Jose Hernandez Diaz is a 2017 NEA Poetry fellow. He is the author of The Fire Eater (Texas Review Press, 2020). His work appears in The American Poetry Review, Boulevard, Cincinnati Review, Crazyhorse, Georgia Review, Huizache, Iowa Review, The Nation, Poetry, The Southern Review, The Yale Review, and in The Best American Nonrequired Reading. He teaches creative writing online and edits for Frontier Poetry.

Other poems by Jose Hernandez Diaz in Verse Daily:
April 2, 2021:   "The Centaur" "I was ordered to go to hell after I died...."
September 11, 2020:   "The Wall" "A man in a Chicano Batman shirt punched a wall...."
June 21, 2017:   "The Bulldog" "I woke up transformed into a bulldog...."

Books by Jose Hernandez Diaz:

Other poems on the web by Jose Hernandez Diaz:
"Almost Buried"
"Guisados"
"Ode to a California Neck Tattoo"
"El Chacal"
Three poems
"The Last Time I Cried"
Two poems
Two poems
Three poems
Two poems
"The Dragon and the Coyote"
Two poems
Two poems
"The Man and The Antlers"
"Taxi to the Beach"
"The Target"

Jose Hernandez Diaz on Twitter.

About The Fire Eater:

"A fire eater, a man, a flame, a mime, a red house, a man in a Pink Floyd t-shirt, and a skeleton walk into a bar. They order drinks and begin a conversation about what it's like to be a character in a prose poem written by Jose Hernandez Diaz. They agree that, after a while, the internal logic makes sense, and they feel free to be themselves, to wander the landscapes of Los Angeles or the moon. They express their gratitude by promising to show up whenever Hernandez Diaz needs them. Luckily, the readers of this chapbook can see the results. In Edson-esque turns of playfully absurd scenarios, Hernandez Diaz reaches to the heart of our existence, and like a magician, he delights us as he confounds us. How does he do it? the audience will ask. With humor, compassion, and imagination, the three ingredients I want in any work of art."
—Christopher Kennedy

"In these homages to humanity, Jose Hernandez Diaz weaves magic and duality: a conjuring of metamorphosis from unknowing to understanding. These lines invent themselves as a circuitous way of thinking, a nonlinear way of experiencing. We stand on the precipice of fire in Hernandez Diaz's poems. We inhabit a place where orange roses burst into flames, preachers transform into pigeons, flames walk among us and turn to ash, we are simultaneously dragon and coyote, and where seeing the stars from the moon speaks to the delicacy of our sparks, our actions, our bones. A world exists in these poems where eating fire may be our only skill, but the scars on our 'autumnal hearts' prove we were here, prove we were a part of it all, prove that we believe the flames may one day be ours to wield. Hernandez Diaz creates a multidimensional existence, one where Latinx artists may 'dream about existence beyond the clouds,' an existence filled with part wonder, part pain, but most importantly, part possibility."
—Felicia Zamora