BIO
José Hernández Díaz is an MFA student at Antioch University-Los Angeles. He earned a BA in English from UC Berkeley. His work has appeared in The Best American Nonrequired Reading, The Progressive, Lumina, Witness, Huizache, Pilgrimage, Juked, Hobart, Parcel, Acentos Review, Whiskey Island, and others. He has served as an editor for Lunch Ticket and Floricanto Press.
Photo credit: Yago Cura
Painting by: Gus Harper
Ode to Nicanor Parra
I don’t like long hikes,
I can stand the beach.
Not when it’s crowded.
Fine dining is for degenerates.
The Capitalist Orchestra
never did much impress me.
Winter is no reason to ice-skate
downtown. Keep away, I’ll do the same.
No, I don’t want to get coffee.
What good would that do?
Often, in red, in rainfall, I sit in the rain.
Once words were worth more
than management skills. Fame is
you got it all, why ask? Why pretend
to seek some sort of truth,
what good would that do?
Previously published in Lumina
I think of Diego Rivera
Sitting in this hidden taco shop, a couple of blocks from Atlantic and Firestone,
a mural of a Mexican ranch steals my glance from the waitress’ necklace
of La Virgen de Guadalupe. The scene in the flowing mural of campesinos
and corn fields is idyllic, but what captures my eye is the subtle depiction
of the busyness of the leaves in wind. I think of Diego Rivera and cannot help
but smile. Like turquoise jaguars. Like purple machetes. In the back
of the busy shop, the jukebox plays Chalino Sanchez, and I can already sense
the tenderness of the salsa verde, as the waitress approaches my table.
Previously published in The Packinghouse Review