A man woke up in a field of marigolds. He had no idea how he’d gotten there. He jumped to his feet and wiped the dirt from his brow. He looked around at thousands of flowers. It reminded him of autumn. And pumpkins. It was autumn, in fact. He smelled the bitter flower and immediately pulled away. He jumped on his bike and rode away from the marigolds. Upon leaving, he didn’t take a photo of the flowers because he wanted to paint them fresh from memory.
Jose Hernandez Diaz is a 2017 NEA Poetry Fellow. His work appears in The Best American Nonrequired Reading, Green Mountains Review, Huizache, Poetry Northwest, Witness, among others. He has served as an editor for Floricanto Press and Lunch Ticket. His manuscript was a finalist for the 2018 Andrés Montoya Poetry Prize.
