The following poems by James Diaz were originally published in Moonchild Magazine,¹ but were removed from the magazine’s website without Diaz’s permission following a dispute² between Diaz and Moonchild’s editor. We’re republishing the poems as part of an ongoing series of unpublished (and otherwise censored) works.

What’s Your Damage?

“He wants to be just like his father
we play the knife game on the table” – Nicole Dollanganger

you want stain
without white
you of the lander
arm slats musical
houses opening
words on the edge
of a body

your fingers become a number of breaths withheld
between layers of snow
they said show me your savior
i gave them these silver white
thighs spread open
notice me / me / notice the wound
called nameless

a townie said get lost
a townie said this is my country,
love it or leave it
i can’t tell what’s real here
pushing dandy
hard and they said show me god
in your name and i pulled stained white
out of my throat
i pulled opposites from the burning
mother-house / broken
spines / hair on the bed-sheets
need on the light
body gives good country back to you
bottled up inside
bottled up

oh townie
there is two of everything
there is ten thousand pounds to every loss
you can hook god’s name on me,

i got no need i got no need
i got no need i got no need
of sentences anymore.

Remember

I wore my heart down to a nub
you said that’s a prize fighter, baby
love is gonna find you
no matter how many nights you can’t sleep
or towns you run through
or things you break and can’t put back together
you trained for this out of the womb
you pulled air into your tiny lungs
and then you fought to do it again & again & again
you’ve just forgotten your necessity
been so bent you don’t remember straight
remember straight, prizefighter, I love you
and all the ways you try to black out from that
my hand, and you swat it away
but you got a body
and every body needs some body
baby
every-body,
no matter how boarded up your windows are
there’s always a door.

Tracing Paper

he gnawed the bone off his memory
but what about the flesh she asked
where do you keep it
so it doesn’t bite through
block out the sun light
see this plant here
I culled it from memory
and haloed it in dirt
I called it by name
I waited for hours at a gas station
in the freezing winter rain
for a man
a father, a lover
who would never come
I got all dressed down
from hip to star line
I traced my finger
across every bruise
ouch god ouch
see what I’m made of
stuffing, darned socks
sockets wet the wall
of death you leaned me
up against
like I was waiting
for you to enter
me with all that light
you hoard for yourself-
he looked at her for a long while
after that
but he had no words
left that he could give her,
in the field behind the old motel
he held his heart in his hands
and wept without sound,
she knew what he meant

1. We reached out to the editor of Moonchild Magazine via email to give them an opportunity to comment on their decision to unpublish the poems, but did not receive a response.
2. I spent a lot of time agonizing over how best to briefly and fairly frame the circumstances surrounding the poems’ removal from publication, and I worry that “dispute” might fail to adequately describe a situation that is too fraught and complex to summarize here. Diaz has written a blog post outlining the entire series of events from his perspective, which I urge you to read.