The Year I Took to Silence
by James Diaz / February 26th, 2017
and brought night with me,
wore idol and eider down
like prairie fire spilling
from a wispy mountain
like blood in my body
gone speechless
and high wire
when the heat mutates into experience
when the fallen rise from the floor
and cannot locate where it hurts
thinning light
scud and scarred
vacuumed into the current’s core
like a lovers fist
discontinuous at your looming
your “I will be there soon”
hold a spot for me at the reception
a crack in the monotony
nerve endings unfurling
and how deep
is your wound
up river
something breaks you open
a biography of forgetting
molecules,
nearly nothing
nearly everything
James Diaz is the author of This Someone I Call Stranger (2018, Indolent Books) and editor of the forthcoming anthology What Keeps us Here: Songs from The Other Side of Trauma. 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.
Read other articles by James.
This article was posted on Sunday, February 26th, 2017 at 8:02am and is filed under Poetry.
