James Diaz
After Light
I make some kind of perfect fold along the wound
pour sugar into the hurt
in my mind our bodies have not been abused
by so many people so long ago
that every unexpected touch sends us reeling
back again and again
to the shaky little thing with no words for what is happening
other than feed me, don’t devour me
the floor has such a hungry mouth
a dark table of silence
some father-wolf built with his own death rattle
pressed against the tilt of the earth
some witness must know that the hallowed sum of us
is much more than our broken parts.
James Diaz is the author of This Someone I Call Stranger (Indolent Books, 2018) and editor of the forthcoming anthology What Keeps us Here: Songs from The Other Side of Trauma (Anti-Heroin Chic Press, 2018). 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. 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.
SUBMIT to What Rough Beast via our SUBMITTABLE site.