Óscar Moisés Díaz
Mi estilo está claro
— for Gyna & Cynthia Lorena of Pandora’s Box
Chiaroscuro Marica, punks pissing,
Anti-fascism posters, a Guatemalan
theorist in a pink wig, an essayist as
Ziggy Stardust, Durcal’s voice from
a jukebox that also screens soft porn,
the elderly owners smiling on two fags gyrating,
You know Pandora’s Box is all corporate oontz oontz now,
who you searching for probably won’t be there, pouring
more rounds, oral history of these Chinese joints,
queer havens for half a century already, my eyes on
the window’s concentric fracture, on the other side
I had my first panic attack earlier, Wicho told me the
quake in ‘86 knocked down El Divino Salvador Del Mundo,
that someone stole the fingers, Don’t his hands symbolize
peace when raised like that? Quiet nod as I trace the jagged
outline of the break, two hundred or so walking north nearby,
Jesus fingers in their pockets, time wheezing here on
Avenida 6 y Calle 11
Naufus said “Óscar is crazy like you all” so
I’m in this crammed bathroom offering my Magician card to
cut the coke, in the quiet ask if anyone here might know
these two drag queens in these old photos, hard to say, but
the pageant tonight is the closest thing to time travel,
feels like Urna holding the broken horse head violin in that documentary,
how she asked the elder if she knew the missing lyrics,
“Let me stand in the wind” she replied so I stopped
recording and the room got louder and it’s friends kissing each
other and kissing me now too and it’s my Malick moment and
drag queens are the planet mercury.
The Dream
— for Maryam Ivette Parhizkar
Hallelujah crab,
I was so ready for that,
tipped jugs of sweet honey bourbon,
did you know Taca use to have a New Orleans to Sivar direct flight,
I wonder who fell asleep during those, what they saw?
Sahl Ibn Bishr Tenth Question,
The summer I wrote Óscar and Valeria’s name in the sand by
a Long Island lighthouse right
before the Lana del Rey concert,
My generation seaside singing “We were born to die”
Epicatafora I whispered into my beer,
same summer of my bidding wars for buenas epocas,
cuz being haunted is a type of touch,
The summer I failed to write a one-act play about the
hippie commune on El Boquerón during the war,
Don something use to forge pre-Colombian pottery,
even landing some fakes in big international auctions, to
buy LSD and guitars, but
I couldn’t even enter any sort of romance, even that archival kind,
Bonatti Book Six Chapter Nine,
the summer we watched Jonas Mekas films together and
in that theatre seat weeping, I learned that community can be just
two people,
I can’t believe I almost drove to Baton Rouge,
empty weekend on the calendar until you
texted me that Llort’s archive might
be something you dreamt up and so I called and
yeah, the lady at some desk at Louisiana State had no idea, but
how generous is a dream no matter the gate it comes through,
Ivory or Horn, I mean –
this dream of yours made so much room for me to
fit inside, kept me safe,
Dear friend, did you know that Fernando Llort sang
a song called El Planeta de Los Cerdos making
fun of police and I knew you’d love that too, but
look at the last lyrics and what they say:
Los estamos despertando en la luz del amor
Òscar Moisés Díaz is a poet-astrologer, film curator, and artist. They’ve exhibited art in places such as the 10th Central American Biennial, International Film Festival of El Salvador, Queens Museum, The Museum of Art El Salvador, and a solo exhibit at The Museum of Contemporary Art Costa Rica. They are an inaugural Curatorial Fellow at the Poetry Project, NYC. They are a member of Tierra Narrative and a contributing editor at Asphalte Magazine. Recent poems can be found in Schlag Magazine and Screen Door Review. They run a full-time consulting astrologer practice at cielosueloastrology.com.