Going Home Away Indian

Leo Romero

Leo Romero’s collection Going Home Away Indian strikes a hot fusion between dreams and reality, humor and pathos, the traditional and the skewed. As the introduction by writer Joseph Somoza states, “(Romero’s) romantic, zany imagination working through a language that is simple and understated—almost flat in places—concocts a poetry that makes one laugh and wonder, often simultaneously.” Romero fashions his own modern myths and peoples them with characters like Marilyn Monroe Indian and Skeleton Indian. These dead but still very vital characters dream, lust, and wander through the landscape of the Southwest. Romero’s poems are funny, haunting, and well worth reading. Ahsahta Press also published Romero’s 1981 book Agua Negra.

Leo Romero was born in 1950 in Chacón, New Mexico. His first published poem appeared in a 1971 publication of New Mexico Magazine. Romero graduated in 1973 with a B.A. in English from New Mexico State University, following with his M.A. in English in 1981. His volume Going Home Away Indian appeared in 1990 from Ahsahta Press. Today Romero owns and operates Leo’s Books in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

A sample poem from the book

Marilyn Monroe Indian

She’s an angel

Marilyn Monroe Indian

She’s an angel

See those lips

Angel lips

Always her mouth

slightly open

Her lips moist

Even in this

dry country

Marilyn Monroe Indian

is as pale white

as dry desert clouds

That’s what you imagine

when you first see her

But she’s a skeleton

Can't you see

Like Skeleton Indian

She’s been dead

twenty years

and more

Her lips are a mirage

you can say

Men dying for love

spot them right away

They want to drink

of her lips

Be made whole again

In their eyes

She is the perfect

beauty

And Marilyn

At first she is

gladdened

by their wanting her

But then

her mood changes

she grows depressed

All she can do

is flirt with them

Nothing more

is possible

They are alive

and she is dead

She would kill herself

at the impossible

situation of it all

if she wasn’t

already dead