Three Poems by James Diaz

Mountain Never in the Gutter Belly

There
you are
spread like an animal
small talk

composition of seriousness
below the primal want

wed to painting
mother mouth
mourning in a time of laughter

day or sea
lit from the inner flower
bowing to lover
in Arabic
proximity

the nearness
of the invisible dead
falling asleep under
the door.

Here;  I threw myself-
I took the Occident
under my tongue
and bowled out the earth
from which the wound name
lived
pouring blessing
into the honey lung of hell.

Eye-

the double olive

pin prick

present
under a skirt
where the law cracks

to pieces
inside you.



Moth of Monad Brittle

quick and painless whole variety as possible
misrepresentation of e

spelling orbicular in the sand

its not Maybe this or that

pulling prairie lake wool
off the blind spots of the skin

a blessing gone deep
under fickle mountain
slept the blue stained H

an animal in the wrong yard

a yard in the wrong animal

bearing juniper trudging toward

and from there

deposited in a print that signals someone else's land.



Willow and Wanting

Let me buy you
no,

pleasant sweat  stood  startled could she
god me.

knew I  Red.  I knew red always  unlike the  fermented  trinkets

rib cage

I want some cotton
no.

Brocade
clothes yesterday
I ate the other half of the city.

I was not happy about it.

Some steward of the lord came round
fasting and environmentally
self righteous
I told him certain mysteries were hiding
at the county store.

It was mutually beneficial that this be so.




James Diaz lives in New York.  His poems can be found in Pismire, Epigraph, Negative Suck, Abramelin, and My Favorite Bullet.