James Diaz
Three Poems
I’ll Take It With Me
What took the most from us
gave us back the most
in the end
added on like a wisdom tooth
I remember almost dying
there but for the grace of somethin’
and being here, now, I’ll admit,
is bittersweet
considering all those that I come from
are scattered now on the wind
grief too, I want it all now
the hurt so huge
you come out small
some nights
and goddamn if the lake in you
isn’t on fire
again
I’ll take it with me
while I wait my darker turn
across this narrowing divide
how beautiful it was to be here
despite everything
and everyone
you had to give up
along the way.
It Is Time
There is in me
This thing
I have for so long
Refused to name
That I am my life
Right now
And not tomorrow
Or all of the many things (count them,
There isn’t enough time)
That went wrong
Way back when
No, I am right here and now
Which, let me tell you
Is a scary place to be
For someone who was once a child
Whose parents hated their own lives
and each other, fiercely
What you do then is you go inward
But a little too far, child,
And it no longer does you much good
To try and keep the world out like that
Look up, for just a moment,
Because, while it is true
That above us all is a sky
So temporarily holding
And fastly slipping away
You would not be blamed for feeling it’s all a little useless
Is it not also true
That you will have been here
Regardless what proof of you time will consume
And time will end, my child, time has to end
Yours and everyone else’s
The lack of it, like the lack of you so small (I remember)
You were but a plant making due with blood water
This lack that brought you to your knees a thousand times
(I remember)
It is only when you fill a thing to the brim
That it becomes significant to you
We are not long in this place
I dare you to not to let it go to waste.
Breakage
I am tired
but not in the way you think
I am swaying
branch like
barnacle eroding beautifully
intertidal faith carried like so
I’ll dip it all
into the wind
west faced train
gooseneck navigator
I’ve carried things
all my life
handed off
to me
receptacle that I was
the strongest littlest shaker
shackled to the floor
some nights
oh, you should have heard me wail
and laugh it off
it was all just so unforgivably beautiful to me
I tended to my bend
like so many false flares
shot into nowhere
you needn’t come for me
I swim upstream
against the light
the sky bear pounces
I am like a fever lifting tonight
basking in the get-well-soon
of the midnight room
we have waited so long for you
this is the world
and I have wanted
every pain in it
to teach me what I need to know
like so
and on my knees.
—Submitted on 01/31/2021
James Diaz is the author of This Someone I Call Stranger (Indolent Books, 2018) as well as the founding editor of Anti-Heroin Chic. Their poems have appeared in Yes, Poetry; Gone Lawn; The Collidescope; Thimble Literary Magazine; Horror Sleaze Trash; and many other journals.
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Editor’s Note: The series title A River Sings is borrowed from “On the Pulse of Morning,” the poem read by Maya Angelou at the inauguration of Bill Clinton in 1993.
