#21stc

Fun fact, I would have been legally entitled to USA citizenship had I set foot in the accursed place before I turned 18. That's because my grandfather was born there, in the 1930s. My grandfather was born in a country full of living survivors of slavery. Like actual living survivors. Who had the DIRECT scars on their bodies and minds from being enslaved.

(And that's just the DIRECT scars I know well from my own family how the abuse my grandmother suffered at the hands of that grandfather impacted my father and became trauma I had to endure as a child. I can't even imagine how the legacy of trauma filters down through the families of the formerly enslaved.)

Blame your drag queen roommate—Lamar by day, Mahogany by night—and then blame his sequined dresses—all slit high, up to his balls Explain that dusk smells so different in Spain—musky cherry- tight tangerine burst—sage mixed with lavender Tell him you were under the influence of bees or bats— the spin and swirl of doves Tell him you were half asleep—about to leave to the dunes just west of Madrid—better yet say fores—he knows that crazy shit happens in a forest Tell him no tongue but his mouth—wax-like and wet Tell him timing Tell him ease Tell him sweat and sweat Tell him lips Tell him the juice—yeah saffron juice Tell him flat-chested Tell him, "crook"—I mean, "creek" Tell him tales—lies—tears—water—weakness—churros— chocolate—hot—heat—heave— Hush Hush Hush Tell him anything you want—then tell him You did it again

Taught wet towel snapped the cute ass pink caught by surprise red blooms, beachside spit and hot water coaxed the barbed stem to the head of the welt thicker than forget but thinner than recall the insecure sun came fast after that nasty spell the tide looped on and on it was plot- less, incidental

¹Stingray venom is composed of the enzyme 5-nucleotidase and the neurotransmitter serotonin. When injected into smooth muscle, serotonin causes severe contractions, activating pain receptors in the brain.

I leave my love on the doorstep. I drive miles of memory. The softest parts of yesterday are your hands, dusk unmade from light, mouths releasing a name into an ending. November will forgive us for the promised pleasures of smaller days, the way they fell to unlivable tomorrows. I could have washed the sheets & watched time dry. I could have cleaned the shelves & learned to collect dust myself. I could have slipped on the ring & reached for another man. How we became old & unkind for familiar bodies: Watching the hours settle aimless & gray between the spaces of where we lay on unforgiving nights. I travel the country. I knock on my father’s door. I mother a girl. I dream of the monarch butterfly flickering on your shoulder, return to kinder recollections. Our footsteps upon the old boardwalk. Your voice & the book of poems. The movies we screened at midnight. Mornings left uncooked on white plates. How this & all else fades from cruelty, draws to the unseen, the way the moon punctures its light into the dark & I forget your small angles, forget how to carve your face into knowing.

Scorpio, it’s time for contemplation. Hear this: my life has been a hologram. History has no mirror but stars misaligned, a thousand tessellated lichens and I have been trying to read them. I admit, a peculiar astrology: girl, boy, body as brown moth come to rest in the lee of an I. Magnetism is forecast. You may force a silk rose through one eye of the 3D moving image. And when Justin Timberlake brings sexy back at summer’s bravura performance, some rosé-all-day DIY backyard wedding you may—no, you will—go get down. Say of the synth pink thread coming through the I it’s made of stone. Stone from which hangs stones, grave markers wearing tessellated lichens. The pattern gets so misaligned. Please, Scorpio, read this horoscope sober as a moth. My whole life has been a hologram. A history of body as bangled, begging hand. But you, you’re down to reflect on what you’re transmitting, aren’t you? Or what did you mean when, leaving advice in the guestbook that evening, drunk on your own stars, notion of goodbye you wrote, wear each other’s clothes?