Author Archives: José Araguz

  Hummingbirds are flying to Mexico and out of the blue a postcard, a photographic grid of recent life—you in sunglasses, a giant cactus, children in their striped suits poolside— all centered around a spray of stars above a violet … Read More

  She imagines it is the day she is born. What does she want? What does it cost to be real? Isn’t the wind the breath of the earth? Will she find ever a god who has been stripped of … Read More

  I enter the mouth of the whale. I am the mother-to-be carried   by night. A slow swallowing, down the throat my plump body   goes. Into the hollow, where I smell the cadavers, Lord—   the bones collected … Read More

  She thinks it’s funny the boys down the road call her a crow when it’s a term better suited to her husband with his horde of shiny things: his money, his trophies, his bullets. The only shiny things she … Read More

  In each of us there is a girl always wanting more and in her wanting becomes someone no one wants to help. Not mice in the board room where she only says sorry when she’s done something wrong and … Read More

  She tongues French toast to her left cheek. Mom, she says, there’s a bug on the floor by the fridge. There it is, I say, a stink bug. Chew and swallow, please, before you talk. She’s five years old, … Read More

  It can’t just be a killer who cuts out hearts. It’s got to be a killer with a blender selling red popsicles in Central Park. It can’t just be a cannibal. It’s got to be a cannibal trapped in … Read More

  When the classroom’s somber loudspeaker voice said “our president,” was I the only one . . . surely I wasn’t the only one thinking our student body president had been shot. Our Jim. A super-cool eighth-grade kid. So popular … Read More

  I. You and your mother sit on the futon and watch Twelve Angry Men*. She tells you she has been looking forward to this. Lately, you have taken to dipping your apples in boiling water to get the wax … Read More

  burns a hole in your head sprouts wings and flies won’t bark up the right unless you shell out or marry it hand over fist penny wise or not occasionally pound dumb after a certain yearly sum it can’t … Read More

  I After working out, I stop by the café across the street that stays open late and I sit at the bar in a favorite spot. I am thirsty and the young café worker fills and refills my generic … Read More

  I spend all day on Google Maps picking out houses with porches and old trees in the front yard. On some online road in California I play how old is that one by myself, I guess it’s 55 or … Read More