Category lyrical alignments

More Colorful, More Alive

José Angel Araguz Leave a comment

On June 25, I had the honor of joining the virtual ceremony for the 2026 Firecracker Awards. I served as one of this year’s poetry judges alongside Danny Caine and Esther Lin, and I was grateful for the opportunity to help announce the finalists and winner during the ceremony.

This year’s Firecracker Award in Poetry went to The Choreic Period: Poems by Latif Askia Ba, published by Milkweed Editions.

Here is the citation from the poetry judges:

[Cover of The Choreic Period: Poems by Latif Askia Ba. Image courtesy of Milkweed Editions.]

“The Choreic Period is a striking contribution to contemporary disability poetics, challenging ableist reading habits and expanding what poetic accessibility and difficulty can mean. We were moved by its pared-down nature, its illustration of the relationship between syntax and disability, and its innovative formal elements, including interruptive punctuation, staccato lineation, multilingual code-switching, and deliberate difficulty. Its force and voice made this conceptually sharp, powerfully embodied book a clear choice for the Firecracker Poetry Award.” —from the judges

Congratulations to Latif Askia Ba and Milkweed Editions, as well as to all five poetry finalists and this year’s winners and finalists across genres. The full list of 2026 Firecracker Award winners and ceremony highlights is available through CLMP.

Elsewhere this week, I listened to episode 318 of Lindsay Mack’s Tarot for the Wild Soul, “Nature as Medicine with Willow Defabaugh.” During their conversation, Willow Defebaugh speaks about the relationship between queerness, nonbinary identity, and the natural world.

As Pride month approaches its close, I keep returning to Defebaugh’s description and how it paints nonbinary life not as a position between two fixed poles, but as part of a world that moves as a wheel.

The following found poem came from a passage in the episode transcript.

more colorful, more alive

after Willow Defebaugh

When people ask me,
What does nonbinary mean to you?

I think:
What is the sunset?
What is the sunrise?

We divide nature
into night and day,

but the world
is a wheel.

That is the beauty
of the world, truly.

When is the sky
more colorful,
more alive?

Found from words spoken by Willow Defebaugh in “Nature as Medicine with Willow Defabaugh,” an episode of Tarot for the Wild Soul hosted by Lindsay Mack. Selection, title, lineation, and light editing by José Angel Araguz. Verbal fillers and false starts have been removed.

These two encounters stay with me differently, but they touch at the level of form. Each asks what becomes possible when inherited divisions are no longer treated as natural, neutral, or complete.

The world is a wheel. Language moves with the bodies and the lives that speak it. At the places where our customary divisions give way, the sky might become more colorful, more alive.

Richard Serra & what it comes down to

José Angel Araguz 2 Comments

This week I offer up a new lyrical alignment1. This time I’m working with a quote by artist, Richard Serra who died earlier this spring.

In what became “What It Comes Down To (below),” I found myself drawn to a counted verse approach, specifically working out couplets consisting of a 3 word line followed by a 4 word line. I like how Serra’s stark words breathe across couplets. Since he’s talking of obsession and repetition, both of them come through even further with the added white space.

What I get out of Serra’s words here deals mainly with presence. Obsession and repetition here relate to presence in that they are an insistence of it. Obsession insists on presence in terms of attention; repetition insists on presence by embodying it. Serra is making a point about how obsession leads to repetition, which is attention leading to embodiment.

So much of art as well as living feels split in this way. Whenever we make time to do our art, that is a decision of attention; the art that comes from it is embodiment. Whenever we make time to do things for ourselves–outside of obligations, paying bills, chores, etc.–a similar attention and embodiment occur.

But what is made present after all our efforts?

That’s the poetry of it, I believe.

What It Comes Down To

a found poem based on a quote by Richard Serra

Obsession is what
it comes down to.

It is difficult
to think without obsession,

and it is
impossible to create something

without a foundation
that is rigorous, incontrovertible,

and, in fact,
to some degree repetitive.

Repetition is the
ritual of obsession. Repetition

is a way
to jumpstart the indecision

of beginning. To
persevere and to begin

over and over
again is to continue

the obsession with
work. Work comes out

of work. In
order to work you

must already be
working.

Abrazos,

= José =

  1. For the record, what I term here as a lyrical alignment falls under the category of found poetry. I typically take a quote or excerpt of prose, then work it out into lines. I find that working with other people’s words allows you to focus on pacing, enjambment, breaks across line and stanzas, etc. without worrying about “saying” something.

    The cool thing has been said; this is just poetic celebration. ↩︎