ABOUT THIS BOOK

The Many Deaths of Inocencio Rodriguez chronicles an obsession with the 1971 unsolved murder of Rocha’s grandfather while interrogating the true crime genre, tabloid culture, immigrant identity, the phenomena of missing and murdered women, troubled relationships with law enforcement, and the intersection of prose and poetry. Because the details of his death were (and are) terribly unclear, part of how the family reconstructed him was to share the different accounts heard over the decades, and this collection attempts to pin down these shifts and contours through destabilizing form and genre. Each speaker reconfigures a past mysterious and tenuous, clouded by distance, language, and time in order to demonstrate how Inocencio Rodriguez defies a single narrative.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

Iliana Rocha is the 2019 winner of the Berkshire Prize for a First or Second Book of Poetry for her newest collection, The Many Deaths of Inocencio Rodriguez, forthcoming from Tupelo Press. Karankawa, her debut, won the 2014 AWP Donald Hall Prize for Poetry (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2015).
The recipient of a 2020 CantoMundo fellowship and 2019 MacDowell Colony fellowship, she has had work featured in the Best New Poets 2014 anthology, as well as Oxford American, The Nation, Virginia Quarterly Review, Latin American Literature Today, RHINO, Blackbird, and West Branch, among others, and she serves as Poetry Co-Editor for Waxwing Literary Journal. She earned her PhD in Literature and Creative Writing from Western Michigan University and is an Assistant Professor at the University of Tennessee-Knoxville.
Her three chihuahuas Nilla, Beans, and Migo are the loves of her life.

REVIEWS

“Iliana Rocha’s exquisite book The Many Deaths of Inocencio Rodríguez illustrates how our singular grief becomes amplified when set against the violent tapestry of contemporary America. ‘Where is it safe for us?’ it dares to ask as it navigates yesterday’s harrowing headlines, which continue to resonate in the travesties of today, and which we’ll likely hear again tomorrow. Powerful and poignant, Rocha’s poems give us temporary refuge, each page an occasion to grapple with the troubling stories of our times.”
—Rigoberto González

“As the granddaughter of a murder victim, Rocha feels we must understand violence in order to stop it. Violence is central to her poetry. In “True Crime Addicts,” she writes of Charles Manson acolytes Susan Atkins, who killed Sharon Tate in 1969, and Squeaky Fromme, who tried to assassinate President Ford in 1975. Rocha writes: “I’ve been elsewhere, researching serial killers & unsolved murders because at least I don’t have to convince myself that this is horror.” She finds empathy for the needlessly murdered as well as those who languish for decades in prison or face execution.”
— George Longenecker Rain Taxi Review

The author’s personal experience allows her not only first-hand knowledge of the dark currents surfacing across the continent, but also the authority to speak of them. That she succeeds in doing so with these remarkable, almost daring poems, is proof of her considerable awareness and keen eye. Her sure handling of difficult content is complimented by inspired imagery, and by a solidarity; an empathy, like flowers left at the scene of a crime. Often, on reading of shocking brutality or bleak desperation, it feels as if we are trespassing on a stranger’s grief. But surely, coming up against the sometimes sordid, often heart-breaking reality is like an Act of Witness, and is no more than these victims of fate deserve.
—Robert Dunsdon Heavy Feather Review

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Table of Contents

The Many Deaths of Inocencio Rodriguez 1

Bad Hombre

The Jump 5
The Many Deaths of Inocencio Rodriguez 6
The Many Deaths of Inocencio Rodriguez 7
Tabloid for Inocencio Rodriguez 8
Bird Atlas 9
The Many Deaths of Inocencio Rodriguez 10
Landscape with Graceland Crumbling in My Hands 11
The Many Deaths of Inocencio Rodriguez 12
Bury Them 13
Love Letter to Scott Peterson 14
I Watched a Bat Kill Itself in Yuma 15
Last Seen 16
Elegy for a Quinceañera Dress 19
Milieu 20
Landscape with Boy-on-Boy Action 21
Tabloid for Judy Garland 23
White Mexican Girl 24
Self-Portrait as Crime Scene 25
Kurt Cobain Requiem (Acoustic) 26
Tequila, Cinnamon, Orange 27
Chelsea Bruck Requiem 28

In the Place of Guesswork

Texas Seven 31
The Many Deaths of Inocencio Rodriguez 39

Hoax

Marfa Lights 43
Ken Caminiti Dies in a Houston Hotel 44
The Many Deaths of Inocencio Rodriguez 45
The Many Deaths of Inocencio Rodriguez 46
Hoax 47
The Many Deaths of Inocencio Rodriguez 48
Texas Killing Fields 49
The Many Deaths of Inocencio Rodriguez 50
The Many Deaths of Inocencio Rodriguez 51
The Many Deaths of Inocencio Rodriguez 52
PHX Elegy 53
The Many _____ of Inocencio Rodriguez 54
The Many Deaths of Inocencio Rodriguez 56
Collective Memory 57
The Many Deaths of Inocencio Rodriguez, 58
Tabloid for the Black Dahlia 59
Still Life 60
The Many Deaths of Inocencio Rodriguez 61
Elegy for the 1950s Waist 62
The Many Deaths of Inocencio Rodriguez 63
The Many Deaths of Inocencio Rodriguez 64
Bettie Page Finds Jesus 65
The Many Deaths of Inocencio Rodriguez 66
True Crime Addict 68
White Mexican Girl 69
Jess 70

True Crime Addict

The Girls Gone Up in Smoke 73
The Many Deaths of Inocencio Rodriguez 74
Nutshell Diorama 75
Tabloid for JonBenét Ramsey 77
Tabloid for Jayne Mansfield 78
Tabloid for Lupe Vélez 79
The Last Supper—600 Plates Illustrating Final Meals of U.S. Death Row Inmates 80
Human Combustion 81
AZO Elegy 82
The Many Deaths of Inocencio Rodriguez 83
Interrogation 84
The Many Deaths of Inocencio Rodriguez 85
Tabloid for Lori Erica Ruff 86
The Many Deaths of Inocencio Rodriguez 87
Houston 88
The Many Deaths of Inocencio Rodriguez 89
The Many Deaths of Inocencio Rodriguez 91
True Crime Addict 92
Obituaries 93
A Transitional Time for Planets 95
The Many Deaths of Inocencio Rodriguez 96

Notes 99
Acknowledgments 103