Ecopoetics Along Shorelines

Much of Rodriguez’s poems occur on the bridge between spaces, people, and culture. In his poems, Rodriguez bridges language. He mixes English with Spanish: “wanted to be buried / with Sinaloenses / dancing on his grave / to the tune of / ‘La Ultima Paranda.'” He creates spaces to connect people (“Witnesses, looking like sad paintings, / sit in pews of swirled wood. / Policeman laugh in the hallways . / For months I visited these marble corridors”) from different walks of life. He finds the boundaries of his own city, “across the LA river / concrete border / of scrawled walls.” Boundaries aren’t the nepantla, they are the space.