Juan Herrera, Notebooks of a Chile Verde Smuggler
Pg. 175

“I say hello but no one listens except myself and you, of course. Maybe it’s my crazy two-tone Armani dance shoes, the fuchsia tights. Or maybe I just had Juantoomanys. Everywhere I look there is Juan, Can’t help it. It’s true. Can’t knock it, cant shake it. Everywhere I turn there’s Juan.

I find this quote interesting because he is saying how he wants to get away form himself that he cant shake himself, but why would you wan to get rid of yourself? Throughout the whole poem he add his name into words and then says that he cant get away form him self and he wants to stop obsessing over himself.

Pg. 186

“One quick flash of the hands. It was a mother thing. She blessed me one too many times. She crossed her tiny hands over my face so. I saw through the mountain furnace –this old road of lives and cross blossoms and unturned stones.”

This poem was the last of the book the title was How to Make a Chile Verde Smuggler. In this quote he is talking about his mother, and how no matter what he did whether he was right or wrong she would always forgive him and love him. He is also saying that even though he had made many mistakes she was always there to forgive him. He now was visiting his mother in a graveyard and telling how there are so many lives there that are blossoming to new places beyond.