#gary soto

[crushing-on-nico-di-angelo]

food as a love language...

what to cook right now, sam sifton // お仕事, @tomokohara // oranges, gary soto // rusty love from post partum portraits, tammy rae carland // @jacebeleren // iftar (breaking fast) (2020), dir. mike mosallam // @hakkiofficial // perhaps the world ends here, @diabolicjoy // @naomigoesferaldotcom // in the kitchen - helena janecic

[maybuds]

Between Words by Gary Soto (appeared in Poetry Magazine, January 1984)

[Text ID in ALT text]

[fallensapphires]

Holidays: Christmas in Orange

I peeled my orange

That was so bright against

The gray of December

That, from some distance,

Someone might have thought

I was making a fire in my hands.

[aemperatrix]

Gary Soto, The Plum’s Heart

[manwalksintobar]

The Wrestler’s Heart  // Gary Soto

I had no choice but to shave my hair And wrestle — thirty guys humping one another On a mat. I didn't like high school. There were no classes on archeology, And the girls were too much like flowers To bother with them. My brother, I think, Was a hippie, and my sister, I know, Was the runner-up queen of the Latin American Club When I saw her in the cafeteria, waved And said things like, Debbie, is it your turn To do the dishes tonight? she would smile and Make real scary eyes. When I saw my brother In his long hair and sissy bell-bottom pants, He would look through me at a little snotty Piece of gum on the ground. Neither of them Liked me. So I sided with the wrestling coach, But first there was wrestling, young dudes In a steamy room, and coach with his silver whistle, His clipboard, his pencil behind his clubbed ear. I was no good. Everyone was larger In the showers, their cocks like heavy wrenches, Their hair like the scribbling of a mad child. I would lather as best I could to hide What I didn't have, then walk home In the dark. When we wrestled Madera High, I was pinned in twelve seconds. My Mom threw me a half stick of gum From the bleachers. She shouted, It's Juicy Fruit! And I just look at her. I looked at The three spectators, all crunching corn nuts, Their faces like punched-in paper bags. We lost that night. The next day in Biology I chewed my half stick of Juicy Fruit And thought about what can go wrong In twelve seconds. The guy who pinned Me was named Bloodworth, a meaningful name. That night I asked Mom what our name meant in Spanish. She stirred crackling papas and said it meant Mexican. I asked her what was the worst thing that happened To her in the shortest period Of time. She looked at my stepfather's chair And told me to take out the garbage. That year I gained weight, lost weight, And lost more matches, nearly all by pins. I wore my arm in a sling when I got blood poisoning from a dirty fingernail. I liked that. I liked being hurt. I even went so far As limping, which I thought would attract girls.

One day at lunch the counselor called me to his office. I killed my sandwich in three bites. In his Office of unwashed coffee mugs, He asked what I wanted from life. I told him I wanted to be an archeologist, And if not that, then an oceanographer. I told him that I had these feelings I was Chinese, that I had lived before And was going to live again. He told me To get a drink of water and that by fifth period I would reconsider what I was saying. I studied some, dated once, ate the same sandwich Until it was spring in most of the trees That circled the campus, and wrestling was over. Then school was over. That summer I mowed lawns, Picked grapes, and rode my bike Up and down my block because it was good For heart and legs. The next year I took Driver's Ed. Coach was the teacher. He said, Don't be scared But you're going to see some punks Getting killed. If you're going to cry, Do it later. He turned on the projector, A funnel of silver light that showed motes of dust Then six seconds of car wreck from different angles. The narrator with a wrestler's haircut came on. His face was thick like a canned ham Sliding onto a platter. He held up a black tennis shoe. He said, The boy who wore this sneaker is dead. Two girls cried. Three boys laughed. Coach smiled and slapped the clipboard Against his leg, kind of hard. With one year of wresting behind me, I barely peeked but thought, Six seconds for the kid with the sneakers, Twelve seconds for Bloodworth to throw me on my back. Tough luck in half the time.

[russianded]

Femme Soto

[nevinslibrary]

Totally Youthful Tuesday

Christmas Eve can sometimes be a day that becomes unique and special totally aside from Christmas Day. And, in this book, that seems to be the case. It’s a perfect Christmas Eve for Maria. She gets to help her mother and cousins to make Tamales. Except, when her Mom takes off her ring, Maria tries it on. Uh, and then she realizes much later that the ring is no longer on her thumb (one of the problem with thumb rings sometimes). Her cousins have her back though, and they come up with a plan to find the ring (a hilarious plan).

It was such a fun book, and the art. Oh, wow, the art was just amazing as well.

You may like this book If you Liked: Growing Up With Tamales by Gwendolyn Zepeda, May Your Life Be Deliciosa by Michael Genhart, or Carla and the Christmas Cornbread by Carla Hall

Too Many Tamales by Gary Soto

[pegasusdrawnchariots]

extract from Oranges, by Gary Soto

Adam Clague (American b.1982), Cara Oranges and Coffee, 2022, Oil on board

[spoke9]

Gary Soto

Chiapas

There is the one who turns

A spoon over like a letter,

Reading the teeth-marks

Older than his own;

The one who strikes a match,

Its light flowering

In his eyes,

The smoke in his throat;

The one who opens the mouth

Of a dog to listen

To the sea, white-tipped

And blind, feel its way to shore.

At night

They walk in the streets,

The dust skirting their legs

Raw with lice

And the wind funneled

Through a doorway

Where someone might pray

For a loaf of good luck.

*

Somewhere the old follow

Their canes down

A street where the front

Pages of a newspaper

Scuttle faceless

And the three-legged dog hops home.

A door is locked twice

And flies ladder a scale of fish.

Somewhere a window yellows

From a lantern. A child

With fever, swabbed in oils

And mint, his face

Spotted like an egg,

His cry no different

Than the cry

That shakes the trees lean.

A candle is lit for the dead

Two worlds ahead of us all.

[iucemon]

[abookishidentity]

Speaking of similar names...

I was trying to think of a book I read that I thought was by Gary Paulsen. The book I was thinking of was called Baseball in April and it was actually by Gary Soto.

Who knew there were two authors with the same name. Maybe it was Gary Soto that I read a lot of.

I have definitely read the book as I recognize the first story.

I know I have definitely read two other Gary Soto books as I recognize the covers.

[elizabethgrofskyramos]

We read Gary Soto in the English classes I teach. When I saw that another English teacher had this book on her Amazon wish list, I decided to buy a copy.

It was a lot smaller than I thought it would be and a very fast read. I enjoyed it.

Everyone should read more poetry.

[puppycharmz]

"Someone might have thought

I was making a fire in my hands"

(sketch and pre-render versions under the cut)

[graphicpolicy]

Copro Gallery Celebrates Hellboy’s 30th Anniversary with an Art Show Curated by Gary Deocampo

Copro Gallery Celebrates Hellboy’s 30th Anniversary with an Art Show Curated by Gary Deocampo #mikemignola #hellboy

2024 marks the 30th anniversary of one of the most influential independent comic characters in pop culture: Hellboy. Mike Mignola’s iconic character has inspired artists working in every medium for decades. To celebrate Hellboy and Mignola’s legacy, curator Gary Deocampo has assembled a group exhibition with over 40 artists paying tribute to Hellboy with paintings, drawings and sculptures. The…

[thebowerypresents]

Ministry & Gary Numan – Terminal 5 – March 19, 2014

A pair of highly influential acts — Chicago industrial rockers Ministry and English synth-pop godfather Gary Numan — brought their North American tour to Terminal 5 on Tuesday, the first night of spring.  

Photos courtesy of Silvia Saponaro | @Silvia_Saponaro