James Diaz
The Arrival Never Ending
I dreamt you destroyed the world
and you weren’t even here to see it
something about the heat pressing in
and the planet was getting uncomfortable in its skin
and the people I loved
didn’t know what to do
with themselves anymore
life was getting small
words repeated like incantation of spirit
we cannot wash fear off
time being circular
hate follows its own tail
in the dark
and under the table
a tug of what-call-it?
Hidden light,
the atomic morning after?
I dreamt that all of that hate was turned into a garden
and there was no water to nurture something new
and I wept knowing how you didn’t even notice.
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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