Sarah Cortez on Poets Cafe

The following interview of Sarah Cortez by Lois P. Jones originally aired on KPFK Los Angeles (reproduced with permission).

Biographical Information—Sarah Cortez

Sarah Cortez, an award-winning member of the Texas Institute of Letters, has numerous poems, essays and short stories anthologized here and in Europe.  Winner of the PEN Texas Literary Award in poetry, her debut poetry collection is entitled How to Undress a Cop.  Her second book of poetry reveals the life of an urban street cop and is entitled Cold Blue Steel. An award-winning anthologist of six volumes, her most recent is Our Lost Border: Essays on Life amid the Narco-Violence, recent winner of a Southwest Book Award .  Her memoir, Walking Home: Growing Up Hispanic in Houston was published in 2012 by Texas Review Press. She lives, works, polices, and runs a thriving freelance editing business in Houston, Texas where she is Houston’s most popular writing teacher.

__________

Cop Math

Nose broke three times
by drunks.
They pick smaller officers
to assault.

Five fleets in one year.
Lucky the county didn’t fire me.

Three wives.  No kids.
I pay a good lawyer, so I don’t
ever have to talk
to the last bitch.

One broken leg.
Healed fine.

Thirty-three years total
on the force.
Wouldn’t have changed
a damn thing.