Sunday Cruise
Jose Hernandez Diaz | Poetry
A man in a Chicano Batman shirt drove his 1972 Chevy Camaro down Beach Blvd. Sunday was the best day for cruising. It was the beginning of spring. There was still a slight chill in the air, but it was better than frigid winter. As the man in a Chicano Batman shirt approached the ocean at sunset, he began to play his “neo-soul” music louder. A few surfers still surfed in the background. Plenty of people lay on the sand with their towels and umbrellas to block the sun. As the man in a Chicano Batman shirt turned right on Bellflower Blvd, he left the beach and headed back to southeast Los Angeles. Sunday night was always smooth and mellow.
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, The Cincinnati Review, Georgia Review, Huizache, Iowa Review, The Nation, Poetry, Southeast Review, and in The Best American Nonrequired Reading Anthology. Currently, he is an editor for Frontier and Palette Poetry and an educator in Southeast Los Angeles.
Camaro by Jorne Hermans