Drag Night
I find myself on a red couch
in a dim room, sequined,
my worm body watching itself.
The universe was right here,
its laughter balled in my hands—
but now it’s everywhere:
stickying the walls
and pouring underground.
The door beckons me,
bodies in party scraps and painted brows
file past the WOMEN sign,
and nothing about need
is simple now. Especially tonight,
my friends remind me,
no one’s going to care.
The line is moving
jump in now! and it’s come to this:
nineteen years to perform the most basic rite.
A studio of eyes
watch from the wallpaper as I stand—
that plastic flamingo in the corner
behind the chair
is more real than I am.
A camera clicks again and again;
another flush resounds within.
Fall Premonition
I face backwards on the southwest train,
sucked out of New York City.
September’s broad vortex of moving clouds:
grey, ruffled fields falling
diagonally upwards,
drawn by a great migratory bird.
I retreat at rushing speed
from that open yawn:
the world’s two halves peeling apart.
Has industrial Newark, stationary
as I flit through it,
been witness to this evolution?
Whistling from an overhead groove,
the air conditioning tricks me
into anticipating winter.
Some nerve of me exposed
will never be the same, ionized by rubbing clouds
and combed by their wind,
so the needlework wires of my body
yearn for any period of change, elemental progress,
skinned knees on the climb,
to tumble in the tumult with the seasons.
