James Diaz- Three Poems

I Don't Know If You Can Read This, But If You Can...

Pressing

down,

the thumb

assaults the blood flow,

inwardly you think: this

is what it must feel like

to be saved,

to be warm

between the elbow and the wrist

to have measured out the gap

between each beat that your heart makes

in the mausoleum

in the auditorium

a dream that you are on display

and late for your own display

“Don't make a scene”

the director says

“be the scene”

“but I don't know how”

“Then get the fuck off the stage”

I remember the first deer

I saw lying dead

how I wanted to crawl down

and kiss its mouth

how I wanted to hold it

until the ambulance arrived

and then the grief

at realizing we aren't meant to save such things.

Come Morning It Will Still Be As Bad As It Was The Day Before

Packed in neatly

where the burden 

that is your face

turns toward the wall

and all who have 

known you incorrectly

for so long

stare at you 

with noncommittal eyes

you want to scream

but there is a promise

of heaven in your throat

and it won't allow you

to be this imperfect

to flare and flash your wounds

as if that is what makes people

who never got it

suddenly get it

suddenly grab you up into their arms

and sing to you

and cry into your hair

the same refrain: I am so sorry

so, so sorry

sometimes a damage is so deep

it is the surface that kills

you close a door inside of your head

the warning light is as dim as the warning

no one ever arrives just in time

and there is no other person in the world who could destroy you

as well as you do.

Response To The Prior Experience Section Of A Job Application

Fasten your skin down

beneath the arid wandering

of truck stops at the edge of the world

blitzed coats of white

snow on the road

whose bible put thorns in yer blood

I got two guns

under the seat

almonds and alms 

and when I pull this car over

I'm gonna start a fire so big 

the whole outskirts of towns will implode

we'll chisel our name in ash

we'll walk it off

cut the line / communication will stink

amber wave riding

this jades the mind

but it's all a trial - trivial

two tone travesty

trellis and wall – overgrowth

left to love in the absence of love,

left to bleed out in the open,

you get the drift,

I get the draft.

Author Bio: James Diaz spends his time writing poetry as if his life depended on it, because it does. His forms of survival can be found in Chronogram, Ditch, Calliope, Cheap Pop Lit, Pismire, Collective Exile, My Favorite Bullet, Commonline Journal, The Voices Project and The Idiom. Do not follow him. He does not like to lead.