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New Poets of the American West contributors Lynne Thompson, Melinda Palacio, and Teresa Chuc Dowell

Guest article written by Melinda Palacio

One of the most popular questions I am asked is, “Did That Really Happen?” The answer is different for every poem, short story, or scene from a novel. My poem, El South-Central Cucuy, published in New Poets of the American West: An Anthology of Eleven Western States, is easier to break down because this narrative poem is highly autobiographical.

If you are interested in realism, there’s a fine line between truth telling and the fictional dream. Raw, honest emotion must be infused in a poem or story or else all you have is an elegant exercise in language. Personally, I prefer to read stories or poems that have a huge dose of realism, making it difficult, even for marketers or academics, to distinguish between the fictional dream and what really happened.

Originally, El South-Central Cucuy, had a different title, was much longer, and focused on my uncle Ramon, the youngest of my mother’s brothers. The poem verged on epic length, a mini documentary about Ramon’s choice to follow my grandparents back to Del Rio and leave the place he had grown up in, South-Central Los Angeles.

Ramon was more like an older brother than an uncle eight years my senior. He was the baby of the family until I came along, the first granddaughter. Ramon and I were watching television and a show predicted the world would end in the year 2000. The statement made my uncle laugh. I didn’t understand what was so funny, but he pointed at me and said I wouldn’t have a life. Something I ignored at the time, but obviously never forgot.

Two years ago when I wrote and revised the poem, I started with Ramon’s laughter and mixed in one of his favorite themes, El Cucuy. My uncles, all eight of them, not just Ramon, enjoyed frightening me to death and hearing my signature horror-film scream. Ramon especially enjoyed turning up his eyelids and walking very slowly towards me like a zombie. He amused himself by turning off the lights leading down the long hallway towards the bathroom. After I had gotten too far to turn back, he would jump out of the darkness and say he saw the cucuy.

As a child growing up in South-Central Los Angeles, I d