James Diaz
Vestiges
open your eyes, she said
even on the longest road the light still shifts into shadow
cars drifting like orphan gods
someone cleared their throat
from the backseat
and asked for what sounded like water
but was really
am I lovable
like a backwards prayer
you move your hand along a wall
that attests to sorrow as a primal state
we count the things that got left out of us in the making
a scintilla of hope against the chain link fence
that runs for miles around your heart
you carry a lot of water, a lot of weight
and at the end of the day
not all of it is yours
I’m telling you;
you can still make such beautiful things
with what got left out.
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.
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