#carson wolfe

BY CARSON WOLFE

stuck between two Texans

who can’t believe I don’t know

how blockchain works.

I am always around men

who know more than I do:

the professor of engineering

who said I had no business

homeschooling my daughter

if I don’t understand geometry.

Lectured about the lubrication

of my engine. In a festival yurt,

my grey aura, my big ego

which I must learn to transcend.

I came to San Jose for Pride,

but my couchsurfing host

had a spare ticket to the launch

of a secretary app named after

a woman. How quickly I ditched

the queers to party with men

old enough to be my fathers.

I always end up back here.

Which one of them is the wealthiest?

Which one of them can save me?

Strange, to barter with the idea

of myself in a floral apron,

floating across one of their ranches—

I’d never have to think

about bitcoin. Soon, they say,

this car will drive itself.

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Yellow like the sun. Yellow like buttercups, baby chicks. Yellow like bumblebees, like scabs on knees, like old bruises. Yellow like daddy’s pee on the carpet. Yellow like mummy’s gloves washing it up. Carson Wolfe (they/them) is a Mancunian poet. They recently won the Debut Northern Writers’ Award for Poetry from New Writing North. Their work has appeared in Rattle, Fourteen Poems, Button…

I snuck to the souk to barter for a djellaba that hung like new life above the Arabian glow of trinkets that magic surely dwelled in. The man who decided when and how I showed my body – was pissed I paid tourist prices for a garment that fit like a coffin, burying my breasts under a heavy grey wish. There was nothing cute about the pixie hood casting a reaper’s shadow over my sweetheart lips, or…