Underwater

Imagine being at the bottom of the ocean
Imagine a world of water above you
How heavy it is
How dark

Imagine crying at the bottom of the ocean
Only you're not sure if you're crying.
You're under water
And you're cold
And you're holding your breath.

It feels like you might be crying
Or maybe you're starting to forget what it was like to cry
On land. What did the air used to smell like?

Erotica

Consider sunlight dripping across your shoulders
And brushing your lips scarlet
I think about your tongue
I try not to.
I try not to think about your voice naked in the air
The way your husky "please" sounds
In my mind you taste like the bluest, sunshiny-ist day in fall
You taste like a fresh apples
Plucked straight off the tree
Dripping with ripe fruit
Bared of leaves
Branches writhing towards the sky.
Please

So what?

So what happens now?
I've woken up crumpled between your bedsheets
For the third time this month
And I look over and your sleeping shoulders
A world away on the other side of the bed.

An open letter to my Spanish teacher

An open letter to my Spanish professor 
And your concern that you forcefully “outed” me when we were doing a class dialogue
Wherein you chose me to fill the role of mujer on a date with an hombre
And at the end instead of saying (in Spanish) I was tired and goodbye
I looked that hombre straight in the eye and said me gusta mujer
Which is a ballsy move except that it’s pretty bad Spanish and so
When you asked me to stay after class to assuage your own guilt that you had forcibly outed me
I found it simultaneously laughable and punitive.
Professora, if you didn’t know I was gay at this point may I direct you to
Exhibit A: My eyebrow piercing
Exhibit B: My Jewish stick and poke tattoos
Exhibit C: My undercut
Exhibit D: My sparkly lip-print crop top
Exhibit E: My literal ring of keys I carry to class
Exhibit F: The rainbow pin on the front of my bag that reads “Not gay as in happy but queer as in fuck you”
I know it’s Spanish class but you can read English and I know everyone else can too
Professora, I have not been in the closet since before you knew what gay was
I know coming out is an ongoing process but it’s hard to imagine anyone anywhere considering me una heterosexual
And also, I had a bus to catch
And when you asked me to stay after and reassure you that my feelings hadn’t been hurt by my mid-class outburst of queerness
I was amused that you thought anything you had done had forced me out from between the cobwebbed coat hangers and moth-eaten fur coats and into the light and furthermore,
Professora, I have a bus to catch that doesn’t care about your guilt over being a bad feminist
And maybe you could take that guilt and include some queer-inclusive vocabulary so instead of saying me gusta mujer I could say yo soy una lesbiana and also
Have you considered that every example in the textbook is una mujer y un hombre and maybe also like including the genderneutral pronoun elle
Instead of holding me after class so that I could personally tell you that you shouldn’t feel guilty and
Don’t lose any sleep over it, professora, and don’t use this as a learning experience to change any of the curriculum and just maintain the status quo
No, I don’t mind missing my bus to soothe your ego, professora
But, as we learned to say in our job interview unit, gracias por la concideración.

Haikus on Climate Change

Leave it in the ground
It took billions of years
To get there. Leave it.

Leave it in the ground.
Good fuck! The science is clear!
You're killing us fast.

Leave it in the ground.
The sky weeps and the ground is
On fire and the seas rise.

Leave it in the ground.
No one else will save the world,
We must save ourselves.

https://www.greenpeace.org/usa/global-warming/keep-it-in-the-ground/

A nursery tale

Nabokav's balls sit in a wooden box I keep on my beside table
One end is smooth sack and the other is jagged, like little roots
Or many bloody uvulas, flapping without sound perhaps
My best friend has the balls of Kerouac
My roommate claims to have one of the testicles that belonged to John Muir
But it's so pulverized it's genuinely hard to tell.
Please, tell me again what it is: literature?
Is it fantasy?
A lesson to be learned?
A radical political expression?
An original thought?
If you're curious
Nabokov's balls smell like little girl.

A bug's life

Insects have six jointed legs, four wings, three body segments, two antenna, and one exoskeleton.

Six: The number of times I got distracted during work today just thinking about the way your hair falls behind your ears. I have been teaching for nearly ten years but today I paid no attention to the way Lee refused to share blocks with Claire until they were both crying.

Four: The number of dances we had on Saturday. I remember the tunes we danced to were Siren's Fiddle, Apple Blossom, The Hat Thief, and Heartbeats in A. In that order.

Three: The number of times I was sure I should kiss you but didn't this weekend. Once after our third dance, once at the late night song share in the sheep shed, and once as we were saying good bye and you were gazing into my eyes and my heart was pounding and I looked away first.

Two: The number of days it has been since we danced. The number of days I have been thrilled at every text I have received from you. The number of days I have analyzed and studied, to the minute detail every interaction we had this weekend. The number of days every love song I have heard on the radio has been about you. The number of days I have been penning poems on perfume scented paper with hearts over the dots on the "i".

One: One juicy enormous stupid fabulous secret crush on you.