In Colorado My Father Scoured and Stacked Dishes

Eduardo C. Corral’s “In Colorado My Father Scoured and Stacked Dishes” (2012) shares a grown man’s memories of his father, an unauthorized migrant worker from Mexico who, while the boy is growing up, moves him about the American West looking for work. 

It is a touching portrait of the father. He is at once proud of his Mexican heritage but now driven to drink as he endures one menial job after another. Corral explores how the US in the new millennium wrestles with the implications of its centuries-long tradition of welcoming immigrants in search of an American Dream that promised unlimited economic opportunity and the dignity of hard work. 

To encourage a fusion of cultures and to help his English-only American readers empathize with what Mexican immigrants face in their new country, Corral experiments with translingual poetry: His lines move seamlessly between Spanish and English without italics, quotation marks, or footnote translations. This fusion compels the reader to transcend language barriers and thus feel more a part of the immigrant experience. 

Corral not only tests how language can bridge cultures, but he also explores the difficult family dynamic within the migrant community, particularly the relationship between a father and son. The poem also reveals the challenges faced by first-generation immigrants as they grapple with the painful reality of feeling out of place in their new country, while yearning for a sense of belonging elsewhere. 

Content Warning: The source poem and this guide contain references to racism.

Language Note: The source poem uses the terms anti-Mexican terms “Beaner” and “Greaser.” This study guide reproduces this language only in quotations.

Poet Biography

Corral was born February 25, 1973, in Casa Grande, Arizona, about two hours north of the Mexican border. His parents were first-generation Mexican immigrants. Although he maintained a love/hate relationship with school, Corral was intrigued early on by poetry. Corral would later acknowledge that poetry’s purity of language inspired him to experiment with the sounds of words, fusing his first language, Spanish, with the English he learned in school. 

He completed his bachelor of arts at Arizona State University in 1992. In college, he relished how creating poetry could expand elements of his own experience into fictive characters whose emotional tragedies could, in turn, speak to his readers. He completed graduate work in creative writing at the University of Iowa’s Writers’ Workshop. His first collection, Slow Lightning (2014), won the prestigious Yale Younger Poets Prize, an annual competition open only to unpublished poets. Corral was the first Latino poet so recognized in the nearly century-long competition.

Although it would be seven years before Corral’s second collection appeared, his poetry was regularly featured in numerous prestigious literary journals. His third collection, 2021’s Guillotine, won the Lambda Literary Award, which has recognized the best literary works of the LGBTQ+ community since 1989. He is known for his public readings, his voice giving life to the sonic effects of his experimental poetic lines. He has also held numerous teaching positions in creative writing since 2017 at North Carolina State University, Raleigh. 

Poem Text

Corral, Eduardo C. “In Colorado My Father Scoured and Stacked Dishes.” 2012. Poetry Foundation.

Summary

The poem tells the story of the speaker’s father, an unauthorized immigrant from Mexico who searches for work in the United States. He lives a nomadic lifestyle and endures discrimination as he works various jobs—branding cattle in Arizona, picking apples in Oregon, and washing dishes in a Colorado Tex-Mex restaurant, where his coworkers call him “Jalapeño” (Line 2). 

The father has a tough and defiant personality, shown through his actions and how he expresses himself. For example, when the speaker once asked for a pet goldfish, his father simply spat phlegm into a glass of water. The speaker reflects on memories he’s shared with his father, such as sleeping outside “in a grove of saguaro” (Lines 12-13) and borrowing his father’s clothes, connecting the speaker to his father’s heritage and his struggles to support his family.