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Schism

The Mirror World

By Jose Hernandez Diaz
A man in a “Baudelaire for President Shirt” fell into a mirror.

A man in a “Baudelaire for President Shirt” fell into a mirror. The mirror was not on the wall. Who had placed the mirror on the ground? It was too late to ponder that, anyway. The man in a “Baudelaire for President Shirt” was now in another world via the mirror. This new world was full of constant rainfall. Accompanied by the rainfall was Beethoven’s classical piano. Who was playing the music? There must’ve been a hidden pianist somewhere, perhaps on the campanile? The music never seemed to stop.

The man in a “Baudelaire for President Shirt” continued to walk in the rain with his jacket over his head. Luckily, he had his lunch pail with him. He ate his turkey sandwich in an isolated phone booth. It was hard to move around in there, but it was still cover from the rain. When he finished his lunch, he called his high school ex-girlfriend. She didn’t pick up. She had clearly moved on.

It was time for the man in a “Baudelaire for President Shirt” to get going, too. The rain and music finally stopped. He jumped out of the mirror world and landed back in reality. It wasn’t so bad in the real world after all. He did miss the classical music, though, and there was a constant echo of rainfall inside his ear.

About the author

Jose Hernandez Diaz is a 2017 NEA Poetry Fellow and an Associate Editor at Tupelo Quarterly. 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 American Poetry Review, Yale Review, The London Magazine, Poetry Wales, The Iowa Review, Huizache, The Nation, Poetry, Poets.org, 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. Additionally, he serves as a Poetry Mentor in The Adroit Journal Summer Mentorship Program.