It’s Strange, Calling Yourself

i’ve fucked the Confidence Man for confidence
the Renaissance Man for a Renaissance

the Mailman, thinking i could get away with it
if i never read this poem out loud.

the Middleman, convinced i’d get
somewhere, incrementally.

. 

it was good with the Manly Man, until
he called me a good girl,
and i collapsed, Mulholland Drive-style—
The Man In Back Of This Place,
who’s, of course, also played by a woman.

he took me from behind there
in the Winkie’s parking lot, tilting
my head to meet her eyes.

.

i strike out with Kinsey Scale zeroes
and men who believe in a god.

they always want to fight me differently
than i want to fight them.

.

people keep sending me photos
of Butch Kristen Stewart
on the cover of Rolling Stone,
the pull-quote she wants to grow
a happy trail, a little mustache,
and it feels like the cops are outside.

.

jig is up and i’ll roll over soon,
beg mercy, submit, i promise.

just tell me one more time
that i’m the aggressor.

.

          >Why this Winkie’s?

It’s kind of embarrassing.
I had a dream about this place.

…are you wearing a wire?

.

i want to fuck Butch Kristen Stewart
differently than she’d want to fuck me.

.

you would like Barry Keoghan
in Saltburn, they say, and i know
they’re thinking of that scene
where he sucks Jacob Elordi’s
cum out of the tub drain, and
i do, and only half because
i’m down so damn bad and disgusting.

.

i’m not like other girls.
i want you in a way
that should scare you,
the way drains want water.

.

      >Okay. So you had a dream
      about this place. Tell me.

You’re standing right over there,
by that counter. You’re in both dreams
and you’re scared too. I get even
more frightened when I see
how afraid you are
and then I realize what it is:
There’s a man, in back of this place.
He’s the one who’s doing it.
I can see him through the wall.
I can see his face.

.

i want to fuck Barry Keoghan
but don’t relate to people online
who want to fuck Barry Keoghan
because i want to be Barry Keoghan,
the way Barry Keoghan in Saltburn
wants to be Jacob Elordi.

had to stand on your street for hours
posing with my broken bike
just to get here, get you
to hold me down and say
i’m not like the other “girls,”
fingers curled around my throat
like scare quotes.

.

      >So, you came
      to see if he’s out there.

i nod.

To get rid of this god-awful feeling.

Koi no Yokan

today years old when i learned
the phrase “like moths to flame”
implies the flame eventually kills
the moths. it’s a flame, not
a lightbulb, and even then.

hot for you,
and it’s a problem.

we talk about fucking
while the wind rips fixtures
off the roof. kind of fucking
i can feel through the phone
and two layers of fabric.
kind of wind that puts out
the drunk cig a man half my size
lights standing in the street.

like kissing through tubes,
in a way:

exchanging the shirt that cures depression
for the one that makes people ask
questions about your sexuality.

chop you up in little pieces?
me, in my chelsea boots?

regret to inform
i felt something.

regret to inform that recording
of me in the morning in New York
moaning four-syllable words.

nobody has pushed my hair behind my ear
since i cut it. i was shook. angel emoji.

‘course i’m fucking with you.

cropped out the laughter at the end
and the crinkle of sheets.

i’m jazzed about you,
feeling unplayed notes.

baby now i don’t want
what i want anymore.
i’m easy for you, don’t
want nothing, loyal
and desireless, like a dog.

starving, like a dog.

like a dog, pissed on
and pissing into the wind,
onto the fire. the moths
scare me, you find them cute,

figures. typical morning for me.

bet you picture my eyes
bulging open, orchestral sting,
pawing your shirt as i babble for—
and in—various tongues.

well, regret to inform.

on the way out of the bar, on the wall,
there’s a heart-shaped sticker
that says YOU ARE NOT THE ONE
and no matter how many people point it out to me
i can’t see it. then again, i never do.

Life’s Awful, I Love You

All I know is this can’t be one of those poems you hate
about Positivity and Personal Growth. the world
will keep on dipping its hands in misery
and I’ll lick its palms down to the yellow bone
while your love for me rots in the fridge. you won’t cure
that void in me, that taste for everything wrong.
you will keep following your own dread
into dark rooms padded with so much guilt
you won’t be able to hear my voice. some days,
I’ll wake up heaving, with stones in my chest
not even your white-hot breath can dissolve.

a week will come when we’re both too raw to touch each other,
a month so thin we unsubscribe from language
and deal only in low groans. like that morning I kissed you
and we couldn’t talk about it, our ache suspended
like a big egg between our chests. I’m not excited
for that inevitable shower where I can’t invite you
because I need to cut myself under the arc of the water,
though I know you’ll forgive me.

I’d love it if it was always that first trip to the movies,
when you had a cold and the GPS took us off course
to a random strip mall instead of the theater
and the movie sucked, but we still made out after,
passing laughter like pink foam between our lips.

but at least when one of us gets cocky
and leaves to have a word with the darkness,
comes home at 3 a.m. with a fat lip
and a head like a bruised apple and says, like in a sitcom,
you should see the other guy, we can’t pretend
to believe it.

Yearner’s Prayer

i’ll pivot to “lover” once
someone touches back.

the beginning is an erogenous zone
and i need this to last, flushed
and panting in the steam
while i hallucinate a bleeding lance.
(or are you just happy

to see me?) like christ, an insect
being eaten by a frog
in a film about frogs
created by, and for, bugs.

invent me a way
to bleed out more than once.

think of the wrist
like a neck you can get away with
slicing multiple times.

think of me
as a nude gargoyle
on that bed where i first tried
to make a frog a bug
and a lamb a lion.

think of me
at perfect intervals
of zero, a glass room
on which it is impossible
to intrude,

the answer to the question,
what kind of pervert
hides a trenchcoat
under a naked body?

it’s me or your life,
but don’t make me say it.

the good ones never do.