after Rane Arroyo

First I was fairy

then faggot.

In Catholic school, forbidden

fruit. This is a popular joke

but it is one that was used against me.

Syrup mixed

with lighter fluid.

The school hallways would bend

           & curve like a pelvis. I made

no eye contact.                          A faggot

knows burning          to be better

than a dead angel, one must

avert the gaze.

Each marble staircase layering

a particular volume of ridicule. I saw it

in their teeth hungering towards

   the questions my body arose

      in them.  Yesterday, leaving

my apartment another stranger flickered                

past      my periphery.    I feel the city breathe

          out what I inhale.       The fear I carry

from mirror to street corner to street corner to

cafe to bathroom to bus to train car to airplane

to department store to street to apartment.

I am not being dramatic.        

I am writing my name on this beige uniform

collar over & over & over

the ones assigned then charted     on the skin, like rage

        pinned        to a map. Riddled with holes

   I count them        like freckles,            resign

        to silence when the married faggots

   I know asked what there is left

to be afraid of.

       Yeah, I get it but do you have to be

so loud.                     Could you take it

        as a compliment, then

thumb the fraught iron around their ring finger.      

I touch my tongue to see what I have

to lose my mouth stuffed

        with grey silk.   I nod at the strangers.

I swallow the apartment key;           laugh

        at the jokes.                I have a theory                  

     about shovels             it’s kind of funny.            

When Adam met Steve

god pissed herself & gave him

wings. Song of angels         heard through

the bedroom wall.                 Un-deviling;

                    a coronation.

I have another theory           about closets

 & the gowns inside them

  but I’m waiting      for the house to stop

burning so I can tell you.

I would be laughing if I wasn’t gagging

on the smoke. I cut slits in the suit jacket

so my wings could breathe.

Anyways, Steve pressed his mouth to a sapling

        & it gave him a crown.

Coronation.

A naming.                 He knifed

   the shovel     into Adam’s shoulder,

       stripped feathers,                  now crooked

in flight. Anyways, the fire is in the garden now

& the joke is behind it, staring in the language of man.      

I’m waiting for you to notice me

    pacing around the block. Go ahead.

The fairy is ash

now. Laugh.       I’m not listening anymore.