On the eighth day, coquelicot,
wearing my Armageddon earring,
my faggotry jumped to its death
from the foam spire of its death.
& on the ninth: in paradise, titmice
scrubbed its pearls with aftermath flax.
From its suicide note: So men might
once again flip you buffalo nickels.
The being inside my having been so
delicately razed itself into wondrous pink.
Meaning my faggotry carried all of astrology
& I wanted only the varmint baubles,
little sex cowlick with which I coaxed
maw into morrow, morrow into morning.
How many times could I wake like that:
gowns & waxwings, the paler gust before
the gust that everyone remembers with a notch
in the wall when a prodigal boy molts past his pastness?
How many times could I join the hundred
apocryphal boys nursing their empire stitch?
Their faggotries, too, nixed themselves
with lovability’s long & bedazzled shears:
drowned in a tub filled with pink milk,
Alice’d by an extra-large bottle of Rush.
To build trust, we plunged the javelin of fey
suspicion, deep & darkling, inch by inch,
deeper into each other. I think we sought
a new unto, as in the boys we barely let
ourselves struggle to be, as in two yuan
pieces, silver & tinkling, nearly crushing
each other into the bottom of a celadon
demitasse given as a gift by a lover who,
nightly, conspired to push our faggotry
from the glottal stopgap of the word
he never said but always meant: not fickle, no,
not fanged—but blood, yes, & its heavy shimmer.
2025