Juan Delgado: California Poets Part 8, Five Poems
Juan Delgado
January 8th, 2025
California Poets: Part VIII
Juan Delgado
Five Poems and Artwork
A Freeway’s Concrete Certainty by Juan Delgado (11/3/2024) (With photography by Thomas McGovern)
1.
In the curves of a freeway, we sink the faster we press.
A motion inside the guardrails tugs,
our seatbelts embracing us,
a rush of dust alongside us.
We merge our way
on bent knees and locked jaws.
Our foot pedals are steady as rhymes,
fixed on the best routes.
Our plates are
personalized as chiseled Roman headstones.
A freeway prepares us for a fast end.
Being alone with others is a highway’s code,
a symmetry we plunge into and veer from.
We trail pared down orders
guiding us along the boundaries of our lanes.
Our maneuvering is who we are: the more
we cruise, the more we are pulled in,
and the less we grasp.
Yet, the freeway
is a game allowing us to extend beyond
the pointing signs, even the times
we space out and erase our journey,
a trek of being on the loose,
a time gap,
we still find our way.
Though possessed by our routes and secure
in our terrain, we are more than buckled in.
Too at ease in our lane, in a hub binding us
with sand and gravel, keeping us in pace
with our daily quests, we are easily consumed,
snaring one another and exhausted in gridlock.
Keeping ahead of the rush hour is our madness.
2.
I surge with the flashes of metal and glass,
with the durable rubber squeaking below.
Overtaking slower cars, I create a safety buffer
gliding by and sunbathing half of me.
Inwardly, am I unlike others? Yet,
are we interchangeable in motion?
At the busiest interchange leading home,
a bridge’s shade cuts off my vista.
Unabashed horns, squinting windshields,
the shadows of cars hitching and unhitching,
we focus on the space between bumpers.
Someone can hit the brakes at any time.
The limbs of brutal collisions are the skid marks
that crisscross and reveal their road’s end.
Whatever has us emerging also has us exiting.
We are a spirited flesh at a commercial scale.
3.
In our high-speed gears,
we are inside
the roaring tunnels of our city’s freeways,
stretching to adjacent streets and canyons.
On pace, gophers expand
their tunnels beyond our fenced-in city.
We, too, are on tracks, repeating our efforts,
and the lanes of asphalt streaming backward are
pulling us into smaller versions of ourselves.
In my high-speed gears, I stop
changing my story,
a turntable spinning without songs.
In front and fast approaching me,
a banner of pending bills spreads across the sky.
Here I go again—The emptiness of drive-thru food fills me.
Here I go again—I relocate to a not so quiet street.
In high speed, unfolding what is ahead
and what is behind, I mind the gap between us.
4.
Where there is no doubt there is no freeway either. Still, I am at ease on the freeway when the lanes are almost empty, free of the burden of us. My lane narrows the night to a pair of headlights. With my steering wheel steadying my hands, I merge, going under the cracked bellies of underpasses and bridges, their pillars, rebar reinforced for the sustained shaking. When the freeway is a sanctuary for my impulses, my hands gripping down on the steering wheel is the jolt of certainty I need.
5.
The local is more than the grit
of a mini mall’s adjoining countries and the odors
of Tacos de Ensenada, the live eels of a Thai market,
and the clothing racks of a thrift store.
Now the local links to the local,
and our freeway is a veil
not softening our faces enough.
We glimpse at off ramps the way we turn
toward our wristwatches, timing our miles.
The concealed and faint fingerprints
of our rearview mirrors also hold time.
Our crusade is chasing down time,
and we try to guard ourselves
from the daily pace we cast upon
the ones we leave and return to.
The on-coming horizons are our windshields.
Note on collaboration:
Poet Juan Delgado and Photographer Thomas McGovern have been collaborating for over a decade, first writing Vital Signs, a book about their city of San Bernardino and winner of the Before Columbus Foundation’s American Book Award.
Their artwork has been displayed throughout galleries in California, and they describe their artwork as photopoetic, a mixture of handmade signage, concrete poetry, and photography. Their artwork on the citrus industry is an example of their artistic collaboration. See the links below:
Juan Delgado is Professor Emeritus in the English Department at California State University, San Bernardino, where, in addition to his professorial duties, he chaired the English and Communication Studies Departments and served as the university’s interim provost. His collections of poetry include Green Web (1994), published by the University of Georgia Press and selected by poet Dara Weir for the Contemporary Poetry Prize; El Campo (1998), a collaboration with the Chicano painter Simon Silva and published by Capra Press; and Rush of Hands (2003), published by the University of Arizona Press. His most recent book, Vital Signs (2013),was a collaboration with photographer Thomas McGovern and won the Before Columbus Foundation’s American Book Award. One can find a sample of his poetry and a critical essay on his last book at the Poetry Foundation: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/juan-delgado. In recent years, he has presented his photopoetics and signage throughout southern California in museum exhibitions such as Más Allá del los Fencesat the Peppers Gallery in Redlands, 2017. Manos, Espaldas y Blossoms, a collaborative art project with Thomas McGovern featured their artwork and poetry in the groves of the California Citrus State Historical Park, 2018. Sign Language, a mixed media exhibition at the CSUN Art Galleries, featured the collaborative work of McGovern and Delgado, and the artwork of Amando Lerma and Carlos Ramirez, aka "The Date Farmers." In 2023, he won the California Established Artist Award for his Concrete Poetry.
Comments