What Rough Beast | Poem for April 23, 2017

James Diaz
A Wound Pulled Me In

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
very little 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.

 

James Diaz is the founding editor of the literary arts and music journal Anti-Heroin Chic. His work has appeared in Cheap Pop Lit, Ditch, HIV Here & Now, Foliate Oak, Pismire, Chronogram and My Favorite Bullet. His first book of poems, This Someone I Call Stranger, is forthcoming from Indolent Books (2017). He lives in upstate New York.

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