Lotería is a traditional Mexican game of chance played with a deck of 54 cards depicting various nouns. Esteban Rodríguez's eighth collection, Lotería (part of the Sabine Series in Literature for Louisiana and Texas writers), allots each Spanish-language card a one-page poem in a creative, poignant recounting of his Mexican American family history.
Rodríguez (Limbolandia) invites readers into his family circle through the use of the second person. The poems spin stories about different relatives in turn. Both parents made the perilous trek from Mexico. "Like your father, your mother/ never speaks of her crossing,/ so you invent a narrative for her,/ switch the river for a desert,/ add a scene with carrion and carcasses,/ with cactuses adorned with torn shirts." The cover image is from "27 El corazón," which imagines his father's pierced heart being too big for his chest. One cousin teases that a swallowed watermelon seed will fruit in Rodríguez's belly ("28 La sandía"); another prepares to go to war in 2007: "seated in the middle of your uncles,/ aunts, your cousin smiles, babysits/ a Bud Light because he can,/ because nineteen is just a number,/ and his deployment is near."
Alliteration and internal rhymes create aural impressions; animals, foodstuff, and household objects are the metaphorical stock. The sun-moon pair, "23 La luna" and "46 El Sol," is a highlight. The poet memorializes his father's hard labor, alluding to the Atlas myth and describing his versatile work boots. The familial struggle for survival has buoyancy in Rodríguez's telling. --Rebecca Foster, freelance reviewer, proofreader and blogger at Bookish Beck