The Surrealist Cafe

A man in a “Santa on a Surfboard” shirt walked by a café. It was called The Surrealist Café of Southern California. He went inside. Sitting there were Salvador Dali and Guillaume Apollinaire. The man in a “Santa on a Surfboard” shirt ordered three coffees, for all of them, plain but with a little bit of sugar. They thanked him. The three men discussed politics, at first, but then naturally began to tell jokes about the weather. “It is so cold, my mustache feels like a Snowman’s,” said Dali. They laughed. “It is so cold, my poems and philosophy seem upbeat and cheery,” said Apollinaire. Then Pierre Reverdy walked in. Everyone shook his hand and they ordered him a plain coffee, too. Reverdy quickly mentioned he wasn’t in the mood for jokes. People were dying outside in the rain and all he wanted was a cigarette.

Jose Hernandez Diaz is a 2017 NEA Poetry Fellow. He is the author of The Fire Eater (Texas Review Press, 2020) and Bad Mexican, Bad American (Acre Books, 2024). His work appears in The American Poetry Review, Bennington Review, Boulevard, Conduit, Huizache, Iowa Review, The Missouri Review, Poetry, The Southern Review, The Yale Review, and in The Best American Nonrequired Reading. He teaches creative writing for various organizations including Beyond Baroque, Litro Magazine, The Writer’s Center in DC, and elsewhere.

Jose Hernandez Diaz