Author Archives: José Araguz

  Let my spider plant shrivel in a swim of photons. I found the perfect word and backspaced it out of memory. I slept until everyone slept, then woke to admit the dark dog sniffing at my door. I taught … Read More

  Even as telephones buzz and silver voices sing of cash flow strategies, I slump in a shadowed corner by the photocopier and do not make a sound, not a murmur when my earth runs dry and not a peep … Read More

  willow, sallow, blackthorn thought is made in the mouth   quaking aspen, silver birch pulse is mouth in the wrist   cedar, alder, slippery elm wrist is grief in the making   camphor, blue ash, blister fir myth is … Read More

  I welcome emptiness. It is a good start. An empty vessel holds no dynamite. An empty   mind plans no atrocities. Hold my hand and share how it feels, to plan   your own exit. I respect every part … Read More

  in memory of Sam Seskin   All I know is: at this moment, a young scholar solves   a century-old problem. A group of six climbs Everest, a group of twelve   is rescued from a hurricane. The same … Read More

  Butterfly feast, hillside on fire. So many   bright things dulled   in the wind. This is how we pass, unnoticed.

  look, my monologue has broken off I don’t know who’s guilty maybe my own brain allured towards another light by the little beggars who tug on your sleeves   small change echoes in a soundbox

  she told me to color my hair and cut it I want to stay wild as in my childhood when the trees were god’s lungs and the stars the yellow eyes of a frightened beast I step over roots … Read More

  leave me alone with my head under the pillow so I can’t hear you when you talk in your sleep leave me alone in my darkness at my flag stop where two trains pass through each other without colliding

  To touch the indentation, purled and pinched, centered in a swale of flesh between bone ridges, point   where tissue was severed, and we were torn from the beat of blood-music—to crown, to slip the caul, to cry.   … Read More

  a man who covered his body in tattoos, tattoo, its root in seventeenth century Dutch for “turn off the taps,” prolonged bugle call to tavern owners so soldiers would go back to their barracks. Tattoo, the word itself elongated … Read More

  两龟乘犊车， 蓦出路头戏。 一蛊从傍来， 苦死欲求寄。 不载爽人情， 始载被沉累。 弹指不可论， 行恩却遭刺。   Two tortoises on a cart pulled by a young ox find a sudden drama on the roadside. A demon insect crawls in from the verge and begs like the devil … Read More