When Josh Fernandez reads his work, audiences are transfixed. His poetry lives on the edge, tells us that “a life full of discarded things is what we were given.” There’s a grim doubt that poetry or language will help, when we hear that “words will falsify/everything.” But Josh’s verse keeps a knowing sense of humor lurking in the background – a kind of self-deprecating grin that keeps the listener on the inside of the poet’s head. And his images render his poem/stories clearly; the reader is brought to the vivid place the poet has in mind.

Josh Fernandez has lived in Sacramento on-and-off for almost 20 years. He currently writes for Spin.com and has written arts and culture stories for the Sacramento News & Review and numerous other publications. Fernandez's first poetry broadside, In the End, it's a Worthless Machine, was published by Rattlesnake Press in early 2009, and his first full-length collection of poems from R.L. Crow (tentatively titled Kim Jong Il and Other Mythical Beasts) will hit bookstores near the end of 2009. His poems have also been published in Pax Americana, Poetry Now, the Rattlesnake Review and Hardpan. Once locked in a mental institution in Reno after a serious drug dependency, Fernandez is now a competitive marathoner, and he's working on his first novel, Stickup Kid, which he plans to finish in 2010.

The Last Thing He Said

“Be proud because we’re Mexicans.
And if they don’t like it, just turn
your head and walk away.
If you haven’t noticed, mijo,
this world goes on
in every goddamn direction,
whether you want it to
or not.”

And just like that, he was gone
—a trail of weed smoke
and wisdom, wagging
into the horizon.

And to this day, a scruffy cholo with muddy skin
and a bad leg limps past and my eyes sliver, like closed doors
and I have to sit down for a second—thoughts
rushing past, like speeding trains in the night.

It’s almost too much to think of the gristly days:
that bus ride from Sacramento to Boston
where I sat, tweaked out, for a week on a Greyhound, too wired
and poor to eat. He waited at the station for seven days
with two black eyes, a set of brass knuckles and a warrant for his arrest.

It’s too much to think about when grandma
asked him to recite a prayer and for the first time in 20 years
he put down his glass of tequila and cried
the way Mexicans do when they find out there is no God:

“Creo en el Espíritu Santo,
en la Santa Iglesia Católica,
la comumión de los Santos,
en el perdon de los pecados,
la resurrección de los muertos
y la vida eterna.”

And after that we wiped away our tears, forgot how to speak
Spanish and got drunker than we’d ever been,
spilling out of that East Los apartment
into the world like masses of hot lava
burning up our livers till the frustrated sun
tucked itself into the cool bed of morning.

A life full of discarded things is what we were given. Humans,
like old bibles, lie—tattered, dirty and useless.
I wonder what he is doing now. My father, the broken schitzo
who wore his sickness like a neon coat.

Walking through this shithole of a city,
Nina Simone, ripping my heart out through an old pair of headphones,
I watch a dirty black mutt sitting in a junk yard
so stupid in his world of chain link, bone scraps, rags and old iron.

If you were here I’d tell you I miss you
and that there’s not much news, save for a funny headline
telling us about some frumpy rube in Arkansas who found
the Mother Theresa’s tit poking out of her pancake.
And, in this way, unwise and reckless, without you unholy father,
if you haven’t noticed, this world goes on in every goddamn direction,
whether you want it to or not.

A Failure

How ironic
to be writing
with a construction company’s pen
while I sit here,
night after night,
deconstructing
every useless thing,

particles
into poems,
sturdy?
Yeah, right.

sturdy as a dandelion
bullied by the breeze.

I should quote a line
from Lamantia,
knowing
how you love him—
something clever like:

a poppy the size of the sun
is growing in my skull

But that’s not it.
It’s just a third-class writer
changing
the words of a real writer
so they sound better to the ear.

Little tulip I am,
soaking up
all the rain

My eyes:
nearly scabbed
tonight
from crying:

two open wounds
on my head

I would never speak
of such a thing,
other than in a poem
to you,
but sometimes
you live doubly
as to not look foolish.

It’s like this:
many times
I have dreamed
that we are falling
from a building,
me and you,
ready
to hit the pavement
without even
the slightest
hint of terror.

there’s no use
trying
to deconstruct you
in a poem.
Words will falsify
everything.

In this light
even language
is the language
of our enemy
and we don’t need
any more of those.