This week I am excited to announce a Goodreads giveaway for my latest poetry collection, Small Fires (FutureCycle Press). I’ll be giving away ten signed copies of the book. Deadline is August 10th, 2017. Check out the details here:

To help celebrate this announcement, I am presenting an excerpt from Small Fires in the form of both a poem and some commentary. The poem is entitled “Hail from Corpus Christi” and as I mention in a Q&A conducted by Carve Magazine, working on this poem was key into finding the themes of the collection.

Hails from Corpus Christi – José Angel Araguz

I would be belted after dinner,
my food eaten with the moon,
the night a table where a place
is set, and a place diminishes –
hardened, chucked out of the sky,
milk-glow, but a rap like a stone,
the kind in movies thrown at windows
to get someone’s attention – I was all
attention as my mother’s boyfriend
turned to rain and thunder,
clouds broke into fists and cries
broke the sky of my sleep with lightning
that held fast in me, turned me
into that color – a hardened flash
falling through the years into a room
where I tried to restrain the weather
of what I felt, but raised
my voice, punched the wall, the table,
clawed after and clutched your arm
as you tried to leave before
hearing what I had to say,
clutched and pulled away to see the white
of where the blood had left, a hardened
streak that burst into
your hand hard across my face, your voice
no longer a voice I knew,
a voice that from then on
kept me at a distance,
would harden and check me for years,
distrustful, despite our apologies,
despite tears and my own diminishing
voice, a pebbled voice, a grit,
shit shit shit under my breath
every time we’d argue, knowing
there was nothing I could do
but take it, hold my clouded self,
not wanting to hit, ricochet, scatter.

*

For more commentary on this poem, check out the rest of the Carve Magazine Q&A.

Happy hailing!

José