Western Voices: James Diaz

Bio:

James Diaz is the author of This Someone I Call Stranger (Indolent Books, 2018) and editor (along with Elisabeth Horan & Amy Alexander) of the anthology What Keeps us Here: Songs from The Other Side of Trauma (Anti-Heroin Chic Press, 2019). In 2016 he founded the online literary arts and music journal Anti-Heroin Chic to provide a platform for often unheard voices, including those struggling with addiction, mental illness and Prison/confinement. His most recent work can be found in Moonchild Magazine, Occulum, Drunk Monkeys, Yes, Poetry, and Thimble Literary Magazine. He resides in upstate New York, in between balanced rocks and horse farms. He has never believed in anything as strongly as he does the power of poetry to help heal a shattered life.  

Domestic Blis-ters 

I won't sing sweetly 

if the buck needs cleaning

and poetry is all wrong for this

I'll dig a hole for the fence post

this is my day to day

rockabye rockabye momma's gonna buy you another pair of eyes

the wash is on the line

and my heart is wrung dry of beauty 

dinner at eight 

but in my bones I feel the tug 

of a black sea I can't sail

with flowers in my hair 

it's only dance hall Tuesday at the VFW

brown beer and neon signs two for one

still equals nothing special

lumber trucks belching black smoke 

on the long shadow of the highway

I read poetry at the kitchen table 

and cry so hard some nights it wakes the kids

put on a brave face 

for the storms have their own path in this place

I'm only human and so so small underneath this mountain town

is there more than this

if so, it ain't mine

maybe happiness is just thinking the bottle's empty 

and findin' one more sweet sip.

Laughter Loves The Company of Darkness

I woke 

and slipped 

through the break

in the river, 

the day I was born

a wail and a shock

that could not be shook

hungry, scared, wanting back in

to one knows not what

a body that walls out the light

cradles the wail, the want

I circled the prayer tree

with knobs of wheat 

mental pictures  

of what you must look like

dancing, bars along the interstate 

with names like the watering hole

and simmer down tavern

get on my knees 

but I can't remember the prayer

which word works for this

paint by numbers

the wilderness in a kiss

bee stung 

beneath rib cage

a candlelight prayer for nowhere 

I used to have the method

now I only have the madness

love is where you go to lose your mind 

in the alder bush

dogs bury their loot 

for the less fortunate to find

I am one of those tonight

without a home or clue 

of where I came from

who I belong to

once I was the compass 

now I am the break wall

the pressure cracks me open

and the ocean rises above me

I am such a small detail 

in your world-story

I am wood used for the fire

and the night is long

and the water is more than I know what to do with

I am wailing space and collapsing time

in my tiny hands 

I am loving you more

than a fault line loves the earth it separates 

in two, between the born and the dying 

I want back in, blind and without memory 

first taste of life a blank

a bleed, blotter of entry 

poised for the breaking.

Janis Joplin # 3

you seen me bend so low

I almost drank the stage

with my teeth, never once

thought of giving myself

over to the light, I closed

my eyes so f**kin' tight

cuz that's where

the high note lives

played it out on my skin

baby, I was the brightest thing burning 

but cried myself to sleep

at night, I wanted to be a boy

size eleven feet 

and a monster truck heart, 

eat this f**kin' town alive

with my blankety blank 

throat pulsing lizard king blues

I wasn't meant to be this Queenie 

burden of sadness, I come from mountains

way up yonder, bare foot tom boy

rippin' through the creek bed

and yelling at stars with my 

microphone heart 

on my sleeve

they called me magic 

but I was born that way

and let me tell ya; it f**kin' burns to be a shooting star

in a little woman's body.

---

Western Voices :: Setu, February 2019