Michael Torres is a Mexican American poet, professor at Minnesota State University’s MFA program, a teacher in the Minnesota Prison Writing Workshop, and graffiti artist who writes about his life growing up in Pomona, CA. His debut, An Incomplete List of Names, navigates late nights out with the boys, fence-hopping with busted sneakers, the scent of aerosol spray paint, being targeted by police, and all the laughs and heartbreak in between. He is a recipient of an NEA grant. We spoke on the phone about loyalty, process, and his favorite California memories. – Alan Chazaro
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First off, congratulations on the success of your debut collection and its inclusion in “NPR’s Best Books of 2020.” As a Mexican American, I feel that your book authentically represents what it’s like to grow up in California for many of us, and I saw myself reflected throughout in a genuine way that I don’t often feel. That’s huge! How does it all feel for you?
Michael: It’s been a real trip because there’s the initial release of the book when your family and friends are always there to support, albeit virtually, then, fortunately, there’s another audience that the book gets to after that. People reach out to me and tell me that they’re really vibing with it and it’s like, the book is having this whole life of its own and it’s something I’m really grateful for. You never know if that’s going to happen. I’m also glad that the book has vibed with people like you, Jose [Hernandez Diaz], and people whose work I read, Latinx writers, and especially Latinx male poets because there aren’t a lot of us, and because in the community it’s not seen as this masculine thing to be a poet. So to see you and Jose and others like us vibing with the book is special.
Alan: I read in a previous interview that your professor had suggested calling this book Love Letter in its early stages. But you ended up going with An Incomplete List of Names — which I think is more compelling, because it creates a layered sense of anonymity, secretness, exclusivity, and outsiderness all at once. Can you speak about the moment when this phrase came to you, and what inspired it?
Michael: The title of Love Letter — that idea — was coming from the fact of my relationship to homies and writing longingly for adolescence, which is a big part of the book. But the eventual title came from the penultimate poem in the book, “Elegy with Roll Call,” from a smaller section in that piece called “An Incomplete List of Names” that I wrote right around AWP 2016 in Los Angeles. It was my last year in MFA, and I flew back home from Minnesota a week early, and I wrote that poem before the conference, reflecting on my time in Minnesota and all the homies I’d grown up with. I was searching for a poem that could wrap up my thesis, and that poem just came out. For a long time, the book was supposed to be titled Homeboys and Slipped Halos which was a nod to the influence of Sonia Sanchez’s book, Homegirls and Handgrenades. I wanted to pay homage to that for a while, but I also don’t think that title fully encapsulated everything I wanted. Someone told me it felt like it was lacking the full picture. The more I started to revise and think of Minnesota and not returning home, the more that exclusivity and insider/outsiderness captured a larger scope, An Incomplete List of Names.
Alan: The title avoids easy binaries and provides a more complex entrance. As for the cover art, since you’re a visual artist this must’ve been particularly engrossing for you. It seems to be inspired by your past as a graffiti writer. Is there any story behind this?
Michael: As Beacon was working on the cover, I let them know that I had certain and specific feelings about it. I actually made a Pinterest page of images that reminded me of the book — visual representations of what the book meant to me. I sent that to them along with photos of me as a graffiti artist, some of which are on my website. I didn’t tell them they had to use it, but I wanted the designer to have a reference to see what inspired me. They understood it because they picked that style of graffiti lettering, which is kind of like graffiti on top of graffiti. When they showed it to me, I really liked all that, because you couldn’t pick out one particular name or thing. The title’s red and white font reminded me of Supreme, and I thought that was a cool hip hop feeling. I sent them the images because as I don’t want to get misrepresented by a flat or stereotypical representation..
Alan: I’m impressed by the book’s eclectic range of formal and stylistic features — as in the series of poems like “All American Mexican” and “Down” which are broken and remixed into fragments, then interspersed throughout the entire collection. What drove your decision to break up these lengthier poems into smaller sections that cycle in and out of the book rather than keeping them as singular epics?
Michael: To be honest, I sent my manuscript for consultation to the Loft Literary center and one of the first poets I worked with was Jude Nutter. She asked why I didn’t break up the longer poems to create section breaks, instead of having conventional section breaks. I felt there was no need for section breaks since so many of the poems are woven into each other. Especially with the “Pachuco’s Grandson” poems in which the speaker is very young, and since I didn’t want to proceed in a chronological order, I thought if I had them scattered in different parts of the book, it could help to call back the reader to this younger self. The “All-American Mexican” series was easier to move around because those poems were huge — it was just about finding where to put them.
Alan: In your notes section, you credit Compton rapper, Kendrick Lamar, as an influence. There’s a line in a song when he says, “depending on the way I feel I might kill everybody around me / might heal everybody around me” — and it felt perfect for your writing. I think this speaks to the dual energy that many young men of color must learn to harness: to heal/build or rage/destroy. How do you navigate these extremes in your work, which investigates masculine identity and the search for a more wholesome self?
