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narrowed lust

i say i’ll be / dressless, skinless, curated / and pickled. i say i’ll give it / all up for a chance to be warm.

after Kim Chi’s “Fat, Fem & Asian”
after Frank O’Hara

 
 
 

imagine i’m a shapeless orb
and every once in a while,
a person’s into it. so now i’m
feeling myself like really feeling
myself, my lineage, my whole
thing. a man in my phone said
he wants this narrow picture
so i’ll serve it up solemn and
without thinking.
i say i’ll be
dressless, skinless, curated
and pickled. i say i’ll give it
all up for a chance to be warm.
the next day,
i smell my top lip
and it’s contagious.
i’ll reject another like me now—
a darkest skin, a biggest
lover, a wrist folded into a
hate crime. i’ll grab these
feet by the ankles and drag
them to the ocean, where
the dark won’t let them find
another warm body. and when
i unlearn this wound in me,
i meet to touch my
delicate identicals. come forth
shapeless, come forth
rounded in the colors, come
and come and come again.
i’ll spend the rest of my days
writing odes to this beauty!
look at us dancing under the
big, good strobe! look at us
reaching for one another’s
skin! look at us! becoming
and becoming!