JAMES DIAZ - POEMS & PHOTOGRAPHY

James Diaz is the author of This Someone I Call Stranger (Indolent Books, 2018) and founding Editor of the literary arts & music journal Anti-Heroin Chic. His work can be found in Thimble Literary Magazine, Drunk Monkeys, Moonchild Magazine, Occulum, and Peculiars Magazine. He lives in upstate New York.

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​The Notes We Played

​There is nothing so beautiful 
it cannot crumble 
like old letters in attics 
like buildings with odd names
we huddle in for warmth 
we do not get very far from our hauntings

we want what is golden 
to grow in us
but there is scrub land 
there is brier 
dark and rushing rivers 
we step into the mess of light
the dirty and stinking parts of us
crying out, oh, love what is broken in
the body has this little hum
and it is more than we can carry in two hands
strange offerings to silence 

how it keeps us in its prayer-barrel of necessary stinging 
and we are singing not to be heard but to hear
our own small voices carried off beyond us

​

​We Are Light of Day

 I considered crawling into the bottom of you
on all fours, arrow straight in this desire 
to really see
the world through you, 
vessel and skin
and contagion, I am mess you are maker
or I am builder and you are water
or you are none of these things and I've bungled
the lay of your light with my shaky hands
or maybe you've also considered crawling into the bottom of things
and you don't know why
only that it hurts to be alone
and so you seek a carrier 
a cleft of rock where your shadow is the size of salt 
become small boned and the heart grows and grows
when it is left wanting and it is always left wanting
everything that it cannot have.

​The Closing

​"will we ever find our places in this fucked up world? 
Hold on to me and we'll feel our way through this dark age." -Talons'


at night the sound of the highway 
rattling 
the air crisp
around us

we're so out of season
here, in this parking lot
where the light dances
like cigarette burns on our skin 
and I lean against you
becoming air and lung
and I'd put all of it right
if only i could, everything that ever went wrong

we stare at the kids in motel 6 autumn dusk 
running with sparklers in their clenched fists
we don't speak a word we just share the silence 
and pavement like old friends
we want this to last forever
but it's only beautiful because it won't

I smile at your two inky stars 
I want to touch you there
at the side of your face
I want to trip across your true north
undo the past and make a fire 
and dance around it all night

what is beyond wanting is simply letting go
I want that to be beautiful 
and I know that we already are
even in this closing 
there is so much that lives 
beyond us 
you can taste it in the air
and it is equally sweet and burning.

​Drop Me Off, Lift Me Up, Cut Me Down

​everything happens out here in the dark
of you, and i'm so many bad habits
I can't keep em all straight 

maybe it's the way you laugh 
maybe it's how dark I know you get
and still you ask me about the light
where to find it when it hurts to breathe like this
and I point to the heart

you smile like that's my greatest trick
the perfect response to the most imperfect question
i'm more mess than you know
you know what a mess i am
and still you climb into me with your dangerous mouth
full of New Jersey nights
parking lot beer and a quota on who really gets to know you
and who gets the extra
the montage, the jump cut heart
every thing worth loving is worth loving all wrong.

A. Tells Her Story ​

​and if I killed someone, would you still love me then
she asks, and I know she's serious,
just like I know she's lonely 
and scared of finding out too much about what it is that's brought her here 

she tells me things that she hopes will scare me off
I say, you're light and good and I love you
and she laughs, I am trash, I'm a cheater, I get bored easily -
and I know she means it, but I think she doubts herself
knows maybe there is light somewhere in the hill of her eyes
just over the bend in that long road back home
that winds in on itself 

we both know how little sense that word makes; home -
sticks like a pit in the throat, air moving around the loss of it
the wanting of it, oh, I love you more because you've killed,
not less, never less -

I'm not runnin' from what you're bringin'
I'm standin' in for all the sunlight that you've never seen
up close and through your bedroom window
shiny little tomorrow's dancing just beyond 
your town at night, the heavy-heaven in you,
the whiskey on your breath, bruises on your thigh
like road maps to nowhere and everywhere all at once
you're like this thing that I have no words for
but I say it anyway, goodnight angel, sleep dark
and dream of all that lonely highway light
let it bring you... home.