Back to Issue Fifty-Two

A Child of Immigrants

BY ÁNGEL GARCÍA

The phone rings. I pick up. The voice, unrecognizable. Distant words. Between, I hear my mother’s name. I cover the mouthpiece and call out for her to pick up. From somewhere else, she answers  the  line.  Yells from another room, okay, hang up. Only, I don’t. In a language I know will never be mine she speaks to someone  in  a  country  I will never know. Still, I listen.  I  coil  the  cord around my finger, fist, and wrist. Long after she says goodbye and hangs up, I’m still  marked  by  what  I don’t understand.

 

Burials

BY ÁNGEL GARCÍA

Click Here to Read Burials by Ángel García

Ángel García, the proud son of Mexican immigrants, is the author of Indifferent Cities (Tupelo Press, forthcoming), winner of a Helena Whitehill Book award and Teeth Never Sleep (University of Arkansas Press), recipient of a CantoMundo Poetry Prize, an American Book Award, and finalist for a PEN America Open Book Award and a Kate Tufts Discovery Award. His work has been published in The American Poetry Review, McSweeney’s, Crab Orchard Review, Huizache, The Acentos Review, and most recently in fugue journal and Sonora Review. He has also received fellowships from CantoMundo, Community of Writers, Vermont Studio Center, and MacDowell. Ángel currently teaches in the MFA Program at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

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