Alberto Alvaro Rios born on the American side of the city of Nogales, Arizona, on the Mexican border, in 1952. He was son of a Guatemalan father and an English mother. He attended The University of Arizona and received his bachelor of Arts in 1974 and a MFA in Creative Writing from the UofA in 1979.
We live in secret cities
And we travel unmapped roads.
We speak words between us that we recognize
But which cannot be looked up.
They are our words.
They come from very far inside our mouths.
You and I, we are the secret citizens of the city
Inside us, and inside us
There go all the cars we have driven
And seen, there are all the people
We know and have known, there
Are all the places that are
But which used to be as well. This is where
They went. They did not disappear.
We each take a piece
Through the eye and through the ear.
It's loud inside us, in there, and when we speak
In the outside world
We have to hope that some of that sound
Does not come out, that an arm
Not reach out
In place of the tongue.