^{after George Abraham}

My mouth is all wrong answers. I know what happens if
I speak & vanish the question marks on every slur.
I dream his lips against mine. Chapped. Red as an exit.

                                       ▼

I speak & vanish the question marks on every slur.
I dream his lips against mine, chapped red as an exit.
He still calls himself straight even after we fuck.

                                       ▼

I dream his lips against mine, chapped-red. As an exit
he still calls himself straight even after we fuck
& I vanish in his bed. Years later, I’ll prove him right.

                                       ▼

He still calls himself straight. After we fuck
in his bed—I vanish. Years later, I prove him right.
Unfaggot his past. The first girl to redden his sheets.

                                       ▼

I vanish in his bed. Years later, I’ll prove him right—
unfaggot his past. The first girl, I redden his sheets,
still, he calls me boy & my half-buried name.

                                       ▼

His unfaggoted past—the first girl to redden his sheets.
Still, he calls me boy & my half-buried name;
my body, always center stage. The subject of debate.

                                       ▼

Still, he calls me boy & half-buried. My name,
my body, always center stage, the subject of debate;
this is not a metaphor—though I wish it was.

                                       ▼

My body is always center stage, the subject of debate.
This is not a metaphor, though I wish it was:
the wedding band; that night; thin bruise of gold.

                                       ▼

This is not a metaphor, though I wish it was:
the wedding band—a night-thin bruise of gold
a promise we know we can’t keep making.

                                       ▼

The wedding band—a night-thin bruise of gold
promise. We know we can’t keep making
brides of each other nightly & divorcing in the sun.

                                       ▼

A promise: we know we can’t keep making
brides of each other nightly & divorcing in the sun,
we all know the score, one of these boys must die.

                                       ▼

Brides to each other nightly, divorced in the sun—
we know the score. One of these boys must die.
No one in this poem would even recognize my face.

A boy can wear a dress
    by cliff or by
creek, by God or by
   dark in the caul of the devil.

A boy can wear a dress
    bought with a tin-
can full of cherries on the
    day of his daddy’s dying.

A boy can weep in his dress—
    by boat or by plane, he
can sleep in his dress,
    dance in his dress, make

eyes in his dress at the
    flame at the hotel bar.
Goddamn it all to graceland,
    how stunning he looks

in his blue cotton dress,
    just stunning! Nothing can
keep him from
    losing our minds, sluicing

my heart in that way he does.
    Nothing can keep him.
On the walk to his daddy’s wake,
    persons of rank may

question his dress,
    raise their brows at his dress,
so he twirls and twirls
    till his dress is its own

    unaddressed question, un-
veiling the reasons he
    wakes every morning, like an
x-ray for colors beneath

    your colors, your
zygote soul, your naked twirl—