Henry Oso Quintero is a very mean man. He likes guns. He lives alone a ranch outside of Tyrone, NM. He eats rabbit, and snake and horse meat regularly... Or so the Hollywood version of Henry's life would go. In reality Henry is a native New Mexican, from a generation of landed, college educated mestizos who annually reclaim their ancestral lands through rituals of poetry and song.

Often times I've told you
How they do not see the misfortune they make

How we live among them and they do not see

My Brother Bats High along and above
Coastal Savings and Loan
Swallowing their shaded swarms
Of mosquitoes mussed to living by the sewage
The stagnant water of our paved filth

    Perhaps you too think this is our last sunset
    how fire light dips behind the hills
    and as if by luck the roan oaks and junipers
    steep into the gray of a fool moon

When one speaks of Maverick Poetry, one speaks of politics. Referring to the Great Red Book again, examine the root--

Politic: 1. Artful; ingenious; shrewd 2.using, displaying or proceeding from policy; wise; prudent; judicious--see synonyms Suave-- Websters' New Lexicon Encyclopedia of the English Language.

I, knowing little, will tell you that only a graceful animal survives an urban range. Only the awkward Coyote is scoured across the road, tracing the lightning zags of rubber. Rarely do you see the Coyote of 7th and Grand trampled by the feet of cars. The Maverick Coyote, Skunk, Bear, Possum--whatever survives the sentence of becoming a meat cookie cooked on the concrete of our own humiliating kingdom by simply Observing the luxuries of man, sampling the bounty of society in our own quiet moments of inattention.

 From The New Lexicon Webster's Enclopedic Dictionary of the English Language

Maverick: (1) A person who refuses to conform and acts independently // (2) a member of a political party who will not tow the party line // (3) an unbranded animal on the range­­


In lineage of poets who have taught me the craft of word, The Saint of Fresno told a Fish by the sea:

"For me the finest poems are those that continue trying to locate and echo the mystery or mysteries that resonate most profoundly throughout our lives; you know, sex and death, love and faith. And poets have to do that with the most awkward of artistic tools--language.

    Bear, even flying with the sun behind me
    The sky is dim

    With certainty I tell you this
    Pentad sun is falling
    I caw a long night before
    A sextet sun can rise
    A yellow yolk to drown out iron

    Friends, country gentlemen
    women of the red cloak

    It is not the moon that draws the liquid silver
    Of my voice across the black starry field

    It is the last mind
    thumping loudly like
    the falling snowflakes
    across the space of fallowed tillage

     I.

    Outside, the night is dark
    Crickets bleat like dull knives
    on whetstone

    It is all a loosening static
    A luminous silence
    Before rising up to a full moon

Oh No one makes much of a mouse­­
A good view in Buena Vista
Seems to have captured the light
of the eyes

But who would ever guess
the glint of a bag of silver
would prevent the preview­­
Who could have dreamed?
When you wish upon a star
a fog of heavy machined breathing