^{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.

^{Gelatin silver print, Hal Fischer, 1977}

I swear, this filthy light could pass clean
            through me. My body—stretched & strung

across a wooden cross. Counterfeit
            Christ, corset abandoned in the corner.

There’s a precision to the intimacy
            of this ritual; strangers’ vicarious

hunger for gentle violence; being made
            a spectacle in a room filled up with spectacle.

It takes a measure of restraint. A precise
            velocity & angle to make wood or leather

into thunder. Snap & paint a red horizon
            on my spine, my ass, my chest, or thighs.

Mark skin the tint of stolen pomegranates
            split against cement, then faded to the shade

of winter figs. A broken still life—landscape
            layered over landscape. The gathered bodies:

Dom & sub, whip & cross & crowd, create
            a lexicon of their desires. Even the image

desires something—witness. When asked
            why he took the pictures of bondage gear

without a body in the frame, Fischer said:
            because it would have been too real.

Would have pushed too hard against
            an invisible boundary. Even the empty

frame demands something—a body
            to fill it. I fill it with a memory. My body

of hazy lines & thin glass longing
            to shatter.