I was flipping through the photographs
When I landed on one of your face,
I skipped over it, not needing a reminder,
But went back guiltily anyways,
I had been listening to sad songs getting over you
But all the feelings came rushing back,
Seeing your hair, it was longer back then,
And your ever so bright smile,
All of my feelings of you resurfaced,
But I’m drowning in your eyes again.
Split a dragonfruit
down its bright middle.
Inside you’ll find
the belly of a wood thrush,
black spots trembling with song.
Watch a black cloud
until lightning cracks it open,
traces shatter marks
across the ground,
like the earth is an egg, fragile,
its insides pale white and
dandelion yellow,
twirled on stems
by tiny fingers,
petals held to tiny chins
or breathed in white puffs
into the air,
earth seeds that scatter, ethereal,
that float like feathers
or a thrush’s scaling song.
Fair skinned blue-haired ladies did genealogy
Hoping to find
Greatness, virtue, refinement
In their linage.
To go along with their daughters of the revolution status.
Thought they had.
Ancestor had founded a fine old city.
His ancestors, scholars at Cambridge
Six hundred years ago
Except they got the linage wrong.
I showed up for a DNA test
That showed we were no kin
To any of those esteemed folk .
We descend from scandal.
Patriarch came out of nowhere
With a name that did not match his DNA.
Adopted?
Illegimate?
Hiding from his past?
And where did he get all of that money?
Founded a southern town
And gave it his own name
(Apparently not his name)
Nor did the next generation bring pride to the blue-haired genealogists.
One of the sons married his 14-year-old niece,
For whom he was guardian.
Changed both of their names and fled the state.
Another son fell in love with a slave girl,
But, unlike Jefferson,
Embraced their love without shame,
Married her,
Had a bunch of kids.
Now when the blue-haired ladies gather for an ancestral reunion,
Half of the crowd is white
(Some descended from the inbred)
And the other half black.
Snobs need not apply.
September 15, 2024,
A young man at his favorite bar
is about to close his tab.
He’s a shot and four beers in
but stone cold sober
because it’s the last time
he’ll ever set foot in the place.
The pipeline springs a new breach.
One of the female bartenders
has garnered a certain reputation
of getting a little too drunk,
a lot too flirty on shift
but he didn’t know this
before getting entangled
in unchecked and often mixed signals.
The pipeline hungers for fresh blood.
Utterly confused, he finally had to ask
I thought that you were into me?
earning a matter-of-fact answer
I was drunk. Sorry.
Now saddened, he became scarce
which another friend noticed. Reaching out
they gave him a space to confide his hurt.
Did the young man need to say the girl’s name?
Probably not, but nevertheless,
the pipeline widens to gaping.
Except the friend was the wrong friend.
Forgetting discretion and chasing drama,
they begged the nonchalant bartender
for her side of the story.
Now she knows her name and reputation
are in the mouth of a rejected man
and he’s become the villain of the bar.
The pipeline begins to breathe in.
It’s now September 16,
and the young man
has too much on his mind
and nowhere to go with it
except online.
He floats his story in places like Reddit,
to see what others might say
drifting ever closer to that pipeline.
Some say things like
men are always assuming things
which may be right, but
it’s not the support he’s looking for.
Then another validates him with
that’s just what women do, my friend.
It’s that latter voice he latches onto.
The next part
happens
in a flash.
The pipeline
swallows
his arm
but it’s okay
because
they want him,
have a perfect
place
for him
so
he
doesn’t
fight
just
gives
in
lets
himself
fold
in
half
disap-
peared
like the threat they never see coming;
one almost impossible to escape
if no one else knows it’s happening.
AC broken,
fan on full blast,
yellow lights on
when I should be sound
asleep.
legs straight out, like
roads meeting a horizon.
they look
still,
like icy logs.
I wish my stagnation was
peaceful,
a forest under a blanket of snow.
Instead,
I am frozen
under unseen threat.
cortisol surges inside,
critters scuttling lively, fulfilling
their evolutionary purpose.
let it break
let everything break
Scatter shards like crumbs behind you
go hungry for a while
don’t ask why
ask why
Honor failure until she’s a friend
ask about her almanac and why she laughs so much
let it be
just be
still as old-growth timber laid down where mycelium makes magic
Practice holding breath (heart-), breath (-beat)
unfurl
one crystalline leaf at a time
as if you weren’t mortal
as if eternity were your middle name
someday, from a height
you will look down and See the path
perfect
i promise
inspired by l.jōnz’s lexpomo poem “in a queer kinda mood”
In a condescending world
disturber of the peace
a Pride Parade
darling it’s free speech
Aint it a “world-class” teat
caught crass in between
all our colors on screen
and the rainbow
I don’t need cosplay, honey
glitter gores me
I can’t fit another masque
we’re all the proof we need
for this feeling to last
I’m just trying to say
I’m glad we’re here
living queer
we always have been
human
Luxury scents
fit for a goddess.
Everything I could ever want?
I have.
But it’s the thrill of the kill
that reels me back in.
Craving more.
Craving the wrong things
for too long
it ruined me.
Now,
in my ever-loving,
never-needing era,
I find the right things—
the things made for me
and I don’t just take them…
I ravage them.
Here,
That torrid river of ink stalled to still sunlight.
It was peaceful, and I gazed out knowing
It was all my art—
Dublin became a quiet acceptance,
Then an emphatic yes I said yes I will Yes.
Now I watch you walk through
My open galleries of gaiety,
Teeming with Sentimentalist sacraments—
Crawling out of the grey with a green infancy of persistence,
Like stone bathed in fluid movement
Or sculpture that begins to speak,
You wouldn’t believe what brilliant springs I bore
Through the pangs of their labor—
The living agony of authorship.
Here, I
Pull you out of muddied waters,
For the clay has kept you tender
To meet the day.
