Longview Road

Poems from Manny Moreno, a Central Valley poet, trace his life through memory, family, and the places that shaped him. The collection opens with a photograph Moreno took of his niece gazing through the doorway of a rural shack where his family lived for years after his father died young. Moreno also works as a photographer and painter, and the poems describe that shack, once called home, as a weathered elder nearing its end.

Grandparents appear as quiet teachers throughout. Grandfathers plant willows and fruit trees, help raise a family's house, hand a boy the season's first tomato, and warn him away from a habanero. When a boy wants to be a buckaroo and side with the cowboys, his grandfather Manuel corrects him: he is Yaqui and Tarascan, and he must never forget it or feel ashamed of it.

Moreno writes about staying rooted in place and family, respecting Indigenous community and ceremony, and honestly examining his own dishonest and self-destructive choices. He looks with compassion at people consumed by self-hatred, reflects on the power of prayer, and considers how painful forgiveness can be. Alcoholism runs through his family, and he took his first sip of wine at nine. Elders from Native communities help him break that cycle, affirm his Indigenous identity, and connect him to his heritage.