England Finally, Like My Mother Always Said We Would

By Alberto Ríos b. 1952 Alberto Rios

The old dog and the old rabbit,

The old house and the cold

Air; the fog and the pigeons

Cooped up and warm as we watched:

I was there, finally—here;

Fake coal in the fireplace

Instead of fake wood, the habits

Of walking, and laughing.

Lanes instead of streets,

The taste of bitter in the pub,

Greenall’s: lager was for

Shall we say, they said,

The women. All in sweaters

And pleats in their skirts,

Hands rubbing knees so hard

I expected flame.

The faces hurt here,

Laughing so hard.

So many wrinkles, lines

Like rivers they had not seen.

Alberto Ríos, “England Finally, Like My Mother Always Said We Would” from The Warrington Poems (Tempe: Pyracantha Press, 1989). Used by permission of the author.

Source: The Warrington Poems (Pyracantha Press, 1989)

Biography

Alberto Ríos has won acclaim as a writer who uses language in lyrical and unexpected ways in both his poems and short stories, which reflect his Chicano heritage and contain elements of magical realism. "Ríos's poetry is a kind of magical storytelling, and his stories are a kind of magical poetry," commented Jose David Saldivar in the Dictionary of Literary Biography. Ríos grew up in a Spanish-speaking family but was forced to . . .

Continue reading this biography