9.10 / October 2014 Queer Issue

When [PANK] asked me to be the Guest Editor for the 2014 Queer Issue, I did a little Snoopy dance.

Late Prince He takes the body out. He’s forever taking the body out and it makes you buckle all your teeth. Thinking helps, he says, seeing her number glowing in your palm. You would stretch yourself at her feet as the undeniable. He’s wearing your graybright gift.

A T-boy we both knew blows through a house, peeling off paper, letterpress band posters and tiny, tiny writing. He says he doesn't remember what happened. He won't be held accountable. He says it was the testosterone. He calls it a fugue.

I see too much sky between your branches, and where I was, I see too much trauma in your lashes.

As Nikola Tesla's mother pushed him out, light cracked through the troposphere, tumbling to the ground, illuminating the heavy sky above. The midwife caught the child, slick in her palms, “This will be a child of the storm.”

I light matches the same way I hold my pencils—close to the edge and with great focus. It takes me a few tries each time, no every time, and when it happens, I am always too close to the flame, and so I have to scrunch my fingers back like frantic inchworms.

             I am wearing a dress of bees                           there are pockets              pockets filled with smoke                            and ash              from which              peaches are growing                           trees are            growing from my body                                        turning me into ghosts of smaller              & smaller suns                                        they won’t stop getting older               the bees are where they are supposed              to be                           sewn into my shoulders

Every day I am asked to care about white people, especially if they’ve been kidnapped or killed overseas or are experiencing marital problems in New England, on screens large & small. Any size. I am told American lives are in danger, American libidos.

I tell Muse Leave. Me alone, Muse. […] Muse is finally giving me what I want.

the touch of a man is turning shrill         a cicadas’ final screech        their hard plastic other body falling dirt bound planting       nothing I sleep & dream       of crowds of flies wake         up grabbing at my phone for         a name for an hour      a number for the chill behind me         before me a jaw of the older           stock prehistoric &    reassembled clenches my neck

Confusion. Confusion up till college. Unsure. Shortly after meeting Gheri, a junior, she takes you to a house party, mixes you some 151 and coke. Later, she’ll climb into your lap too shitfaced to stand (while you’re too shitfaced to push her away) and lap dance her way into making out. It has the surrounding nerds stupefied, making the gossip rounds, but nobody gives you shit for it.

The hotel in Minneapolis was not different from the hotel in Vancouver, which was similar to the hotel in Toronto, and had reminded him of the hotel in Cleveland, which was not as nice as the hotel in Cincinnati though it was nicer than the hotel in Miami.