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Jun 7, 2019
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Image: Ayla Maisey
A Love Poem Will Not Save The World
On the last perfect day beside the last perfect body
of water, we got infected with a persistently bad idea.
We cancel our appointment with a squalling therapist.
You are smiling, you are emptying the world
so we can be alone. But who would dare to exist,
just for that? It’s Spring, bitch, be in love.
When you were in a ditch, I was in a ditch.
They were different ditches, but there we were
waiting for one another like a phantom limb.
I’ve made the stupidly courageous act
of letting our loudmouthed scars fall in love.
The daisies beside us are closing their mouths
in anticipation of what comes next.
I recognize this is the actual end
because I finally feel alive.
I’m hawk-eyeing your hairline
as you talk about your youth in Florida.
Were you there then, too, looking out the pier
wondering if there could be someone out there
just as strange as you?
The waves have started to crest
as you speak French; the dogs cease
their yawps. I still my mind to ride your tongue.
I am terrified of wide open spaces,
all the possibilities of someone with ill intentions.
I’m fighting my thoughts of Florida again,
the nightclub, the 50 phones scuffing the floor
like downed birds. I was not there,
but I will never be the same.
Tell me again (in French) the word for pulse.
Let us rename what we have to remember.
I don’t think I will ever not be afraid again.
When Someone Asks My Gender I Say A Nonexistent Month
I want so much
to say so much.
All my life I’ve seemed to be
just a funny little thing.
I look in the mirror and try to love
my body, my existence, my death rate
which have recently become subject
to academic discourse and projection
while a cis man signs
another bill to kill me.
I’ve made terrariums of hurt
out of men in my fishnets.
I broke a jaw in houndstooth
as I told the can’t-hear-NO-man
I’m going to be a lady one day;
I don’t know when or how.
I adjust the tuck;
I crack my knuckles.
I’m an all out;
I’m a good time seed.
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June 07, 2019