Author Archives: José Araguz

  She ran to the forest like the women before her, and like them, she turned into a tree that the gods gave her name, a way to honor a woman, an object of desire. She multiplied into woods that … Read More

  a guinea pig, running loose in the grocery store, refugee from the pet shop next door. Word of the escape traveled more swiftly than the rodent did, and she could track its route by the sounds rippling from odd … Read More

  she rose early to swim. Laps, in the indoor public pool, an hour before the sun reared up. She reveled in a morning layered with contrast: cool air on her skin as she walked across the lot, clammy heat … Read More

  On the fourth day, I was standing in the front yard stretching after a run (I don’t run), slightly high on endorphins. I could suddenly see everything O the purple spikes on the Pride of Madeira bush just coming … Read More

  I ask my students, What’s at stake in this poem? I ask my daughters, Did you do your schoolwork? I ask my husband, Did you remember to cover the drains, so cockroaches don’t emerge at night, walk the hallways … Read More

  —after Philip Lawson (1859-1936) The chicken proves accurate in its back and forth: the way I traveled up from Virginia backward on boat, rail, and foot— never acting on that deep knowing turned gnawing in the jawbone then belly: … Read More

  I have been moving in and out of one. Every few hours, I hold my hand up to my face. If I can see the hand, I move towards the window; if I can’t, I stay in bed. Usually, … Read More

  Do you ever feel like an alien? I ask Cliff. He’s arranging my body on the radiation table. Usually I apologize for my muddy boots, but today I’m feeling more and more like my childhood alien abduction dreams were … Read More

  Sea levels rise and we regret our skins, how they blister as much from cold as from heat. As if the point is mediocrity— that soft, shifting middle ground. And we can make this shore lonely enough for the … Read More

  Knee-deep in floodwater, I consider the rats. Not the live ones that fight in the alley each night, each entitled to its chicken bone prize, but the poisoned ones that turn up sometimes, their bodies a banquet for flies … Read More

  —owes a debt to Anne Sexton’s “Just Once” Once a day, I see a flash of white-patched feathers, hear a cable wire mockingbird teach itself a new tune, and understand life is for joy. For the garden. Today, skeletons … Read More

  —after Louis Simpson’s “American Poetry” What this is, must be open-dark, petunias rubbing against one another. What I contain, body knowing the movement of this verse, and the next and the next. Anything can happen if I stop saying … Read More