January Late In The Decade

unfortunate me when I’m happy

I just want to perch as a little ball at the peak

a doughnut covered in sugar—

I’ve ridden this trolley up

let’s see how I can take it down

I hate feeling full

I don’t want a body full of beans

I’m mad at their softness

concerned with lines, blind

reliably aware of faults

full of dust, powdered

to pop and swallow, bald in libraries

The winter when the pipes burst

Screaming into the store downstairs

Panicked, the man entered our apartment

Amanda in the bathtub watching Netflix

the tub was full of icy water, clear in a yellow way

We were going to meet up

maybe get some mac and cheese

But he fell in love, and maybe he could love two girls at once, but more likely he’s marrying this one, likely in the next few years

Libraries are warm places

they are open, but more often ignored

the infinite other feels different when there’s not someone perceptible encoded in bits

the peak looks different

the dough, I must admit, flatter

the sugar, I must admit, sour

this beloved string is my dance partner

this string, beloved, is an empath

this stone is from a shop in Oakland, 

but still it is black and smooth

heavy, really, so to invoke the middle of the forest perfectly

riding the edgy internet party

queer in Crown Heights

dosed in color

the living future, new moon

Stop, everybody just stop, and throw your hands up

and stop asking how to be alive inside an institution

Institutions are old. The powerful crumble—

Gender is over. If I say it is— so what?

I could tear out every page here, put them in a pile in the middle of the room, on that table—

What are you afraid of? What’s the joke

—and somebody, most likely, would be too afraid to press their hand down into the pile until it started to sweat and pool and run

dampen the words they could turn to black wet goo to dollop on each other’s noses to bite down hard on

I would laugh I’m pretty sure everyone would laugh

We’d all laugh—

and then when the room exploded we could still blame it on a terrorist, because we would know the truth

I hope that the ashes of pages would fall upon Brooklyn

Everyone come out you bats, look up!

Cough if you need to

the embers can get hot, and they most certainly are not healthy.

I wish this stabbing would stop

daggers, wishing, caught between reverence and childish knowing

realizing, freakishly, that the boundaries are invisible

these are reasons why I defend the past as the most direct route to this moment

immediate as a needle in your veins, pre-AIDS immediate

a needle to your veins

clean

safe and pure

wholesome experimentation does not equal death