Author Archives: José Araguz

I was told that one of the old gods appeared to my mother as a turkey while she planted hyacinths at her parents’ graves. He chased her out of the cemetery, dirt and pollen clinging to her knees. ++++++In the … Read More

    At the Poetry Center in 1971, B.F. Skinner, founder of radical behaviorism, responded to a poem called “Verbal Behavior,” named after his book that says we should remember how we learn language: it’s social. It’s made. The words … Read More

I need to tell you + this is Maine. The woman prattling incessantly next to me + with a smoky New England cackle blotting out her husband John’s one-word encouragements, is Mary. Her voice is the only sound in the … Read More

  +++ for Chen Chen A fathom used to mean the furthest distance a person could reach. A yawn—like chasm, chaos, or hiatus—is another name for space. Chiasma: inside the globe of the brain, there is a dark place where … Read More

  • One of my dad’s favorite jokes starts like this: “I can’t believe they got back together after all that shit!” • Some nights he just left, and when I tried to reach him, I’d hear the silence my … Read More

    Like a curse, I am drawn to my bookshelf, to the title page of Motherless Brooklyn. Here, I find your name and number written in the left- hand corner, blazing with your orange scribble. Its simplicity shocks me—an … Read More

Around fullness you barely knew from noon the late light falling in cinched with red southing shadows ++ along a yard ++ maybe mine in the hardening dim ++ a stand of blooms / the violet faints ++ slight and … Read More

  +++ some women are born in flight a first flush summer in memory it seemed to have never rained you were warm like the walkways red under chinaberries swollen under the thirsty season + red is the color + … Read More

    Single white alienated female seeking a companion to stroll the dark night of her soul. Be advised, this is not a sexcapade. And aside from my knack for killing, I am not one to rouse a body. There’s … Read More

  The woodpecker that ran into my window is dead If only I knew taxidermy, I could bring it back to life Up close, each feather looks hand-carved, like the Black Forest cuckoo clock +++++my father keeps in his office … Read More

  At the estate sale, 70s porn fold-outs drape over the bedspread. When you’re dead, everything is laid out for sale, even your porn. The man running the sale tells me it’s not porn, it’s vintage porn, as if this … Read More

  1. In the graphic novel the hero drives death the way a rancher drives livestock. Four-legged, voids pour from the hillsides—the shape, not the shadow, of extinction. 2a. +++++++ The death drive as fund drive, as telethon. Last breaths … Read More