Author Archives: José Araguz

  Southern Black Superstitions remind me that it is bad luck to leave any hair in a comb or brush. After I’ve oiled my hair, I take the knotted brown ball, the size of a quarter, to the front left … Read More

  [corrido under a fort myers palm]   Flea market girl handed me a flyer for a big norteño brass band festival going down next weekend, here at Ortiz, featuring the “original, world-famous Banda el Limón”— trumpets from the fairgrounds’ … Read More

  [new thorns, 2020]   Pull the thorns from this borderline ’til barbed wire runs smooth against a palm, ’til coils of concertina fold back inside the accordion with a sigh. Write the crime story of this borderline & paper-plane … Read More

  [one for adán]   What ridiculous luck to even be born. What ridiculous luck, living long enough to sing how your father was murdered by false policemen. What ridiculous luck to make it through the chorus, the next measure, … Read More

  Ninety-three years old, stains on either side exactly where it would have covered her hips, as if on the last day, she was making bread, staring out the window, with an absent smile, kneading, kneading, miles from the mine … Read More

  “Breastfeeding is a culturally and psychically fraught practice.” —Jennifer Friedlander, Subjectivity   We cry over spilled milk, yell shit at the elbow bump that puddles the pumped sweet gold onto the kitchen counter. Convinced each drop lost is an … Read More

  Because waking up in the hospital, handcuffed to the bed, charcoal staining my teeth, my face blue with death, was no fun. Because dressing up as a woman, learning how to shave my legs while doing everything in my … Read More

  a ghost came to me once a specter shrouded in fog and stared at me through sunken mounds, lifeless caverns hollow like clay caved in by thumbs I don’t know if it could see it had no mouth, so … Read More

  Not the sense of standing alone in front of a microphone, but the adjustments of playing along with a more experienced band. Not the fear of representing an establishment, but of representing it badly, of being inundated and then … Read More

  What if you really had never heard it before? The throaty voice, the credibility And strength of a man who could always pick you up And bring you to that one place and keep you there And never abandon … Read More

  RPM’s throat anger over highway one. Windows cracked seals let in hiss and shiver. Nod your head to exhausts gargle with rhythm like it is song

  could have been raven scraping her beak against granite sparking or dipping crane stirring death from waters dumb floated mush on surface we circulate to shore gather sticks that coil like serpents first words peck and slobber from mouths … Read More