Hey,

With the intention of going to an independent bookstore
with you, both of us fed up with the machinery of capitalism,

consumption, the greed. Hey, with the intention of filling the void
with your smile, your laugh, your kiss beneath the autumn moon.

Hey, with the intention of moving to Montana with you,
writing and painting, inspired by the muse of the mundane,

living a minimalist lifestyle, until they grant us both MacArthur Grants,
and we can afford to fly away to the Moon.


Jose Hernandez Diaz is a 2017 NEA Poetry Fellow. He is the author of a chapbook of prose poems: The Fire Eater (Texas Review Press, 2020) and the forthcoming full-length collection: Bad Mexican, Bad American (Acre Books, 2024). His work appears in The American Poetry Review, Boulevard, Cincinnati Review, Huizache, Iowa Review, The Missouri Review, Poetry, The Southern Review, Yale Review, and in The Best American Nonrequired Reading. He teaches generative workshops for Litro Magazine, Hugo House, Lighthouse Writers Workshops, The Writer’s Center, Beyond Baroque, The Adirondack Center for Writing, and elsewhere.