Ed. Note: The following is the second in a series of excerpts from “IRL,” a long poem.
I’m in the city. Am the city.
The rush is what I covet the
noise of constant motion,
curled in bed on the rez
a sense of options. I’m
starting to (s)well up,
feasting on boys ideas
and language and chips
of technology. Sometimes
real food. So much is left
to interpretation—the jag
you think is a dagger
as Man says faggot
but really says father
to someone out of
the range of yr thot process.
This is how shoulders
scoop n say stay scooped:
Feeling eyes
upon you, walk to the door.
If walking to the JMZ
summertime and you want
to show your legs—
take Scholes to Lorimer,
cross to the other side
of the park—
if you walk parkside,
men on the benches
will call you faggot,
spit toward you
and sometimes even fo-
llow close behind.
If you take Montrose
to Lorimer, it’s almost good
but nearing the turn
is the stretch where men
sit on lawn chairs to watch
the baseball games in
the park and they will
throw bottlecaps call u
fag, if you walk alone. W/
a friend, you will forget
to pay attention. The walk
to Greenpoint is fine
until about Norman. Stay
on the even side
otherwise you pass the red-
faced Polish men
who will bark at you
sometimes jut their chins
make kissy faces
and spit. Cross to Metro-
politan at Lorimer,
or to the side of Graham
to the right of Scholes
and never btwn 3pm and 4
bc you know—teens.
When walking with Jess
or Chantal or Wilkes
or Lauren or Maud or Cat
or Kayla or Theresa
or Ruby or Allison they
intone walking with you
six foot two
feels safer, they get less
shit and spit and suck
from men, and while you think
godamn, my faggot ass
makes men hesitant? while
u of course oblige while u
realize this makes you
more that hated man-
thing—this is a safety
exchange. With friends,
u think less about a jeer
and more then what’d he say?
These rules are subject
to change at any
time and you may be
hit or spit on eye bulging
broken nose stabbed
pounced and left for dead
Chelsea Clearview rainy day
spit on. Duane Reade
Delancey Lower East Side
spit on, man
on the subway shouting
Bible verses at you from
across the way, white spittle
in the corners of his mouth.
Feeling eyes upon you,
exploding red,
walk to the next car.
Wipe your face off, bitch.
There is a kind of power
in being reviled
for just being
in the sense that my
scooped shoulders the snake
of my neck my bare legs
strike frenzy I scare them
something in the lumen
jolts, terror or desire, hate
so swoll it destabilizes some-
thing about their everyday some-
thing bubbling shuddering
under the brushstroke
of stars. The point at which musc-
le isn’t flexing so much as re-
flecting work That is not power
I have, but have been
granted. It’s more marble
than I can handle,
more ambient fear than I
want swirling in my wake
Gay bar. Stupid fucking gay
bar. Stupid fucking panic attack
when boy makes eye
contact in the fucking gay feel
of an open, low grassland
surrounded by tall pines
the neck rolling side
to side—There is surely
something stalking
and knowing
where it comes from
will help the bounding
away.
____________________________
Image: “Marco Polo” by Cat Glennon.
