When you're in that state of grief, any little breeze, any hello, any confrontation, any grazing of someone meeting your eyes, might cause you suddenly to burst into grief. You could be looking at a jar of peanut butter in the supermarket, and then start crying.

In the past I was very open and very generous, and I found that it just exploded in my face. A lot of people weren't there for me when I needed them. So I have become a little shell shocked. Subsequently almost paranoid and frightened of people now. Maybe I'm losing out in meeting some marvelous people, but I am doing the only thing I can to save my spirit.

Perhaps the community you mentioned might not come to the story. Sometimes you have to take the story to them, and perform it, and that's another way that I get an alternate point of view that isn't the official version of history out to a community. I feel that's what I've been doing since Caramelo.

I like to mix it up, because the kind of comments you can get from a fiction writer about your poetry are going to be very different than what you'll get from a poet.

The border between the dead and the living, if you're Mexican, doesn't exist. The dead are part of your life. Like my dad, who's not here, but he's here.That's why there's the Day of the Dead. There's such a connection with the dead.

Post 9/11, we've seen such disastrous policies on the border. I live two and a half hours away from the border, and I've seen changes for the communities there. I feel like it's an occupied zone. We're losing our rights, and both sides of the border are terrified. The Mexican population and the U.S. population are united in fear.

Now I feel life is really short and I have to take care of things.