BIO
Ángel García was raised in several cities throughout Southern California. His poems have been included in The American Poetry Review, McSweeney’s, and Miramar among others. A CantoMundo fellow, Ángel currently lives in Los Angeles, CA and is a lecturer at CSU Los Angeles.
Waist deep and naked
I wake up in the river
bone cold & unable to breathe.
Other nights, I wake beside it,
sleep wrinkles from river stone
etched into my body and face.
Those nights, dreaming on stone,
I hear their murmured voices
downstream, in darker waters.
The web of their hair swims,
pulls me finally in one last embrace
where we don’t descend or ascend
but simply, keep floating.
Llorona’s Husband Sees the End of the World
After a hard rain: the small scatter of death.
The dream of a woman in red spitting over
the kitchen counter, the poisoned saliva
drowning a trail of ants looking for my flesh.
The boy of me crying on the front stoop,
worms wriggling over my bare feet.
Rain, rain, go away... never come back...
My punishment to be banished in the storm
where I hear brakes screeching toward me,
vision blurred like oil stains floating over puddles.
Llorona’s Husband Experiences Anger
I’ll break you. I’ll break you. I’ll break
you. For good measure, break you again.
Break lip. Break nose. Break both cheeks.
Break you until you are broken and bleeding.
Threaten more breaking, when the breaking
is done. Once broken, I’ll pick up shard by shard,
what’s left of your name. Put you back together again.
Piece by piece. So when you leave, or try to, I can break
you. Break you, again. Break you, continuously, my love.