‘Taco Shop Poet’ returns to National City to commemorate library anniversary
Adolfo Guzman-Lopez, a journalist and poet, recently released his first book of poems, “California Southern: writing from the road, 1992-2025.”
Written by Kate Morrissey, Edited by Lauren J. Mapp
When Adolfo Guzman-Lopez was a young journalist at KPBS, he spent a day with customs officials searching cars at the border.
He still remembers when officers found a stash of drugs behind the backseat of a car driven by a young woman from Mexico, the way the officials picked out the car by irregular fading on the seat and bulging arteries on the woman’s neck.
His audio piece about the day aired on the radio in the 90s. Now, he has published a poem about that same moment as part of his first collection of poetry, called “California Southern: writing from the road 1992-2025.”
“With the facts as I knew them, I wrote as if I was in front of this young woman and almost as if I was floating atop of all those cars rising with the exhaust,” Guzman-Lopez said.
He said the collection is meant to preserve memories of the places he knew growing up as he traveled along what he calls “the spine of Califas,” which was also the name of a poetry event he used to host.
“It was like a tour of the state,” Guzman-Lopez said. “That's the concept of the book.”
Guzman-Lopez was born in Mexico City and grew up in the San Diego-Tijuana border region, living for much of his childhood in National City, where he delivered newspapers as a teen and watched the riots after the police beating of Rodney King unfold on his bedroom television screen.
He was a founding member of the Taco Shop Poets while working at Centro Cultural de la Raza, he said.
He has been working in Los Angeles for more than two decades at the outlet now called LAist, where he has covered, among other topics, school districts, transportation and art.
These memories — and some of his journalism — make their way into his poetry.
“I hope that people get to see some of what has been underneath these cities and places where I've been, and underneath may be physically like underneath concrete or asphalt or sidewalks, but also like something more evanescent, less tangible,” Guzman-Lopez said.
The most recent poem in the book, he said, processes his experiences of the L.A. fires.
In a prose poem ode to National City, Guzman-Lopez writes about growing up witnessing the struggles and triumphs of immigrants living there. He recalls the 1986 law that allowed him to get a green card and laments a violent Border Patrol arrest of Perla Morales in front of her children on a street corner there in 2018.
He hopes the poem does something to preserve that memory, too.
A few weeks ago, he went to the site where Morales was arrested and took pictures.
“What do you do? How do you remember? Do we sculpt something?” Guzman-Lopez said. “It's an open-ended question.”
Guzman-Lopez will return to National City on Saturday to read poetry at the 20-year anniversary celebration of his hometown library. He read a poem at the building's grand opening — a poem that is now preserved in a plaque on the library's wall.
He's dedicating the performance to David Avalos, an artist and educator who died in July.
Guzman-Lopez’ book is available through HINCHAS Press and at his readings.
