Close Enough
you bring me dark mouth
and on the inside
where none can find you
that haunted hollow
where you stir up dreams
and throw throw them on the floor
one by one
I count the magic
you've lost
one of the first and only casualties
I pocket it like a tooth
I go deep toward you
nothing can break us now
we are in pieces already
It's Not As Easy To Be Loved As You Think
I look for horizon line
something descending
like I don't know what
to call it even
maybe the sound of dying
or shattered things brought indoors
a name on paper
little to no reassurance
we are more than fragile
I want to say we are more than we know what to do with
I want to fight you
but I don't know the method here
the math is odd
and your mouth fierce
a furnace eating poems
I can't write fast enough
to keep up with your not needing to know how human we are
and deserving
and belonging here
almost more than you
I want to say goodness will win
but I'm not so sure anymore.
Simply Breaking
Artificial light
will only illuminate
artificial things
it's so familiar
to be this broken
sound of cars
misfiring in the parking lot
of sadness drawing the shortest straw
every night
the day dreaming of its longest run
across thighs quivering from too much
sex, drugs, cutting-
god-letting
and the angular rush
toward whatever form
oblivion takes
this side of nowhere at all
comes like a haunting
all over your face
as if you've seen too much life
or suddenly forgotten your words
as if you are just figuring out
how badly the world will break you,
how much you'll let it.
Small Talk
The colliding in your heart
the arriving at the party too late
and how painful living is
hand me down reminders
of rags to rags
to wondering
where all the years went.
Bionote
JAMES DIAZ is the founding editor of the literary arts & music journal Anti-Heroin Chic. His work has appeared most recently in HIV Here & Now, Foliate Oak, Chronogram, and Cheap Pop Lit. His first book of poems, This Someone I Call Stranger, is forthcoming from Indolent Books (2017.)
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