Miraculous

poems by

Angel Zapata

~50 pages, $13 (+ shipping)

Projected Release Date: February, 2025

An Advance Sale Discount price of $8 (+ shipping) is available HERE prior to press time. This price is not available anywhere else or by check. The check price is $12/book (which includes shipping & sales tax) and should be sent to: Main Street Rag, 4416 Shea Lane, Mint Hill, NC 28227. 

PLEASE NOTE: Ordering in advance of the release date entitles the buyer to a discount. It does not mean the book will ship before the date posted above and the price only applies to copies ordered through the Main Street Rag Online Bookstore.

Angel Zapata calls Augusta, Georgia his home. Born and raised in New York City, his award-winning fiction and poetry is a conglomeration of street smarts and Southern charm. Previously published poems have appeared at The Boston Literary Review, Treehouse Magazine, The Midnight Lane Boutique, Trailer Park Quarterly, and Melancholy Hyperbole. He is the author of two poetry collections: Prayers from Crooked Spines and An Offering of Ink and Feathers. His chapbook, Pearl Street was published by Rinky Dink Press.

“Poems in my twenties,” Zapata declares, “were so much easier.” Like a punk-rock survivor of the apocalypse of “youthful betrayals” by sacraments and saints, lovers and cousins, Zapata’s poems playfully and heart-wrenchingly revise the idealized past, redefine the constructs of Catholicism—from a dancing Jesus to the knees genuflecting into the sea. Through the wisdom of hindsight, his melting pot of memories seeps into our hearts and psyches, where “blood on/black asphalt is/nearly indistinguishable/from rain.” ~Rosemarie Dombrowski

creation is a branch tapping along a fence

I was
a babe,
a boy,
a man,
a husband,
a father,
but then
some of me
went away
and I was
someone else
that looked
a lot like me
but was none
of those things

I was
a husband,
then I was not,
then I was,
then I was not,
then I was,
then I was not

a father
is a different
species
altogether,
we’re always
related
but not
always a dad,
a daddy,
a dada,
sometimes
we are
simply a palm
pressed to
a pregnant belly
and that’s as
warm as
we ever get

I was,
I am
also a son,
the first born,
the brutal
experiment,
the bark
and growl of
laboratory
dogs,
the howls,
the leash
holding them back

but tonight
I am
the babe,
the fetus,
the sperm,
the egg,
I am
the unknown,
the impossible,
I am
the miraculous

dissect
the man
and liberate
the poet
who is no one
particular
but someone
always familiar,
like a boy
in the distance
with something
in his hand,
a pen,
a blade…
a branch
tapping
along a fence,
unrecognizable,
unhindered
by the
architect of
his construction

comatose is a church with no plans to kneel

not nearly as boring as opera,
I gargle a four-verse hymn,
turn and spit into an aisle
splintered by the birdseed
or rice of some stranger’s wedding

the preacher jackknives an eyelid,
has the congregants’ children
storm the altar, perch beside him,
coughs up a parable on the fly,
something about fishers of men

he scans the young faces for a pulse,
chooses a boy with sunburnt lips:
pretend you’re at the beach,
he says, tell me one thing
you’d see beneath the water

the boy’s response is miraculous:
knees, he says, a whole lot of knees

jesus is a potato, a cloud, an oil slick

1.

take these plastic ears
and insert them
into a potato head god

they say his children
hear him
when he calls

take my ears, jesus
and let me become another
set of eyes on your dark skin

2.

a cloud
a clod
a cod

this time
he walks on
water in reverse

3.

as if someone formed
his faux-anglican features
in a crude oil spill

his long, black hair
and gleaming beard
coat the white wings

of a pelican— in its mouth,
a fish; on the sleeve
of its artist, a stain