Every sound is not a wolf

"The Sonoran Desert--that word sonoran, / It means to be full of sound, sonorous." Poet, short-story writer, and memoirist Ríos (Not Go Away Is My Name, 2020) prods the soundscape of the Southwest, forging deliberate and attentive paths in poems composed of couplets. Ríos repeatedly transforms the Mexican American borderlands, from the dreary neutrality of twilight ("We are standing in a gray hour, dusk or dawn-- / So tired but we cannot say") into a "ready feast, a continuing festival, a traveling circus of imaginary // Delights." Ríos wrangles a wealth of memorable images, from the strangely disorienting ("A downed mesquite, a pelican confused") to the simply striking: "The orange tree in the side yard is full of white blossoms." Turning his poetic eye indoors, Ríos apostrophizes household objects ("Mirror, I would recognize you anywhere") and remarks on their musical qualities, such as the "operatic soprano door hinge." Ever a poet of calculating purview, Ríos revels in the present, even as he casts a wary eye and ear forward: "The future will speak our words. / But there is another language ahead."