Ghost / At the Cemetery of the Dead Poets
by Jose Hernandez Diaz
Ghost
Someone broke into my house and discovered me writing at 3 a.m. at my desk. “What are you doing that for?” they asked. “I have no life, I guess,” I said. “That’s too bad,” they said. “Why are you robbing my house?” I asked. “I’m short on cash at the moment,” they said. “What if I give you some poems, instead? Or a couple of haikus?” I said. “I’ll see my way out. Thank you!” the thief said. When the door closed behind them, I got up and made another strong coffee; I continued writing my memoir, tentatively titled: My Life as a Very Real Ghost.
At the Cemetery of the Dead Poets
I was trapped in a cemetery of dead poets. I was (technically) trapped, but didn’t want to get out, anyway. First, I went to Rosario Castellanos’ grave and paid my respects. I addressed her as Madre in Spanish, Madre de la Poesía. Then I went to Octavio Paz’s grave. I wrote a small poem on the grave for El Gigante of Mexican letters. It was a haiku and that’s all I’ll say about it. Next, I went to James Tate’s grave. I placed some pink roses on the gravestone, and shed a few tears. I glanced at the sunset. I said, thank you, and told him I owed him a lunch. Then I went to Russell Edson’s grave. I dropped off a comic book I’d written and illustrated especially for him. I poured out some cheap whiskey in the grass next to his grave. Lastly, I went to Marosa di Giorgio’s grave by the entrance. I immediately turned into a yellow jackal in the night. The new moon had cast a spell on the city.
Jose Hernandez Diaz is a 2017 NEA Poetry Fellow. He is the author of a collection of prose poems: The Fire Eater (Texas Review Press, 2020). His work appears in The American Poetry Review, Bennington Review, Cincinnati Review, Georgia Review, Iowa Review, The Missouri Review, The Nation, Northwest Review, Poetry, Southeast Review, The Southern Review, The Yale Review, and in The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2011. He teaches creative writing online and edits for Frontier Poetry.
