Johnny Huerta is America’s most prominent underground Chicano folk poet, and Grandma Moses Press is thrilled to make this final book in his Organ Mountain Trilogy available to his fans.
Huerta has learned how to extend his heart, mind and imagery further down a page than ever before, while keeping that gritty tone and plain vernacular you have come to love and trust. With poem titles that can’t keep still, and a mood that sits you down before the kiva and is reminiscent of the flame itself, he has completed the dusty loop begun so many years ago with Acid & Menudo.
13th generation New Mexican, Johnny Huerta, has finally finished the last installment of the Organ Mountain Trilogy. 8 years in the making, in this poetry collection our speaker gets addicted to homegrown opium, gets spun out in the eye of the fentanyl crisis, touches the steaming hem of the devil’s gown, discovers methadone, survives rehab and has the poems to prove it. He has no academic ties and is in nobody’s pocket. He’s a pot farmer. He’s an organic cotton farmer. And he’s a poet from Aztlán.
HERE’S WHAT THE CRITICS ARE SAYING:
A collection of visions about misadventures, land knowledge, and the heart of manito memories.
-Amado Guzman
It is with great honor and privilege to read and say a few words about
my Clovis, New Mexico homey, Johnny. Our relatives are buried in
the same cemetery together in Clovis. Most New Mexicans are bound by
blood and tears. I will now attempt to use Johnny’s own words to
explain his own joyous adventures:
Grey ghost blues.
Poems can smack you like a 2 X 4.
She was bat shit guano in a tight red dress.
Kit Carson needed a Navajo peach tree shoved up his ass and set on fire.
Gila wildflowers near Silver City, NM.
1000 miles of snow.
Warren Zevon’s typewriter.
Freddie Fender was a lady killer.
Prine drowning in a plate of enchiladas after drinking a half inch of water.
Seemingly thought up stolen words, trying to get away.
I thoroughly enjoyed this book. I’ll end with a typical Clovis yell, “ Go
Fucking Wildcats.”
Whenever I read Johnny Huerta’s poems, I feel like I am hanging out on the front porch with my very best friend. His writing is so natural and fun to be around. I have never once felt the urge to throw one of his books into a volcano angrily. Instead, I carry his books around with me happily wherever I go.
-Kyle Flak
