A sky full of starless city yellow

poison tonight while the moon decides

whether to push or pull. These open streets

were lighter once, because no one left them.

haute couture, touch parade, codex of refusal, faux doughnut, authentic glaze, fat white, flat cat

hair, stick & poke baby, poetry is willing the infection out the page, a strain of silk like a virus up

the esophagus & into another’s mouth—

rust hanky, not the cowboy but his horse, femme gays, t-girls & t-boys, stone butch lesbians,

genderfuckers, anarcho-queers, those who have yet to be, those who wear poetry like a tear in the

You wash your hair with the soap Perla. You get dressed in a long-skirted baro’t saya. You have a

red typewriter, one you borrowed from your Lola. You arrive at school, one of three women in a

class of ten. You raise your hand for your American teacher in recitation. You think your

seatmate is muy guapo.