* new post @ North American Review blog!

Just a quick note to share a post I did for the North American Review blog.

The post, “Happiness and the Tough Stuff,” has me sharing some background about my poem “Stitched” which was published in the Summer 2016 issue of NAR (I have provided the poem below for reference).

“Stitched” will be in my second full length poetry collection, Small Fires, forthcoming in 2017 from FutureCycle Press. It’s a good example of the measure and subject matter of the collection.

Special thanks to Matt Manley who provided the awesome artwork that accompanies my blog post! Thanks also to everyone at the North American Review for this opportunity! Copies of the issue can be bought at NAR’s site.

*

Stitched – José Angel Araguz

Shopping after the accident,

my aunt said: See anything

you like and we can take it,

just have you mother open

her stomach there, then pointed

as my mother laughed,

and I recalled the black

smile stitched into

her side, the lines to me

not healing her, holding

her shut instead, like the door

of the hospital room

I was kept out of when

she wasn’t awake – the accident

from the other night,

how her boyfriend insisted

that he wasn’t drunk

and drove her car into

a tree, how she had felt

safe with him before,

how she really needed that,

looked to each man in her life

for the father she’d lost faith in,

for the man her father failed

to be so early on she

was a child when she left,

how her boyfriend now wouldn’t

visit, had come out of the wreck

unharmed while she kept falling

out of herself – all of this needing

to be held in, sewn up

so she would not hurt,

and me then not wanting

to want anything,

so she would not hurt.

*

See you Friday!

José