I first met Jorge about seventeen years ago when he left prison and moved to a longhorn ranch in the Texas hill country. A dear friend introduced me to Jorge’s writing in The Echo, an award-winning prison newspaper the Texas Department of Criminal Justice shut down after Jorge published investigations of a system-wide prison lockdown.

We drove there on a hot afternoon and sat outside on a stone patio eating gazpacho and talking about writing and watching the sunset. We’ve been brothers ever since.

About fifteen years ago Jorge stood on a stage reading “Lamentation for Literature” and his bare words, thundering voice, hypnotic rhythm, stunned the crowd to silence. A woman turned around and her eyes met mine, asking: are you hearing this too?

Yes.

Jorge’s poems are a documentation, gorgeous and vital. A process of making meaning of the worlds we have created for ourselves, violent and unforgiving. They are transcripts of a life. Chopped, rearranged, stacked, screaming in your face: this is what we do to our own.

Like all of Jorge’s poetry, there’s no tolerance for bullshit. No mazes. No double entendres. No abstractions. No psychic twists-and-turns of the kind of writer who must stretch the imagination like a rubber band to try to transform pain into narrative. Jorge’s poems don’t fuck around. That’s the point.

Poets like Jorge must dodge erasure at every turn. Freedom is fragile. Life becomes a double dare to keep existing.