Michael: I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately because of the new stuff I’m writing. There’s an unspokenness about violence because it’s a sort of language between men, and even when we’re teenagers we can understand it. You know, people think of violence as a last resort, but violence is sometimes a first resort, its own language. I keep remembering this — when I was 15 and my homie Miguel, my best friend, found out that I went to eat with his ex-girlfriend and this dude that she had started dating, and so Miguel was really upset. He saw it that way, but he didn’t express it in words. Actually, he punched me in the stomach and said, “Why you kicking it with the enemy?” I don’t know if I processed it back then because I didn’t have the language for it, but I didn’t even feel like I wanted to punch him back, because I knew that he was just so upset. It’s not healthy, of course, but he cared about me so much, and he was so upset about it all, that he hit me. Back then, I understood that as his way of caring, but since then I’ve grown to know this isn’t healthy — it’s just how we grew up. As a man, the only instance I’ve been able to feel beautiful is by being loyal. If you’re loyal you’re accepted and therefore beautiful in a way that you can’t ever really feel beautiful. A guy can be handsome, a guy can be a pretty boy, but a guy can’t really be beautiful. But if you’re loyal, there’s an acceptance that makes you feel beautiful.
Alan: I’m also drawn to the beauty of brotherhood as a beautiful act. I think there’s a separation between outsiders who don’t grow up in that environment and who see that level of loyalty as dangerous instead of beautiful, particularly when viewed by institutions or police — which you also write about, especially in poems about your incarcerated brother. It’s like we’re misjudged by these outside forces and often seen as presenting danger rather than being able to heal one another. But your poems are rooted in the love and tenderness that we share among ourselves as men, even when it appears to be violent.
Michael: I understand that other powers see it as dangerous, but they don’t recognize that we’re always up against a wall. What else do they want us to be if not dangerous? Look at where you’ve placed us. That might be why it’s sometimes difficult for men, especially brown men, to find friends in adulthood, especially if you’ve left home. The homies I grew up with, I can honestly say they would’ve died for me, and I for them. I can’t say that about other people and colleagues I’ve met since leaving — and I can’t ask them to do that.
Alan: There’s a certain wild beauty to that, even if it seems broken. Being expected to cause or receive harm to show your level of friendship is something no one asks for, but if you’re born into it, that’s a reality, and I do find that level of commitment forged among men of color, often out of necessity, as a form of beauty, which you illuminate in your poems.
Michael: Yeah, it’s high stakes or nothing.
Alan: Actually, one of my favorite poems is “Stop Looking At My Last Name Like That.” Your opening lines read, “Nothing in my life was crooked or broken. / Or potholed … Not poor / and unfortunate.” I really love that you’re challenging the stereotypes here and pushing back against some of the conditions that have already been presented and established by the speaker within the book itself. What do you see as the purpose and function of including this particular poem, and how does it complicate the thematic landscape you are writing about?
Michael: I wrote that poem while sitting on an AWP panel called “Writing From Below” — we were asked to talk about what it meant to write with our backgrounds and how it informs us, and I was down to talk about that and my teaching in prisons. But for some reason, the topic made me look back on my own poems and made me realize that it doesn’t always have to be hood shit. I wanted to write something that pushed back against my own work, and I just went after stereotypes that I wrote with, or through, or into, because I wasn’t sure how to navigate the white gaze back then, and which we don’t learn how to break out of until we get further in our craft. So I was just trying to call out these things so that my work could be more complex. There is a lot of truth in that poem, and there is some made up stuff that could’ve been true, because we aren’t a monolith and we’re very complex and layered and it’s not all gunshots. I definitely had fun calling out myself.
Alan: That really spoke to me, and I love how you were actively writing against a “single narrative.” There can be danger in writing with a single voice or single narrative for an entire community, and I appreciate how you called yourself out in that way.
Michael: In another poem called “Push,” I talk about a group of Mexican immigrants in a Home Depot parking lot and how I wanted them to like me, but I revised it later because there was some cliche shit in there about Mexican immigrants. The poet Sara Borjas read it and told me to cut that out. The last part of that poem became me trying to confront myself with these immigrants and expressing how I wanted to be on their side — but also because I’m American I might also fear them for no reason and I’m also privileged enough to not go through the things they have to go through. I’m very privileged and that’s just the truth. It was a moment where I had to think very deeply about my place and how I’m observing them, and how I wanted to be more involved in their community but I wasn’t.
Alan: That’s so important to be spoken about in the Latinx community. Even just being a U.S. citizen is a huge privilege that so many of us take for granted, and we don’t call it out among ourselves. The hierarchy of struggle within our group is extreme and there are different levels of struggle for immigrant groups. The way we might call out a white person for being toxic or uninformed, we also need to do the same for ourselves and others, even if they live in our neighborhoods or homes. We should hold ourselves accountable.
Michael: Yeah. When you call out the shittiness, you’re recognizing someone for being a full human, even if they’re messing up. It’s better to do that than to pretend that they’re not doing anything wrong. That just makes them seem like a flat character or incomplete person.
