Todo for Nada

a villanelle

My name means everything,
and her name means nothing.

I speak to her in word-swing,
and push off of myself.

You can tell in her way of speaking:
through her, my name speaks itself.

If you stop to hear the wind sing,
it sings of the self.

If I stop to watch her dress cling,
it clings to the self.

Yet I am left here calling
out her name as if it were myself.

José Angel Araguz is a CantoMundo fellow and the author of six chapbooks as well as the collection Everything We Think We Hear (Floricanto Press). His poems, prose, and reviews have appeared in RHINO Poetry, New South, and The Volta Blog. A current PhD candidate at the University of Cincinnati, he runs the poetry blog The Friday Influence. A second collection, Small Fires, is forthcoming from FutureCycle Press.