The Santa Fe Springs Swap Meet
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A man in a Durand Jones & The Indications shirt went to the Santa Fe Springs Swap Meet in Southeast Los Angeles on a Friday night with his primos. The first stop was the long line for Micheladas. They listened to a Santana cover band on the main stage. They nodded their heads to the smooth music. After they got their drinks, they walked around the various vendors and bought a wallet and hats of their favorite teams: Lakers. Dodgers. Rams. Palm trees swayed in the warm moonlight. The 5-freeway roared in the background. The man in a Durand Jones & The Indications shirt took a photo of a mural of Canelo Alvarez vs Gennady Golovkin, “Triple G.” At the end of the night, they went to In-N-Out on the other side of the freeway. They had combo #2’s animal style. Summer was nearly over, so they were glad to have visited the swap meet before it became too cold at night. Honestly, the swap meet was always a go-to chill spot for all the locals.
The Last Time I Saw You
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I’m reading Rosario Castellanos in the library
almond eyes remind me of yours
summer moon ardent night
lush lips appear on the page
it’s been three weeks since you
left the café at 2:AM the plane
never landed in Mexico City
it circulates my thoughts it circulates
my thoughts looking for a place to land
I offer my open palms
won’t keep still love kiss soul
Jose Hernandez Diaz is a 2017 NEA Poetry Fellow. He is the author of The Fire Eater (Texas Review Press, 2020) and the forthcoming, Bad Mexican, Bad American (Acre Books, 2024). His work appears in The American Poetry Review, Huizache, Poetry, The Southern Review, Yale Review, and in The Best American Nonrequired Reading. He teaches generative workshops online for various writing organizations.
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