When she sleeps I rise.
The naked light bulb burns
And makes the moths outside
Beat against the screen.
A moth comes out of me.
It flies to the light,
Then staggers back in pain
To rest in me again.
She sleeps and holds her peace,
Though I’m consumed by this.
* one pretty moth-er *
Having written a poem in which a moth speaks to me of light, this poem had an immediate appeal for me. But here the moth comes out of the man – a man who is awake and consumed.
And writing – by writing consumed.
In other news, I am happy to report that autumn is here in full rain and wind and leaves – leaves, some of which, look like the moth above.
José Angel Araguz is a CantoMundo fellow and the author of seven chapbooks as well as the collections Everything We Think We Hear, Small Fires, Until We Are Level Again, and, most recently, An Empty Pot’s Darkness. His poems, creative nonfiction, and reviews have appeared in Crab Creek Review, Prairie Schooner, New South, Poetry International, and The Bind. Born and raised in Corpus Christi, Texas, he runs the poetry blog The Friday Influence and composes erasure poems on the Instagram account @poetryamano. He is also a faculty member in Pine Manor College’s Solstice Low-Residency MFA program. With an MFA from New York University and a PhD from the University of Cincinnati, José is an Assistant Professor of English at Suffolk University in Boston where he also serves as Editor-in-Chief of Salamander Magazine.
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