The Bug
lands on my pretty man’s forearm. Harmless,
it isn’t deadly at all; makes his muscle flutter
— the one that gets his hand to hold mine, or
ball into a fist, or handle a gun. It’s a ladybug,
or an Asian lady beetle everyone mistakes
for…
if time is queer/and memory is trans/and my hands hurt in the cold/then
there are ways to hold pain like night follows day
not knowing how tomorrow went down.
it hurts like never when the always is now,
the now that time won’t allow.
there is no manner of tomorrow, nor shape of today
only like always having…
The Lyric In A Time of War
Let my music be found wanting
in comparison
to yours (as it must)
let me be found loving
(as you were)
extravagantly the beautiful
let me find you
and the song (forever)
between us
in these terrible times
Movement Song
I have studied the tight curls on the back of your neck
moving away from me
beyond anger or failure
your face in the evening schools of longing
through mornings of wish and ripen
we were always saying goodbye
in the blood in the bone over…
My partner wants me to write them a poem about Sheryl Crow
but all I want to do is marry them on a beach
that refuses to take itself too seriously.
So much of our lives has been serious.
Over time, I’ve learned that love is most astonishing
when it persists after learning where we come…
the name before the name before mine
the unknown has hold of me and its grip is strong as honey on the underside of a spoon
the unknown i mean is not the usual one the future the tomorrow of survival
but the past and what happened in the…
One Girl
I
Like the sweet apple which reddens upon the topmost bough,
Atop on the topmost twig, — which the pluckers forgot, somehow, —
Forget it not,…
Portrait of My Gender as [Inaudible]
I knew I was a god
when you could not
agree on my name
& still, none you spoke
could force me to listen
closer. Is this the nothing
the antelope felt when
Adam, lit on his own
entitling, dubbed family,
genus, species? So many
descendants became
doctors, delivered
babies, bestowed bodies
names…
Scintilla, Star
In the old place, there was no place
that did not see me.
Wherever I went mothers whispered
about me like a Greek chorus:
I heard that boy … I heard that.
I was just a boy. But it was
true, what they said, that I liked
other boys,…
son/daughter
In a dream my dad fell
from the top of a steep white mountain
down into a blue crevasse
…
Summer
You are the ice cream sandwich connoisseur of your generation.
Blessed are your floral shorteralls, your deeply pink fanny pack with travel-size lint roller just in case.
Level of splendiferous in your outfit: 200.
Types of invisible pain stemming from adolescent disasters in…
To the Angelbeast
All that glitters isn’t music.
Once, hidden in tall grass,
I tossed fistfuls of dirt into the air:
doe after doe of leaping.
You said it was nothing
but a trick of the light. Gold
curves. Gold scarves.
Am I not your animal?
You’d wait in the orchard…
What to Say Upon Being Asked to Be Friends
Why speak of hate, when I do bleed for love?
Not hate, my love, but Love doth bite my tongue
Till I taste stuff that makes my rhyming rough
So flatter I my fever for the one
For whom I inly mourn, though seem…