I had three ghosts in my jean pockets as I approached the rusty elevator at the doctor’s office. I was going to get my swollen leg looked at. One of the ghost’s names was Raphael, like the Renaissance painter. The second ghost was named Cimabue, like the Byzantine era painter. The last ghost was named Italo Calvino, like the futurist writer.
I reached the fourth floor. The restless ghosts flew and darted out of my pockets. They began to disturb the peace in the waiting room. People began to panic with so many peculiar ghosts in the room. Finally, Raphael, the artist ghost, began to draw stick figures on the nondescript office walls. Cimabue joined him, drawing lambs and goats. Italo Calvino, the social ghost of the group, tried to buy cigarettes from the people waiting in the lobby. When the nurse eventually called me into the office, I was relieved. The ghosts would have to learn to fend for themselves one way or the other. That’s how we all learn, really.
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Jose Hernandez Diaz is a 2017 NEA Poetry Fellow. He is the author of The Fire Eater (Texas Review Press, 2020) Bad Mexican, Bad American (Acre Books, 2024) The Parachutist (Sundress Publications, 2025) and Portrait of the Artist as a Brown Man (Red Hen Press, 2025). He has been published in The Yale Review, The London Magazine, The Southern Review, and in The Best American Nonrequired Reading. He has taught creative writing at the University of California at Riverside and online for Hugo House, Lighthouse Writers Workshops, and The Writer’s Center. He has been Poet in Residence at the Carolyn Moore Writers House with Portland Community College. Currently, he is the Visiting Writer in Residence at the University of Tennessee.