James Diaz contemplates a god as a weapon in the mouth, a band-aid heart, and the shape you leave in the snow

Genesis As a Blur Seen from the Driver's Side Window

The girl was a cloud 

of moss 

over the missing eye of god

in a fire you know where the skin ends

and the bone begins

they gathered their stories in a bundle of heat

whip last and you feel it first 

this mountain of thirst tremble up

against the line of blue wall 

wrapped round a cloud of sound

say sky but not the how of it

it is here underneath the dire thing

all day they sing it like a broken tooth

drowning in milk - a god is a weapon in the mouth 

of everything 

we came crawling out of

speak to me of dark matter 

and I will show you 

where the blade 

of the beginning went in

and came out clean

up there they drew the line

but down here 

we just walked it.

The Time Of My Life

To be born

is to be ruined

so much more gets lost than found along the way

like a broken radio I kept my parts intact

even in silence

I waited for signal return

an unlikely kind of wild

like maybe forgiveness is always unearned

and whose hands were first to shatter me

also loved me and so on and so on

what is it, this thing in my band-aid heart 

telling me how to breathe like a bent arrow through luck-shot air

my god, kid, can you believe we made it this far

and you’d like to laugh it off

but no matter, it matters, you look a lot like them

your people, your kin, your kind

they went wild on you, ate you up,

my god, kid, don’t you know you had to come this way

along the riven path

that your bones were already lit and your blaze is beautiful.

Thousand Oaks 

you know who you are

by the shape on the wall

you know how to fall

into place, broken glass

memory shifter, your tired little body

flailing, failing 

it's your half light

it's the last call tonight

it's the wild wolf coming for you

ambulance lights

the shape you leave 

in the snow

one huge heft of human

wears you down, don't it

getting through 

getting by, slept it off one too many times

only putting down what you know

break and break and you're broken

after a while 

it's the only way 

the light you lay in 

hands to the floor, officer, I meant no harm

 

in the name of the father

i meant only laughter 

meant only the name i was given

sour in my mouth 

and here i am

take me in your shadow

i am dressed for the kill

i am dressed for the light.

 James Diaz is the author of This Someone I Call Stranger (Indolent Books, 2018) and All Things Beautiful Are Bent (forthcoming, Alien Buddha Press, 2021,) as well as the founding Editor of Anti-Heroin Chic. Their work has appeared most recently in Cobra Milk Mag, Bear Creek Gazette and Resurrection Mag. They live in a far too cold and snowy upstate New York, where they are waiting patiently for the Spring.