BIO
Edward Vidaurre is the 2018-2019 McAllen,Texas Poet Laureate and author of five collections of poetry: I Took My Barrio on A Road Trip (Slough Press 2013), Insomnia (El Zarape Press 2014), Beautiful Scars: Elegiac Beat Poems (El Zarape Press 2015), Chicano Blood Transfusion (FlowerSong Press 2016), and Ramona & Rumi: Love in the Time of Oligarchy & Unedited Necessary Poems (Hercules Publishing 2018). Vidaurre has been published in several literary journals and anthologies. Vidaurre was the Director of Operations in 2018 for the Valley International Poetry Festival, moderator for Poets Responding, and founder of Pasta, Poetry & Vino - a reading series in the Rio Grande Valley. He resides in McAllen, Texas with his wife and daughter. He writes from the front lines of the Mexican-American borderlands.
Foto Novelas
Boxes and bags full of
El
Libro Semanal
Were traded between comadres
Las
vecinas and my mom would
Sit and read these little books
Where the women were drawn
To look like goddesses and the
Chiseled bodies on men brought out
Long sighs in women, funny what
A drawing can do with a little caption
Of what a man would say to a woman
To woo her
I read them and learned to write
In Spanish, I learned what women
Wanted from men to romance them.
But I was a kid, and forgot about
It all when I had my first brush with
Sweaty palms and butterflies in my
stomach,
My first crush.
Her name was Lupita.
And all I wanted to do was
Hold her hand and stare at the scar
over her eye