Luis Omar Salinas

Pioneering Chicano poet Luis Omar Salinas has died. "His talent was profound," poet Peter Everwine said. "What I have most admired in his work is his profound humility and courage, his ability to identify with the marginal, the lonely and the wounded, and to do so without self-pity or loss of hope." See his obituary in the Fresno Bee.

I Salute the Dead

In this drunken town
bitten by the whores
of Texas, I pause with
a beer to salute the dead.

Someone's in my house--
the dead child of Texas
haunts the woodwork
and the child is everywhere
tonight waiting for the dawn,
tomorrow maybe playing
in the mud.

My nephew asks if the black
children he sees on TV
are the poor, and I reply,
"We are the poor."
He cannot understand,
and I know this house
is as poor as this drunken
town
and I drink my beer
and hiccup into song.

- Luis Omar Salinas

Here's a link where more of his poems can be found.