Alan: And that’s how your book felt. Nothing seemed flat or unaccounted for. You give the fullness and complexity. You write a lot about homies, about former loves, about family, about home in intimate details. Were there any poems or moments in writing these poems that were particularly difficult to write about, considering that these people might read them? How did you overcome that?
Michael: I wrote the three poems about my brother being locked up in quick succession and I never thought about how my brother would feel because he was incarcerated at the time. Then he got out and my sister gave him a copy of my book. I never felt odd about it because I’ve always tried to implicate myself. One of the poems that I wondered if my homie would say something is “Learning to Box” where Miguel confides in the speaker about how his father flirted with a cashier at the store. I feel like I might’ve painted his father in a negative — but honest — light. I was unsure how he would receive that, but again, I tried to implicate myself in the poem because I could have said something at that moment but I didn’t. He hasn’t said anything about it, and neither have his brothers, but because I care a lot about them I didn’t want them to think their dad is a bad person. You want people who read your book to know that everyone and everything is a lot more complicated. That poem was a hard truth for me to put on the page.
Alan: It’s impossible to capture and explain every angle to readers. We have to pick and choose certain aspects of people and memories. I wish we could give all our family members and friends that show up in our books their full dimensions, but that’s just not possible to do in a poem.
Michael: A successful poem will show that whatever you’re writing about becomes more important than any single character. It’s more about this feeling that you can’t let go of, something more important beyond the characters, even beyond the speaker. also, there’s three levels to it. The first level is your homies support you by buying the book. The second is them actually reading it. Third is that there’s a conversation. Once the pandemic is over and I go back to Cali, there’s conversations about what happens in the book.
Alan: Good art bridges people and tightens communities. Have you started working on anything new, or still marinating in the moment?
Michael: Towards the end of summer, I had written a series of prose poems after reading Jose Hernandez Diaz’s Fire Eater. I don’t know if they’re wack or not but I sent them out. That was fun because I wrote them as third person persona prose poems. I’m mostly working on a non-fiction project, what seems to be an essay in memoir — similar to the idea of beauty through loyalty. I have a rough draft of a 7,000-word essay that has to do with that and the brown body in general. As an artist you sometimes need to reinvent yourself, and not just give a part two of what you’ve already done.
Alan: These last questions are a lightning round about your California roots. I’m just going to give you two options and have to choose one. Ready? First: Oscar De La Hoya or Julio Cesar Chavez?
Michael: Cesar Chavez
Alan: Mustang 5.0 or Chevy Impala?
Michael: 5.0, for sure.
Alan: Top Dog Entertainment or Death Row Records?
Michael: Hmmmm … TDE.
Alan: Fourth: In-N-Out or other?
Michael: In-N-Out
Alan: Clippers or Lakers?
Michael: I want to say neither, but I guess the Lakers. I’m not really a fan because I’m short. There was a year when the Lakers won a championship, and I can’t remember which year, that’s how you know I’m not a big basketball fan, but I went with my homies and joined the celebrations. I remember running from tear gas, but I was never into basketball, never got picked for the teams so I held a grudge.
Alan: Nike Cortez or Chuck Taylors?
Michael: Funny. Cortez but I’ve never really owned either. When I was a kid I had a pair of Cortezes as a toddler, but my tia told my mom that gangbangers wear Cortezes so my mom stopped buying them. Chucks just hurt my feet, I’ve tried them on, they have no support. I bought PF Flyers once after watching The Sandlot but they were just like Chucks and I was disappointed as fuck.
Alan: Alright, this is the last one. California or everywhere else?
Michael: Cali. Cali all day.
Alan: That’s why I got love for you, man.
Michael: I was thinking of France, but then I was like nah.
Alan: At the end of the day, home is home, and I feel like your book really captures what home means, specifically to you growing up in Pomona, and that’s what I most appreciated about it. Thanks for your time and for being open, genuine, and down.
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Michael Torres’ An Incomplete List of Names was published buy Beacon Press on October 6, 2020. You can acquire a signed copy with original graffiti made by Michael by clicking here.
Doing Donuts in an ’87 Mustang 5.0, After My Homie Chris Gets Broken Up With
I want to argue for the stars but I find them missing
through this window splattered with mud. Tonight,
I sit shotty and do not ask Chris if he’s okay. This is
the kind of loyalty I know — how the Mustang
makes eights across a soccer field. I run my hand
over pennies Pepsi-ed to the center console. That photo
of his ex still blocks the speedometer and the next
few years of his life have already begun to carve
a cave. I pluck pennies into my palm. It doesn’t
take long enough for this story to burn through a field.
The safety belt shocks my collar. Chris turns and aims
for a gate without easing off the gas. I yell Fuck it
to whatever I can’t hear him say. And isn’t that why
I’m here? — to watch chain-links swell in his headlights,
to say You’re crazy instead of I’m scared. I disappear
the pennies with my fist.