In Colorado My Father Scoured and Stacked Dishes

Poetry is often seen as a medium for intimate, confessional expression, where poets share personal emotions and experiences. However, in a 2013 interview with BOMB—a quarterly publication that highlights emerging artists through discussions about their creative processes—Corral explained that his poetry moves away from the traditional use of first-person speakers who explore only the poet’s life. Instead, he uses the first-person perspective to create characters and explore experiences that are adjacent to, rather than directly reflective of, his own upbringing in a working-class family in suburban Arizona. 

Corral acknowledges that the more autobiographical his poems seem, the more fictional they often are. For example, his third poetry collection, Guillotine, presents a series of interconnected poems addressing immigration from multiple viewpoints, including white Americans, border patrol agents, and Mexican families. 

Corral imagines the speaker of “In Colorado” as the son of a father who worked in a Tex-Mex restaurant in Durango, Colorado—a scenario far from Corral’s own reality, as his father never worked in such a setting or even visited Colorado. Through this imagined speaker, Corral gives voice to the migrant experience, blending understanding and empathy with fictionalized storytelling. For Corral, the speaker becomes a tool for exploring the dilemmas, anxieties, and emotional struggles of children born to Mexican parents who immigrated to the US without authorization.