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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

guest post by Melinda Palacio

I was surprised, though I shouldn't have been, by a conversation I had with a literary agent who gave me some "free advice" and suggested I give up poetry and devote all of my creative energy to writing novels. As someone approaching the writing life from solely a monetary perspective, the literary agent just didn't seem to get it.

I'm very proud of my poetry publications and could not imagine a literary life without poetry. True, I'm building a literary career without the assistance of an agent and I write what I want, be it fiction, non-fiction, or poetry. Sometimes working with a small press is just the right therapy for a poetry-fearing world.

As someone who works in multiple genres, I never know what I'm going to write when I sit down with a word or image. Sometimes the form gets out of control and the poem I had in mind turns into a short story. A year ago, I decided to make a trip I had been avoiding. I joined my sister Emily and we visited our father in Folsom prison. The weight and importance of this trip didn't surface until several weeks later when I started writing about the experience.

In one weekend I wrote twelve poems about my prison visit. When I started sharing some of the poems with fellow poets, my friend Susan Chiavelli announced that I had a chapbook in the making. Several of Susan's questions led to more poems. By March, some of the poems were published in literary journals; by May, I submitted my chapbook to seven contests. On August 31, Arthur Dawson of Kulupi Press called to inform me I had won their Sense of Place Chapbook Competition. This great news came after finding out my novel Ocotillo Dreams had been accepted for publication by Arizona State University Bilingual Press.

I didn't know which stars were aligned when I received the winning news; I was happy to see my hard work paying off. In June, I received a scholarship to attend the Squaw Valley Community of Writers for a week of poetry, hiking and enjoying the natural beauty of the high Sierras. Squaw Valley is not too far from Folsom prison, and apparently, I hadn't finished my series of prison poems. Perhaps, I'll never be finished with the subject? During my week with the Community of Writers, I wrote one poem a day. For some poets, such as our poet Laureate, David Starkey, who committed himself to write a poem a day for an entire year, writing a poem a day seems like a piece of cake. Each day, I worried that I would come up empty handed.

Luckily, the creative juices kept flowing and on one of those days I wrote "Jail Bird Bop for Pops". The poem was a surprise and a success. In the editing process of Folsom Lockdown, Arthur and the editors at Kulupi agreed to include my new prison poem in the chapbook. Many poetry contests specifically state that you cannot add new poems once your manuscript has been accepted for publication. I was pleased to have such flexible editors. They also allowed me