Category: poetry

on my nintendo switch there is a
mammoth on my new horizons island.
or at least, i have to assume that's
what he's meant to be. he wears 
a leopard-print tunic one-shoulder 
flintstones-style & his name is 
tucker. tucker in english, hajime 
in japanese. did

you know that hajime means one? or
first? the wikia says that perhaps 
he is called that since he is the 
last of his kind. extinct & trapped on
my island with sheep & horses & 
hedgehogs & cats & the knowledge
that he is the only relic of a bygone
time. the loneliest

thing about tiggers is that i'm the only
one, tigger says in the tigger movie. 
hajime —  i cannot think of him as 
tucker — likes historical furniture in 
pocket camp, and all he asks from 
your low-poly player character in happy
home designer is a fresh start. the
wikia says he

is lazy. that his best skill is oversleeping. 
every time i load up the game i wonder
what it is like to wake up after an ice age.
the wikia says he wants to become an 
archaeologist. i want to sit him down on
my wild log bench and look him in the 
eye and say: hajime, it's not worth it.
it's not worth it.

NON-FUNGIBLE TOKENS is already such a negative phrase it starts by telling you no and ends with a word i already know from people saying they need a brownskin person for their photographs NEAT FUCKING TWEETS sometimes as an artist i think about the things that get retweeted and the things that don’t NO FUCKING THANKS like color and shape and the specific genre of art made to appease rich people gold plated toilets and things that evoke the shallowest loss in their destruction and things that nobody should own like the pinkest pink in the world NOT FOR THEM i want to hone my craft learn to draw people as beautiful arcs of motion that will never make me rich i want to dance in my work-from-home office and sing anything but hamilton NO FREE TIME and make art with a hundred colors not one of them gold plated that people pinch-zoom on their phones and admire on company time NOT FOR THIS / NOT FREE TODAY / NOT FROM THIS

and what am i meant to say to you when
you took my little clay heart, me and all my 
loves, and shaped it? glazed it, too, that
crackle-shard stuff that happens when your
outsides cool faster than your insides. they 
tear apart, then. contents too hot to hold,
lawsuit-worthy, overfull. spilling over like
anger and so many poems and ink, blotted
too late not to leave a stain in your terrible
carpet. i was angry, but didn’t know it yet. 
you were beautiful in your anger and your
ennui and the crooked-tooth way you had
about work and men and being queer in the
way that queer means artist, ever making, 
perpetual motion machine, until the cables 
give out on him and her and you and me.

i'm tired of caring. you, your consecrated archways, your
story-spinning whirligigs, the way you papier-mache together
cleavage and moustachioed bravado until someone ⁠— 
anyone ⁠— puts the sword through the magician's coffin. i'm
tired of poisons and poultices and precipices. i'm tired of 
unnecessary hand-wringing and necessary interventions. 
i'm tired of swinging at shadows you've conjured up,
puppet-master around a cauldron of sins and puppy-dog
tails. the trail of broken hearts you've left in your wake 
is a miracle in itself, you stepping lightfooted across the 
watery roil of souls more cursed than yours, or perhaps 
just less clever. i don't even think you're clever, just smart.
you know the difference. that tongue-twisting finger-licking
catastrophizing echelon, riding back through the portcullis
after victory in distant lands, that's what you want, isn't it?
i'm tired of caring. i'm tired of polishing your saddle and 
saving the baby's breath that crumples in your hoofprints.
let me take my gilded scissors to the heart of your tangled
wood and cut your hair while you sleep. it doesn't matter. 

i
have 
never been
good with faces

it's a quirk of synapses
the way my brain swims among 
people silver-scaled and refracted
by water into unfathomable shapes
i hold them loosely because i 
can't see them and i can't
bear to see the hurt of 
someone seeing 
me not see 
them

but you —
i would be lying
if i said i knew you
from the moment that we
met though it's not a lie that
you caught my eye right
away — swam through
my silver net my
crab pots my
bent back
my

memory

an eel a 
taniwha half myth
half purposeful and 
very much alive in my
grasp and my siren song turned
yours and i sang marry me
(you did) marry me (you
will) marry me in the
everyday and
marry me
in the

way 
i always
see you coming 
i remember your face
and i beam like
a lighthouse
shouting
home

it is january and we must be brave.
in all things. the ways tongues fit 
in mouths, or don't. the way that resolve
is a noun and a verb and we aren't
sure if either is within reach, not even
if we try really really hard. the way 
to try can mean to strive for or to
test, you know, trials and tribulations
and all the other things that new
years are made of.

it is january and we must stare into the
corpse of the neonate world unflinching.
or very much flinching, that's okay too. 
curl your pinky finger around the ghost 
of mine six feet or six thousand miles 
away. we'll be fine. we'll be brave. i 
promise. i don't.