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.
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.