Last summer, two discrete young snakes left their skin
on my small porch, two mornings in a row. Being

postmodern now, I pretended as if I did not see
them, nor understand what I knew to be circling

inside me. Instead, every hour I told my son
to stop with his incessant back-chat. I peeled

a banana. And cursed God—His arrogance,
His gall—to still expect our devotion

after creating love. And mosquitoes. I showed
my son the papery dead skins so he could

know, too, what it feels like when something shows up
at your door—twice—telling you what you already know.

After Hanif Abdurraqib & Frank O’Hara

It is the last class of the day & I am teaching a classroom of sixth graders about poetry & across town a man has walked into a Starbucks & blown himself up while some other men throw grenades in the street & shoot into the crowd of civilians & I am 27 years old which means I am the only person in this room who was alive when this happened in New York City & I was in eighth grade & sitting in my classroom for the first class of the day & I made a joke about how mad everyone was going to be at the pilot who messed up & later added, how stupid do you have to be for it to happen twice? & the sixth graders are practicing listing sensory details & somebody calls out blue skies as a sight they love & nobody in this classroom knows what has happened yet & they do not know that the school is in lockdown which is a word we did not have when I was in sixth grade & the whole class is laughing because a boy has called out dog poop as a smell he does not like & what is a boy if not a glowing thing learning what he can get away with & I was once a girl in a classroom on the lucky side of town who did not know what had happened yet & electrical fire is a smell I did not know I did not like until my neighborhood smelled that way for weeks & blue skies is a sight I have never trusted again & poetry is what I reached for in the days when the ash would not stop falling & there is a sixth grade girl in this classroom whose father is in that Starbucks & she does not know what has happened yet & what is a girl if not a pulsing thing learning what the world will take from her & what if I am still a girl sitting in my classroom on the lucky side of town making a careless joke looking at the teacher for some kind of answer & what if I am also the teacher without any answers looking back at myself & what is an adult if not a terrified thing desperate to protect something you cannot save? & how lucky do you have to be for it to miss you twice? & tomorrow a sixth grade girl will come to class while her father has the shrapnel pulled from his body & maybe she will reach for poetry & the sky outside the classroom is so terribly blue & the students are quiet & looking at me & waiting for a grown-up or a poem or an answer or a bell to ring & the bell rings & they float up from their seats like tiny ghosts & are gone

In another life, we married
beneath a murder of
honeysuckles; it could have been
mistaken for eloping – how we ran
until our parents were not
our parents, & nothing was
our own, but the wind, that mothered
nothing but blade after stampeded
blade behind us, until there was
no us to behind – we grew
old together, spent most of
our life in the same woods
where you would take your final
breath – I wanted to call it
peaceful; though, godless,
your last image would end with widened
pupils & twinning flames; I know this
because you would inherit its smoke
(less god) for eyes, in the next life & the next &

We held each other under an oak tree
disfigured by lightning. The dog chafed
in her stiff, purple dress as white smoke
circled the earth. Meanwhile the caterer
found your brother on the couch and pressed
her hand to his face to see if he was breathing.
We laughed in a downpour of lavender seeds
as frogs went extinct. The great bowl of grief
is decorated with mirrors and candied violets.
Under a white tarp on a brick patio, we danced,
thinking of nobody but ourselves.

after Stevie Edwards’ poem “Sadness Workshop”

Your queerness needs to be more visible. Right now,
men like you are nowhere on TV, so we need you
to throw a shoe at Eminem or Howard Stern or any
politician. And then make out with a man. And
a woman. Or anybody, really. We need you to stop
writing about lakes. Take your hands out of the dirt.
People will believe you garden, but no one will believe
you like getting dirty. At least not in the literal sense.

To most, your sexuality is a Magic Eye picture.
They squint at your flannel shirt, at your mud-cuffed
jeans thinking they’re supposed to see fish
with mouths stretched open toward a lake they can’t reach.
I see dancing bears! A man says, pointing at your blue slicker.
You need to tell him he’s wrong every time
he’s wrong. Not just when you feel like it. Don’t you
hate being mistaken for something you’re not?

Here’s an easy fix: a taped threeway, followed
by headlines. Next, a record deal or reality show.
Apologies on late night TV. Don’t worry,
we won’t book you a spot with Larry King.
We can autotune your voice an octave higher,
give it more lisp and more lilt. It’s what people expect.
We can fix the bend of your nose in post-production,
make you The Face of Bisexuality. Enter

every room with a boombox blasting David Bowie.
Take selfies in gay bars and wear only purple
or t-shirts printed with unicorns. Show straight
people you are not deviant, show queers you can
get down. Download Grindr. Then delete it.
Reminder: this isn’t about you. This is for the people
who say queerness needs a shape, who want to hammer
your life like the playset it isn’t, who say you’re too

round to slip through the square hole, but too boxy
to squeeze in the circle. This is for the mothers
and gay men who want to call you a moon
spinning from bloated brightness to shadow,
who name your confession a stepping stone,
a layover, as if you’ve got half your cash
in two accounts and should just transfer
it all to the Fifth-Third in Boystown already.

This isn’t for the boys who lean over bridges
to calculate the height, the river’s cold. If only
they had as much faith in love as in gravity.
Show them. Give them two hands to grasp and tell
them any forked road is built from solid ground.
They need to see you can fall any way you please.