Standing Dead

i’m at a party
(can you believe it?)
saturated w/
hyperpop
transxendance
a pretty girl
in a floral dress
asks me how
many books
i will have to write
to account for all the
US war crimes
HA i didn’t mean
ALL of them
I meant the
WAR ON TERROR
fragment
AFTER
the infrastructure
shudders
i wait for it to
take me home
the theatre of
war papered
everywhere
i say to my lover
it’s almost a fulltime
job to yearn
& crave
love OF COURSE
(unlike labor) a
dyke imperative

Copyright © 2023 by Andrea Abi Karam. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on August 11, 2023, by the Academy of American Poets.