The Smoking Mirror

Naomi Quiñonez

In her second volume of poetry, Los Angeles-born Naomi Quiñonez enlarges our view of her city at the end of the millennium.  Her expanded vision of Los Angeles includes a mock-epic poem, “Mystic Mangoes Roll on L.A. Freeways,” with the choral line “Go Mango! Go Mango!”  Elsewhere she describes herself as a “born-again pagan.”  But behind her fascination with the forever-changing cityscape, Quiñonez remains true to her commitment to the Chicano experience of East Los Angeles where she was born.

“As a warrior of language, she aims to rupture silence and fill it with a new vitality.”—Francisco Lomeli

The world grows smaller
and our faces larger;
this strange proximity
makes us uneasy neighbors.
The centuries have held
like walls around us
the oceans—wet borderlands—
have floated dark diseases
into the veins of confused decades.
Iron fists have punched holes
into the stunned face
of each bruised epoch.
Now we must face the other,
now we must face ourselves.
The days like anger
have disappeared
into the vanity of each second;
our time has been enslaved like this
for 500 years of alternating servitudes;
we have bowed before too many false gods
and our prayers have made slaves of us.
             —from “Post-Colonial Contemplations”

6 x 9 inches • 80 pages • ISBN 0-931122-89-9 • $8.95