it’s been awhile since. a body was inside my body. summer. & now i think how lonely. i am standing next to the oven for heat. so much depends on sex. once you have had it & had it well. only the little ruins follow. i am no stranger. many a man ruined me for both our pleasures. what recent history calls a faggot. what the Greeks called Greek. what some needed no language for. faggot at the moment. i’m always talking. with sam & cam & paula & hieu. my faggots. what makes a fag a fag. one theory rings true. it’s not the sex. the being filled. but the emptiness. void you didn’t know was. until someone stopped it up. a particular strangeness. i was a faggot in first grade. full of so little. one day in the car heading somewhere. probably the park. my friend Alex asked my mom where my father was. never occurred to me. i didn’t have a father. when my friend Ben came over to play all i had was barbies. & he asked whose they were. my cousin’s. my girl cousin’s. i hadn’t a cousin to speak of. i knew to hide. the void. void a more boyish & fathered thing should occupy. plenty straight man faggots too. nothing to do. with what a boy wants. another boy to do to him. everything to do. with how we speak of the silver miles & miles we know. in us. pulsing gray. hungry to be. the land.

//

particular walk. particular wrist. particular speech. particular clothes. particular piercings. particular knowledge. particular ways of eating particular things. particular sounds. particular swallow. particular motions. particular honey. particular eyes. particular fear. particular holler. particular curve. particular midnights. particular shame. particular milk. particular beast. particular cage. particular freedoms. particular blocks. particular glances. particular running. particular gods. particular beliefs. particular hells. particular economies. particular arrangements. particular secrets. particular shade. particular bliss. particular deeds. particular punishments. particular lonely. particular grief.

//

i try not to see myself. in the broken humidifier. nor the molded potato. the freezer-burned chuck roast. woke up with my mind. steady on the old women at the gym in corduroys. what roads have led them to treadmills. i want to say. they are faggots. i want to claim their strange. particular it is. their well-ironed gym clothes. the women. some in t-shirts. most in sweaters. shiny foreheads & creased pants. cycling thru the body. stopping for water. stopping to chat with Barb. fearing the knees. working the shoulders. stopping to pee. braving the knees. begging their machine. to master the machine. bad joints & all. i love them. my corduroy coven. little nana faggots. i see it. in them. they know time. is not a river. not quite. like a lover. but a thing that leaves you. until it’s gone.

self-portrait as ’90s R&B video

lately i’ve been opening doors in slow motion

& find myself wearing loose white silks

in rooms packed with wind machines & dusk.