José Angel Araguz

Araguz author photo 2

BIO

José Angel Araguz, author of the chapbook Corpus Christi Octaves, is a CantoMundo fellow. Winner of RHINO Poetry’s 2015 Editor’s Prize, he has had poems recently in Poet Lore and Laurel Review as well as in the anthology Goodbye Mexico: Poems of Remembrance. He is pursuing a PhD in Creative Writing and Literature at the University of Cincinnati. His flash fiction/prose poem chapbook, Reasons (not) to Dance, is forthcoming from FutureCycle Press. He runs the poetry blog, The Friday Influence.

https://thefridayinfluence.wordpress.com/

Two Poems


Visit

 

Let’s go back to the hospital, to you standing

by the bed where our grandfather, fallen into

himself, lies, his face unmoving, as if about

to, but unable to, speak – back to you staring

 

long at him, unsure if, as he stares off, he can

see you, to you meeting his eyes hard as you can,

until you feel the cold air between you and him

begin to harden, the way ice does, hardening

 

so that I feel it wherever I am that day –

let’s go back so I can give you these words before

I have occasion to write them, before paper

lies bare and stark, and I can’t look at it for long –

 

the words written, ink dries, unmoving, hardening

to moments that melt differently in each of us.

 

                                                               for Lupito & Pedro

 


 

Augustina

 

Down the cracked bark of the mesquite,

sap has hardened into lines

like those of the face in first memories,

before my teeth could bite, before her face

joined the tree, and put teeth into the earth.

 


 

© The Acentos Review 2015