by Jose Hernandez Diaz

 

Thin jacket—autumn.
Morning mist ascends:
Ocean, wind, clouds.

Clouds of October.
Poetry in the ear:
Soft, floating pillows.

Cars: tortoises—concrete freeway.
Beep, beep, beep! Motherfucker!
None of us: Zen monks.

Jose Hernandez Diaz is a 2017 NEA Poetry Fellow. He is the author of Bad Mexican, Bad American (Acre Books, 2024), Portrait of the Artist as a Brown Man (Red Hen Press, 2025), and other collections. His work is featured in Best American Poetry, Best American Nonrequired Reading, and Best Microfiction. He has taught creative writing at the University of California at Riverside, and at the University of Tennessee where he was the Poet in Residence.