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

Credit

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

About this Poem

“‘Standing Dead’ juxtaposes the standing dead trees of climate collapse with the standing dead bodies of unnatural disaster: war. The poem calculates the force of U.S. military violence, where queer desire persists amidst disaster.”
—Andrea Abi-Karam