Image: St. Paul, Minnesota: RNC 2008 (detail) © Joaquín Ramón Herrera
Juan Felipe Herrera was recently named the Poet Laureate of California; he wrote this poem for LARB in remembrance of 1992. The artist and photographer Joaquín Ramón Herrera is his son.
Perched on Nothingness
Broken sidewalk — bleach ragged
The tree to the right homeless
Man under the bush
There is a tower wood the hawk
Perched on nothingness
Fields overturned gauged reddish
The face
Of Rodney King his hand scarred
His gaze dubious television
My son J. lost too where is he
Decades now the flames
The question of race
Too many faces too many killings
Color dissipates only race remains
race beyond race — race
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