Why Does Kafkaesque Nonsense Always Happen to Me?

Poetry by Jose Hernandez Diaz | From Issue 25

I’m getting billed for a Fall 2022 semester at Denver Community College. The problem is I’ve never enrolled, nor have I ever been to Denver, Colorado. Why does Kafkaesque nonsense always happen to me? Sometimes, I feel like just throwing in the towel. The pugilist life isn’t for me. I’m a lover not a caged fighter. I should’ve been a famous ballerino or playwright. There’s enough drama in my life to write a new literary canon. The gloomy, existential play I’m currently living in is called, “Why Does Kafkaesque Nonsense Always Happen to Me?’

Jose Hernandez Diaz (he/him)

Poet Jose Hernandez Diaz stands in a hallway with an arched ceiling, his arms crossed, and looks into the camera. — Photo Credit: Victor Jorge Sanchez Jr.

Jose Hernandez Diaz (he/him) is the author of The Fire Eater (Texas Review Press, 2020) and Bad Mexican, Bad American (Acre Books, 2024).

Author Note:

This poem came about after a seemingly prolonged period of Kafkaesque moments in my life. Sometimes, when it rains it pours and random, seemingly absurd things happen to us. I got billed for a semester I never enrolled in at Denver Community College. Turns out, I had been a guest speaker at a nearby community college and my info was in their database when they noticed someone with the same name (my name is common in Spanish) never paid their bill. Fortunately, it was all eventually cleared up over the phone and I got a prose poem out of it!