Featured Poet James Diaz
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James Diaz
James Diaz is the author of This Someone I Call Stranger (Indolent Books, 2018) and All Things Beautiful Are Bent (Alien Buddha Press, 2021) as well as the founding Editor of Anti-Heroin Chic. Their work has appeared most recently in Cobra Milk Mag, Bear Creek Gazette, and Resurrection Mag. They live in a far too cold and snowy upstate New York where they are waiting patiently for the spring.
I don't know how to anymore
nothing is ever fully in the light
from here it always kinda looks
like we're dancing
in the house we never had
and it is all one thing tonight
I know you know what I mean
when I say it's getting late
it's not about time
it's about our lives
what would we even say to the kids we had once been?
try again, because this isn't all of it
death comes quickly
yes, but so does life
I hold it all tonight
here, in my never whole home
I am halfway gone
and yes I would if I could
tell you all about what comes next
new towns wedding gowns glorious burning autumn hills
radiant child
turning blue into bruise
peach kisses, the pawnshop TV-screen glow
and churches are purring in bone
and we are all alone
margin of errors, one shot arrow and glorious
I know you know what I mean
when I say that's enough now
That's enough
This Time
the past is the past
depends on how bad it really was
he hit me here
and here
in the parking lot of the auto mechanic's
neon glow
I said do it again
and I'll put you in the ground
there was a name my mother used to call the neighbors
angrily in Spanish
there was a way she held the salt shaker in her hand
that reminded me of
a solo dancer
heels clicking on a sad high school gymnasium floor
abandoned by her date for a hotter flame
my father was at the race track
with the rent again
I was sent after him
around the corner
with my tiny hands
held out like contrition
momma says tell him milk and bread
I say I won't forget this pain, ever
my only inheritance
tonight I cut deeper than I expected
the vein in me sang out the whole chorus this time
she cooed like a rail yard
at the end of the world
I looked like I felt
like I looked hooked up to the moon
trailed by barking dogs and no last name
they said it wouldn't hurt so much if I just handed it over to him
they were wrong
it had a life of its own
a death-bell
that I ate like laughter
motel vacancy in my eyes
past the bone
is the spirit
past the spirit
is the pain
you can't outrun what you are—
not ever
it's twenty dollars to forget
it's twenty years
to remember
the county off-road & grid
in the tall pine
moon mother
shouts after tail lights
disappearing into the mountains
her daughter, in her mouth—
she breaks the thing in two
a god of silence
walking home
alone
to build a wreckage
from her womb