The Loneliest Poet Award 2023
I woke up from a restless night of insomnia, tossing and turning, going to the bathroom to urinate at 2 am. I made my coffee strong like a Venice Beach weightlifter and stumbled to my desk to check my emails. That’s when I found out I have been awarded “The Loneliest Poet in Southern California Award 2023.” It is actually a prestigious award. As part of the award I’m invited to live on an isolated beach with a group of poets who are equally shy and antisocial. The coordinator at the beach house will assign us social duties like: have tea with fellow isolated poets. Go for a walk along the shore with a fellow isolated poet. Draw stick figures on the walls of the beach house with fellow isolated poets. I can’t believe I won the award. Well, I mean I get that I’m lonely but the odds were still against me. I’m going to celebrate my obscure award by going online and pretending to have a party at a trendy bar. Cheers to victory! Cheers to general anxiety!
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.