the experience of being raised in southern California as a child of Mexican immigrants in the shadow of the borderlands. Just as the borderlands are defined by the desert, so, too, are its inhabitants defined by their families, their culture shaped from the clay of the Sonoran desert and given life by the nourishing water of their ancestors. In these poems, the desert is recognized for what it truly is—a living, breathing body filled with both joy and pain.

ON THIS SIDE OF THE DESERT

Wick Poetry First Book Series

DAVID HASSLER, EDITOR
The Local World by Mira Rosenthal	Maggie Anderson, Judge
Wet by Carolyn Creedon	Edward Hirsch, Judge
The Dead Eat Everything by Michael Mlekoday	Dorianne Laux, Judge
The Spectral Wilderness by Oliver Bendorf	Mark Doty, Judge
Translation by Matthew Minicucci	Jane Hirshfield, Judge
hover over her by Leah Poole Osowski	Adrian Matejka, Judge
Even Years by Christine Gosnay	Angie Estes, Judge
Fugue Figure by Michael McKee Green	Khaled Mattawa, Judge
The Many Names for Mother by Julia Kolchinsky Dasbach	Ellen Bass, Judge
On This Side of the Desert by Alfredo Aguilar	Natalie Diaz, Judge
MAGGIE ANDERSON, EDITOR EMERITA
Already the World by Victoria Redel	Gerald Stern, Judge
Likely by Lisa Coffman	Alicia Suskin Ostriker, Judge
Intended Place by Rosemary Willey	Yusef Komunyakaa, Judge
The Apprentice of Fever by Richard Tayson	Marilyn Hacker, Judge
Beyond the Velvet Curtain by Karen Kovacik	Henry Taylor, Judge
The Gospel of Barbecue by Honorée Fanonne Jeffers	Lucille Clifton, Judge
Paper Cathedrals by Morri Creech	Li-Young Lee, Judge
Back Through Interruption by Kate Northrop	Lynn Emanuel, Judge
The Drowned Girl by Eve Alexandra	C. K. Williams, Judge
Rooms and Fields: Dramatic Monologues from the War in Bosnia by Lee Peterson	Jean Valentine, Judge
Trying to Speak by Anele Rubin	Philip Levine, Judge
Intaglio by Ariana-Sophia M. Kartsonis	Eleanor Wilner, Judge
Constituents of Matter by Anna Leahy	Alberto Rios, Judge
Far from Algiers by Djelloul Marbrook	Toi Derricotte, Judge
The Infirmary by Edward Micus	Stephen Dunn, Judge
Visible Heavens by Joanna Solfrian	Naomi Shihab Nye, Judge

On This Side of
the Desert

Poems by

Alfredo Aguilar

© 2020 by Alfredo Aguilar

All rights reserved

ISBN 978-1-60635-406-3

Manufactured in the United States of America

No part of this book may be used or reproduced, in any manner whatsoever, without written permission from the Publisher, except in the case of short quotations in critical reviews or articles.

The Wick Poetry Series is sponsored by the Stan and Tom Wick Poetry Center and the Department of English at Kent State University.

Cataloging information for this title is available at the Library of Congress.

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CONTENTS

Foreword by Natalie Diaz

Acknowledgments

I Woke Up in the Wilderness

When Bor...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Foreword
• Acknowledgments
• I Woke Up in the Wilderness
• When Born Wailing into the World
• Tonight Your Mother Is Running with Coyotes
• On This Side of the Desert
• On a Ranch My Father Broke Horses
• After Three Beers My Tía Talks about the Border
• My Mother Drove Us into Tijuana for Dentistry
• In the Second Month
• Borrando la Frontera
• My Mother Says Her Childhood Home Is Haunted
• When la Migra Caught My Father
• In Boyhood
• As a Child I Watch My Mother Sit in Limbo
• México-Tenochtitlán
• The Boy Considers Being Born Elsewhere
• Childhood Is a Realm
• The First Time I Went to the Cinema
• The Monsters My Parents Warned Me about Speak in Their Defense
• My Father Makes Me Hold a Hen
• Avowal
• Family History
• I Returned to the Altar
• Passing
• That Year
• Revision
• Yellow House
• Sueño
• Portrait of My Younger Brother with Birds
• I’m Told My Younger Siblings Look up to Me
• A Translation of the Word Corazón
• Mamá Chelo Stands at the Concrete Washboard
• Piecing Inheritance
• You Watch Your Father Leap
• Weld
• Through the Reeds
• Origin Myth