SMALL TALK
by José Angel Araguz
At work, we find ourselves
with silences, and, because we’re
strangers, we turn to the weather,
or a movie only one of us
has seen, pass the time
in this half way. Today,
we talk bagels, how they
should be cut with the tool
made for the task, yet,
it is obvious to others that
the only real way to do it
is to take a knife
and sideways run it through,
this way the halves are loose
and free, like a wheel
split in two. And this is
why one doesn’t talk poetry
with poets: because no matter
how well one has it in hand
someone’s bound to find
another way it should’ve
been done, and so on, back
and forth, until these silences
repair themselves, and we slowly
realize how small the words
are between us.
by José Angel Araguz
Not that the room must be silent,
nor that there must be no one in it:
the voice will come, nothing to begin it
but to sit and wait, patient
as a man waiting for a train,
holding a newspaper lightly, reading
maybe, more listening to the fleeting
things around him, no strain
in him but the one always there
in whatever room he may be in
waiting for a thing still not there,
waiting, hours and hours spent in
faith, until the time comes when there
is more than the wind charging in.
_____________________________________________________
José Angel Araguz is the author of six chapbooks and the
collection Everything We Think We Hear, published by
Floricanto Press. A second collection, Small Fires, is
forthcoming from FutureCycle Press. Araguz’s poetry and
prose have appeared in RHINO Poetry, New South, and
Crab Creek Review. He is a CantoMundo fellow and a Ph.D.
candidate in Creative Writing and Literature at the University
of Cincinnati.
◄ Previous page Apple Valley Review, Spring 2017 Next page ►
At work, we find ourselves
with silences, and, because we’re
strangers, we turn to the weather,
or a movie only one of us
has seen, pass the time
in this half way. Today,
we talk bagels, how they
should be cut with the tool
made for the task, yet,
it is obvious to others that
the only real way to do it
is to take a knife
and sideways run it through,
this way the halves are loose
and free, like a wheel
split in two. And this is
why one doesn’t talk poetry
with poets: because no matter
how well one has it in hand
someone’s bound to find
another way it should’ve
been done, and so on, back
and forth, until these silences
repair themselves, and we slowly
realize how small the words
are between us.
by José Angel Araguz
Not that the room must be silent,
nor that there must be no one in it:
the voice will come, nothing to begin it
but to sit and wait, patient
as a man waiting for a train,
holding a newspaper lightly, reading
maybe, more listening to the fleeting
things around him, no strain
in him but the one always there
in whatever room he may be in
waiting for a thing still not there,
waiting, hours and hours spent in
faith, until the time comes when there
is more than the wind charging in.
_____________________________________________________
José Angel Araguz is the author of six chapbooks and the
collection Everything We Think We Hear, published by
Floricanto Press. A second collection, Small Fires, is
forthcoming from FutureCycle Press. Araguz’s poetry and
prose have appeared in RHINO Poetry, New South, and
Crab Creek Review. He is a CantoMundo fellow and a Ph.D.
candidate in Creative Writing and Literature at the University
of Cincinnati.
◄ Previous page Apple Valley Review, Spring 2017 Next page ►
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Apple Valley Review:
A Journal of Contemporary
Literature
ISSN 1931-3888
Volume 12, Number 1
(Spring 2017)
Copyright © 2017
by Leah Browning, Editor.
All future rights to material
published in the Apple
Valley Review are retained
by the individual authors
and artists.
www.applevalleyreview.com
A Journal of Contemporary
Literature
ISSN 1931-3888
Volume 12, Number 1
(Spring 2017)
Copyright © 2017
by Leah Browning, Editor.
All future rights to material
published in the Apple
Valley Review are retained
by the individual authors
and artists.
www.applevalleyreview.com
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WAITING