2/5/2017 1 Comment Five Poems by James DiazThe Narrow Pass You feel heart break is a type of sky but who put us under it? and why these useless names for things we can only touch break in half? are you as deep as I think you are, buried under the wool (these could be track marks, the ones I counted on my father's arms as he held me) late at night I thought the sound of every train was god coming to burn my house to the ground and who would you love if you had only today? And what if today never came? Coming Back For More We tarry we tear ourselves limb to limping we hold the fort down inside our throat and nothing fits us just like a glove we have screams and scars under our eyelids fifty two names for the blank spaces the lost time our parents gave us along the back of our thighs god put her tongue sloppy wet on our skin till we begged her to stop we were belly up in the meantime the underbrush was no safe space puddles were public pools and no one cared what kind of language you used in those parking lots burning under our feet I want you to highlight my edges, I mean like my status or hold my chafing soul against the salt of your imperfect skin say human one more time and I'll scream each generation haunts itself damaged broken bastards that stand out a little too much when they say "he's kind of hard to take" they mean they're incapable of seeing themselves in the other this is how you divide what is broken by breaking the division like an almond inside your wound pray that that pain will keep you humble coming back for more. Reading Jorie, as a life boat I was the one who opened up trauma everywhere I went it spilled out of me like light shoved through the cracks onto some other place I never knew beat so early the pain can feel like home you might even try to build something just like it with your own two battle scarred hands compass adjacent body and eyes nerve blind in the night searching for a self that doesn't shatter who failed to hold you? and that place where you were never touched, can you feel it now? Don't you think that you ought to live long enough to find out what you're capable of making up for? Keepsakes When all was lost you were not how tightly you held on until letting go became easier than burning it all down. After Normal Cracks Open Thrift store, dime bins falling left across the map of your veins & waking up to the silence of broken windows a kind of orphan name at the back of your throat sorry for not calling to say all of this on the phone. Bio: James Diaz is a writer, editor and activist, living in upstate New York. His work has appeared in HIV Here & Now, Chronogram, Cheap Pop Lit, Ditch, and Foliate Oak. His first collection of poems, This Someone I Call Stranger, is forthcoming from Indolent Books (2017). He is founding editor of the literary arts & music journal Anti-Heroin Chic.
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Vince Nuzzo
6/20/2021 09:53:52 am
I love these poems James. Beautiful and haunting. Thank you for sharing, your work is amazing. I look forward to exploring more of your writing, and Jack Micheline! Thanks for the heads up on him, I can't believe I've overlooked his work all these years. Vinny
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