by Jose Hernandez Diaz

Beneath my bed is a giant green monster. I call it fear of public speaking and intimacy. I once had to do a presentation in front of a class in junior college and I melted away like a popsicle in the summer sun. Now that I teach English at a local college, I imagine that everyone is a dead poet in class to make it easier. One of my students is Emerson. Another is Lorca. My favorite student is Charles Bukowski. Not because I’m a fan, anymore, he just reminds me of myself at that age. Rebellious. Slacker. Nonchalant. Unafraid of anything, even monsters.

Jose Hernandez Diaz is a 2017 NEA Poetry Fellow. He is the author of The Fire Eater (Texas Review Press, 2020). His work appears in The American Poetry Review, Boulevard, Crazyhorse, Georgia Review, Huizache, Iowa Review, Los Angeles Review, The Missouri Review, Poetry, The Southern Review, Witness Magazine, The Yale Review, and in The Best American Nonrequired Reading Anthology. He teaches creative writing online and edits for Frontier Poetry.