Brooklyn Kissing Poem

we kissed twice this winter
in brooklyn
because last summer
we didn't even know how to say
what we wanted

this year
feeling needed and unique
i drew myself up against the heat of your lips
gently intoxicated by the certainty of your invitation

taafe street and the g train lafayette station
before they meant nothing to me
this year
they have become moments of my life
expressions of your temperature

the sensation of your hand on my back
holding me
into your kiss will never fade
with your mouth and your words and your hands
it remains
on my skin
an unofficial geography of brooklyn
an esoteric calendar of our courage and consent

As the Silence is Exhumed

i am preparing a workshop on class. i am writing an article on queer radicalism. i am changing apartments. i am riding the bus. and then...and then his phone call never comes, and then a bill arrives, and then there is laughter laced with violence from the back of the bus. i choke on my words. the agenda evaporates. there isn't enough money, enoug time, enough confidence, enough strength to defend my dignity. there is little between me and oblivion except the histories of survival and transformation that i remember; my prayers against disappearing. i continue living, "metabolizing hatred like bread," my suffering fine tuned to reveal the aspects of the world i must change. who has words for it?

what can i say about class? about gender and the law of value? the dark nonconformity of my body shudders before the page. for every word i write there is an invader's voice in me that says that my word must be erased and that i too must be--inevitably will be--undone in my attempt to speak.

i clutch my version of Sister Outsider like a talisman and perform another exorcism. the voice that negates me retreats into silence. the lease, the threat, the humiliation, and the inadequacy of my wages do not change. they do not go anywhere.

what can i tell you about the homoerotic and the law of accumulation without unhinging my mind? nothing at all. i risk losing everything in telling you. and in order to be told what i know you too must risk everything.