For Butch Baristas and Platform Docs
My friend hand-crafts bulldog harnesses
the style you always said would look great
after you got top surgery.
We’ve been lying in bed for the whole morning,
drinking black tea because
the french press we use never tastes quite right.
I wanted to get you something,
some gift other than the books that overflow bookshelves,
or the poems I write about you,
or the dried flowers that take up most of our bedroom walls,
but I didn’t know how to properly size a harness,
so the oxblood-red leather went unused,
or rather used for a different customer, another butch.
It’s been hot for days now, ninety-degree sun baking
last week’s torrential downpour into the loam,
or silt, or— well, you could tell me the soil composition,
though you’d bemoan how your hands are too soft now,
no longer farmer hands, despite the tomatoes you planted
earlier this summer.
It’s been hot, and I bought my first pair of sandals
but still wore my platform docs on that two hour walk
because I know you like how the extra three inches
make it so your head rests right against my chest.
It doesn’t matter if heels rub away into raw skin
when I just want to spend all day lying next to you.
And even though you now work for the government,
and I sell books and pour wine,
we both know how to pull a perfect shot of espresso,
how the smell of used coffee grounds can cling to a person for days.
Prayer for Justice
i sink my teeth into bricks, into concrete
push the grit out from between my gums
there is always another question
always another road that needs taking
why must we feed our blood
and sweat to these open maws
these cavernous stomachs
and probing tongues that belong to
these worshipers of profit
who have sacrificed compassion for
an extra ten dollars an hour
the tongues that belong to
this vile idolatry of dividends
we mourn in community
or making bread from stolen grain
we mourn by providing hot meals to friends
to lovers to strangers
in worn books and new zines
in touch and in prayer
G-d where is that fire you promised us
where is your justice they speak of
tzedek tzedek tirdof
why must we always seek what you promise
Avinu malkeinu
honenu va'anenu ki ein banu ma'asim
Aseih imanu tzedakah va'hesed
v'hoshi-einu
i'm sorry
it's just we're dying down here
I am caught on film
The divine is undisputable how else
could we accept the permanence of death. The divine is undisputable
because we see it every day, whether we stop to look for it or not.
The divine is undisputable because how else can we explain the world.
It only takes a minute to look for it, to see it in the way asphalt splits
as if it were trying to form rivers, or in
the infinity of mycelium below feet and dirt.
There is a shot in Solaris of reeds, or
some other plant, flowing as if they were part of the river.
It lasts maybe two or three minutes.
It is proof that the divine is visible.
In another film there is a shot of wood pulp or maybe
asbestos flaking like snow in a derelict factory. Tarkovsky died soon after.
The divine is undisputable because how else could we determine
what is the river and what is not. The divine is undisputable
because what else do we see in the current.
Mangrove trees use their roots as stilts in salt oceans.
Clouds may move or may not. The divine is undisputable
because how else could we know what it means to move or stay still or both.
The divine is undisputable because
you can perform augury if you open your eyes wide enough
and there is meaning in the stars and clouds and tea leaves and bones.
One day we will be gone and yet we will not as if we were the clouds.
The divine is undisputable because it is in neon lights and the warmth of the sun.
Fire eats bones and trees speak.
Do not move.
Comments