José Hernández Díaz

acentos1

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

 

© The Acentos Review 2015