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    Home » Poem: The Many Deaths of Inocencio Rodriguez

    Poem: The Many Deaths of Inocencio Rodriguez

    June 9, 20222 Mins Read Lifestyle
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    This poem tells the story of Inocencio Rodriguez, the author’s grandfather, who was murdered in 1971. It’s a meditation on memory’s playback loop, as well as both the specific and general violence against immigrants and people of color. Rocha’s images are askew and arresting — the “street hangs from the sky” and summer has dark hair that is “lazily in a braid” — before the poem shifts to a home scene that propels us to a tragic ending and ruminates on details leading to Rodriguez’s murder. Poem Selected by Victoria Chang

    The Many Deaths of Inocencio Rodriguez

    By Iliana Rocha

    The street hangs from the sky, held in suspension
    by summer’s dark hair lazily in a braid,
    exhausted power lines. Someone has thrown a pair
    of sneakers, joined together by knots,
    over the wires, insistence of we walk away from.
    Or declaration of staying’s ease. What’s gathered
    overhead — recognition of a cloud-shaped hurt.
    Happiness won’t find a home here,
    escapes through each home’s latticework like papel
    picado chiseled down into a pair of doves.
    Hanging on the wall of my grandmother’s kitchen,
    a wooden scene of her kitchen, with its miniature pots & pans —
    on the tiny table, a vase of daffodils given
    to her before he left. This scene never
    expands. It stays its little size, despite the trial &
    want for it to expand beyond is diminutive
    yellow. Can we reposition La Llorona’s creek behind
    another house? What must stay pinned to the map
    like a butterfly: the view, the sugar factory where he worked
    when he at last modified Texas geography
    to stretch all the way to Detroit
    by letting his gun follow his steps in the grass.


    Victoria Chang is a poet whose new book of poems is “The Trees Witness Everything” (Copper Canyon Press, 2022). Her fifth book of poems, “Obit” (2020), was named a New York Times Notable Book and a Time Must-Read. She lives in Los Angeles and teaches in Antioch University’s M.F.A. program. Iliana Rocha is a Tennessee-based poet whose latest collection is “The Many Deaths of Inocencio Rodriguez” (Tupelo Press, 2022), from which this poem is taken. It is her second book of poems.

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