Foxhole, by Azalea Aguilar

Poetry, chapbook, 28 pages, from Bottlecap Features. Foxhole is a collection of poems that inhabits the tense, uncertain spaces of a childhood shadowed by addiction and lingering trauma. Through the eyes of a young girl, the poems move through a household where love and fear coexist, where a father carries invisible battles that never leave him, and a mother tracing the edges of her own pain in ways only she could bear. Amid the tension, moments of quiet grace emerge—a father pausing along a Texas highway so his daughter can gather wildflowers, a mother sharing ice cream on a sea wall after the house has gone dark. The collection also bears witness to personal loss, the experience of leaving home to protect yourself, and the grief of leaving parts of your life behind. Even within fragility, Foxhole finds resilience and tenderness in the cracks of instability. Love persists, quietly and insistently, and hope blooms in unexpected corners. Through intimate, lyrical imagery, these poems offer both a witness and a refuge—a portrait of survival, of navigating tension and upheaval, and of carrying forward the threads of healing in a world that feels ever precariously unstable. Azalea Aguilar is an emerging Chicana poet from South Texas, where the scent of the gulf and memories of childhood linger in her work. Her poetry delves into the complexities of motherhood, echoes of childhood trauma, and the resilience found in spaces shaped by addiction and survival. She writes to honor the past, give voice to the unspoken, and carve tenderness from the raw edges of experience. Her work has appeared in numerous journals, including Angel City Review, The Skinny Poetry Journal, and The Acentos Review. She has been featured at events hosted by the American Poetry Museum in DC and is currently crafting her first manuscript, a collection exploring the intersections of love, loss, and lineage.