Hey Teebs
Writer, spider, pile driver -- editor of birdsong zine. The goal is to post a poem a day. The goal post is at either ends of a playing field.
This poem is written
in the form of an open love
letter to the taxi cab commission
and Amy Winehouse’s tattoos.
A bruise is still a bruise
even if the lips are marbled
from sudden heavy hickeys
in the space between new strangers.
There is something to be said
for flights of impulse,
but in taking are not to be mistaken
for knowing something awhile.
My boo’s new hat is getting famous. ♥
Chris and Roy. Photo by Allison Michael Orenstein. Hey, Queen! Brooklyn, May 2012.
Like my grandfather, I keep eagles.
Who believes in spiritual horseshit?
There is a common misconception
about Indian people, namely everything,
but especially sadness. One summer
the pepper tree rotted, black and twisted
licorice crawling up the ground
of my grandmother’s garden, to remind
me my grandfather was not my grandfather
by blood. Bikini Kill had an album called
Reject All American, which was not as good
at the CD Version of the First Two Records
or Pussy Whipped, but yielded “R.I.P.”
People die. Sometimes a song reminds
us about pink peppers. I feel inexorably
American, in Paris or Cartegena or Lisbon,
despite the vodka exorcisms I’ve performed
on my liver, or liberal arts linguistic flourishes.
There is a common misconception about
Indians, namely everything, but especially
when pink pepper trees grow cagelike
in the valley, eagle screeching skyward,
and he in a graveyard
and I wasn’t there.
Harry Winston (via queerfatfemme)
(aka MAKE THEM EAT IT)
(Source: doomsdaymachine, via queerandpresentdanger)
Jesus talks to me over wine about liminal lives.
He’s a radical queer friend of mine
in San Diego. The royal “we” learn
to be uncomfortable without smart phones.
There are few things more precious than rain
in Southern California. As children
we are socialized to wish the water away.
It hard to see anything but blood
in the tap, knowing my ancestors died
to keep green lawns over desert sand.
Stolen things crave replacing. I deeply miss
believing in god and am wary of comment
boards. Internet suffers no false idols—
the virtual cave, trench and apex
of human geography. Live a little,
says the tarot card I was texted.
Even on a sunkissed and perfect
afternoon that unfurls atop klamata
olive and falafel balls, nostalgia
is a privilege and somewhat boring
for its singularity—there are other
ways to melt, like cheese like
heavy cream, like cake
batter double fried and gliding like
those inflatable guys that rise
and fold continually recycling
excitement. Okay, we were stone
-d, and confessed a mutual love
of scratching the paint off things.
I soda explode every sunset
at a waterfront concert while
the band plays that song we sing
the morning after.
Summer is by far the best season!
Lemon candles and chocolate marshmallows
zip like backgrounds in a cartoon
chase scene. Creased linen, street fairs—
Major themes reoccur. Early life
cycles follow a startlingly simlar
trajectory. Pitches resist monotony,
but notes loop. Weekly my mother
and I Pledge’d down the catholic
pews where Sundays we’d kneel
to someone else’s god. In preparation
for battle, my father read
the History of Western Civilization
and California’s legislation precedents.
“Navajo Tacos” is sometimes a booth.
I ate one, to see if Madelines
could be fry bread. They used cabbage
instead of lettuce —crazy— which sort of passes
the visual test. Uncle Robert bellows
from inside the house, behind a screen
of memory:
“Shoot by, you got brown!
You look like a real Indian
now”
