The Ice Cream Sandwich at the End of the World
A man in an MF Doom shirt woke up in the middle of the night and wrote a poem. The poem was about a dragon who had polluted the city with his flames. The dragon was trying to destroy the city: a modern metropolis. The dragon rode around in an old Chevy, engulfing the city in flames. As he wrote the poem, the man in an MF Doom shirt described the dragon: “A purple dragon with teeth like a snake and wings like a bat.” He described how the dragon drove around the city: “The dragon cruised in tough and quiet neighborhoods alike and set fire to the world.” Just as he was about to write the ending, or the death of the dragon, the man in an MF Doom shirt fell back asleep. This time, he dreamed about eating an ice cream sandwich at the aforementioned end of the world.
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The Anarchy
A man in a Pink Floyd shirt rode a horse on the sand at the beach. He wasn’t on a date. He was alone with nature. The waves splashed in the background. A surfer waved at him. He waved back. Then, the horse started charging. It charged at a dragon, who was getting ready to douse the pier in flames. The man in a Pink Floyd shirt pulled out his slingshot and fired magical stones at the dragon. The dragon managed to dodge the stones, but asked for peace. They shook on it. The dragon now lives on the coast by the pier and is retired from causing anarchy. In fact, the man in a Pink Floyd shirt and the dragon often ride motorcycles together on the weekend. There is still a mild anarchy as they ride, but it has been significantly subdued.
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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). His work appears in The American Poetry Review, Boulevard, Colorado Review, Crazyhorse, Georgia Review, Guesthouse, Huizache, Iowa Review, The Missouri Review, Northwest Review, Poetry, Poetry Northwest, Southeast Review, The Southern Review, Witness Magazine, The Yale Review, and in The Best American Nonrequired Reading Anthology 2011. He teaches creative writing online and edits for Frontier Poetry.