New Poetry by James Diaz

Before I Forget

This thing 
like lightening
between my teeth
bad ideas
left at the bar
time ravaged 
muddy boots
and not wanting 
hard enough

it is better to long
for what you cannot have
then to have what you cannot long for

people don't know 
how lucky they are
sometimes

the freedom to open a window
and jump out
or simply water the plants
on the fire escaspe
breathing in that first draft of air
morning makes 
in its silent creeping
into the apartment

how our lungs make love
better than our hands 
sometimes

all the things 
you didn't know how to say
words kept from you
by some silent companion
until at last
why not
let it all out

see the ash scatter
and the daylight intervene

no one is where they belong
or who they thought they'd be.


- James Diaz 2017

James Diaz lives in New York. His work has appeared in HIV Here & Now, These Fragile Lilacs, Epigraph, Foliate Oak, and A Long Story Short. He is founding editor of the literary arts & music journal Anti-Heroin Chic. http://heroinchic.weebly.com/ His first collection of poems, This Someone I Call Stranger, is forthcoming from Indolent Books (2017).