“Around Midnight”

         first published in Bodega Magazine (2021).

the bar closed like a hand round a shatter of glass. That is, the night bled on the bar, the bar sucked blue-black blood down its carpet, which everybody said was the only thing the place left dry. This one, this particular bar, took an especially tight grip, sucking the stars out of the sky, digesting, not spitting them up but stomaching them, a swarm of bees in a juicethick hive. Today the night was a woman, or was believed to be a woman, which is all any woman is, really. She wore her hair in soft black curls and if you squinted the oil on her face looked like a glaze, like stardust, like the night, unwilling fully to submit to the grasp of its venue, left a trace of itself on her skin. Her figure was an hourglass, but only because of the fist at her waist. Her hair fell long only because night, too, fell. When she opened her mouth pints of oiled stardust bled from the cracks in her lips, which were, if one looked closely enough, constellations.

---

“Differential Diagnosis (VI.)”

         first published in swifts & slows (2023).

Okay, epistemology:
The story of the fuzz
On my lip. The backbreaking
Labor of being born, nay,
Of being known.
The manner of pimping
The body to the dictionary,
Or worse, the man
ual. The fucked
-up travesty lays
its egg in
definition. You want
to feel how it feels?
You want to hit
the embassy of my
Name? Cool, try this.
Open your fridge. Gloat
Yourself in cold. Invent a value
-system as consistent as
nonsensical. Event
milk. Event crisis. Event
horizon. State the beverage
as if it knows your secret
Name. As if Name’s sat
Slack-heavy inside the
Great flat whiteness. You know
The milk risks reifying you
for good. Now,
What are you going to do?

---

“Have You Seen My Autism?”

         first published in Electric Lit (2023).

It all started
when I was born.

Worse yet, it started
on the taxpayer dime

In the bathwater, in the atmosphere, even

in the baby
if a baby

can get tall enough for college.
It’s true, I am autism

But only when you ask
nicely.

My autism is gentle, yet growing
carnivorous.

Like Medusa, my autism
is something you maybe

shouldn’t see,

but if you do, you should
write a book about.

Someone told me

if a flower opens
wide enough

it just becomes a backwards
flower.

Sanded teeth become new teeth,
renarrated to points.

With enough training, I’m sure

I can make a point 
myself, I can

settle on a sex

for this my waspish swarm.

Be whatever gentle in

tends itself to mean,
though I’ve been nouns

that would kill you
instantly.

I am autism, if you’re

willing. Autism,
if you’re down ––

Gentle, I’m a horny orchid
impervious

to pest control.

This autism’s so long
it’s forgotten

how to stop.