Alberto Ríos

Alberto Alvaro Ríos was born on September 18, 1952, in Nogales, Arizona. He received a BA degree in 1974 and an MFA in creative writing in 1979, both from the University of Arizona. Ríos has authored numerous books of poetry and prose, including Not Go Away is My Name (Copper Canyon Press, 2020); The Smallest Muscle in the Human Body (Copper Canyon Press, 2002), which was nominated for the National Book Award; Whispering to Fool the Wind (Sheep Meadow Press, 1982), which won the 1981 Walt Whitman Award selected by Donald Justice; and the novel The Iguana Killer: Twelve Stories of the Heart (Blue Moon and Confluence Press, 1984), which won the Western States Book Award. He holds numerous awards, including six Pushcart Prizes in both poetry and fiction, the Arizona Governor's Arts Award and fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. Since 1994 he has been Regents Professor of English at Arizona State University in Tempe, where he has taught since 1982. In 2013, Ríos was named the inaugural state poet laureate of Arizona. He served as Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets from 2014 to 2020. In 2017, he was appointed as the new director of the Virginia G. Piper Center for Creative Writing at Arizona State University. Source

Taking Your Olympic Measure

Think of the records you have held:

For one second, you were the world’s youngest person.

It was a long time ago, but still.

At this moment, you are living

In the farthest thousandth-of-a-second in the history of time.

You have beaten yesterday’s record, again.

You were perhaps the only participant,

But in the race to get from your bedroom to the bathroom,

You won.

You win so much, all the time in all things.

Your heart simply beats and beats and beats—

It does not lose, although perhaps one day.

Nevertheless, the lists of firsts for you is endless—

Doing what you have not done before,

Tasting sake and mole, smelling bergamot, hearing

Less well than you used to—

Not all records are for the scrapbook, of course—

Sometimes you are the best at being the worst.

Some records are secret—you know which ones.

Some records you’re not even aware of.

In general, however, at the end of a long day, you are—

Unlikely as it may seem—the record holder of note.

Published:

2021

Length:

Regular

Literary Movements:

Contemporary

Anthology Years:

2025

Themes:

Body & Body Image

Humor & Satire

Joy & Praise