BOOKS
(Note: Email thefridayinfluence@gmail.com for information on purchasing signed copies of the print books below)
AN EMPTY POT’S DARKNESS (2019)
My room in your house was bare.
I painted the walls bright green
for no other reason than
it made you laugh. Living there,
I’d hear you turn and shuffle
papers, until I couldn’t.
The day you died: I didn’t
know it until days later.
excerpt from “for Dennis”
Copies can be purchased from Airlie Press.
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UNTIL WE ARE LEVEL AGAIN (2018)
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All the stars left in
the sky, all the calls and blinking
messages, the wintered sorrow
of all passing thoughts must now wait
until we are level again –
Copies can be purchased on Barnes & Noble & from Mongrel Empire Press.
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stories, not heroes, revising
my grandfather’s house in the rain, I asked, got slapped for it, would it sink or sail away
the mesquite trees we broke twigs from to feed small fires at night
stories, not sacrifice, revisiting
my grandfather’s prayers to a ceiling with holes in it
the canals dividing the neighborhood, the stories of the dead —
Copies can be purchased on Amazon & from FutureCycle Press.
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EVERYTHING WE THINK WE HEAR (2015)
…and as he goes on about parking tickets and handcuffs, I think about all the nice things being said and whether he would say them about “la poesia” and how the thing I do study is made up of everything we think we hear.
Copies can be purchased on Amazon.
Read about the collection here.
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CHAPBOOKS
NAOS EXPLAINS EVERYTHING VIA CRUMBS (2017)
(xi)
Had the men writing the Bible waited longer,
it might have been,
not ashes to ashes, dust
to dust, but rather
from crumbs
to crumbs.
Read the complete chapbook for free here.
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One year exactly since I married one woman I found myself deep in the woods with another,thrusting and slipping into the undergrowth and bracken, and saw myself for what I was: a fire striking itself alive.
Copies can be purchased here.
Read about the chapbook here.
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THE BOOK OF FLIGHT (2016, digital chapbook)
“In the book of flight, plastic bags are brought in to do the work of clouds.
Dead leaves rest in the margins.
Grass clippings, eyelashes, fingernails: errata in the book of flight.”
Read or download (PDF) the complete chapbook for free here.
Read about the chapbook here.
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REASONS (NOT) TO DANCE (2015)I believe you have come here wanting stories, and all I have learned are reasons not to dance. (from “Spinster”)
Copies can be purchased here.
Read about the chapbook here.
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We’ve treated one another like snow,
watched each other fall and drift.
You have come today like snow,
and made me pause. And like snow you leave. (from “Snow”)
Copies can be purchased here.
Read about the chapbook here.
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NAOS: an introduction (2014, digital chapbook)
The fly lifts, flits from the yellowed head
of the magnolia, staggardly makes
it across to the book left open,
lords from page to page,
unafraid of words bigger than him. (“Naos and the Philosopher”)
Read the complete chapbook for free here.
Read about the chapbook here.
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THE WALL (2012)
“…when I am full
of listening I tear
another page
from the wall
and put
not my ear
but this hand to it” (from The Wall)
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“Jose Angel Araguz is a stunning writer. His deep listening – despite walls and silences among them – and his willingness to carry voices of longing and connection even when facts of the world proclaim endless disconnection – help make him a poet of great essential honor and hope. Please welcome him.” (Naomi Shihab Nye)
To order copies of The Wall, email me at thefridayinfluence@gmail.com
Read about the chapbook here.
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