Alan Chazaro

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BIO

Alan Chazaro is a public high school teacher pursuing his MFA in Writing at the University of San Francisco. He is the current Lawrence Ferlinghetti Fellow and a graduate of June Jordan's Poetry for the People program at UC Berkeley. Recently, his work received an AWP Intro Journals award and appears or is forthcoming in Huizache, The Cortland Review, Borderlands, Iron Horse Review, Juked, and others.


http://agchazaro.wixsite.com/poetry

Abuelo’s Example

 

At 75 he still dances
and flirts with women
half his age, hulks
around el centro with a fist
half-cocked
as if he could knock the teeth
down another man’s throat.
He can barely hobble
but captains a Ford Bronco
across unmarked freeway lanes
in Xalapa, flipping
off drivers who tell him
to get the fuck off the road.
A firebreather, he once stopped
mid-traffic and caned himself
out of the driver’s seat
to confront a teen
who was honking
from behind. That’s abuelo. Darker
than the other side
of a summer day. He never
learned English, refused
to visit us in the U.S. Hasn’t
crossed any borders, didn’t want to,
so porque chingada
would he do it now?

© The Acentos Review 2016