Anther
After Sebastian Hernandez
Have you
noticed how the
strobe light is also
a searchlight. The same
way we are surveilled is how we
celebrate. Tinsel is our stage, our
backstage curtain. Our chreesmas leaky
ceiling bucket. Covered in gelatinous detritus, we put
things on and take them off. A harness for an automatic
pistol. A wine glass kicks its legs up. Butterfly hair clips and a
brushed out bob. Outside it’s the X-Files on the sidewalk. Inside,
there’s a green neon star on your back. But that shape shifts and
you do too. You keep emerging as someone else in a smoke machine flood
A sheath here to rhinestone your ____. I’ve been too tired to tell you, but you mean
everything to me. Your water works and projected crimson swish across a wall. What does it cost us to make art and what is the cost if we don’t? We’re neighbors, Dancer. Femmes in translucent heels, teetering on platforms of drag show leftovers. I came today for your filament and you gave me flashing LEDs. I want you to leave me a piece of you, the afterbirth, if you can spare it. I’m hoping to be born one more time before the world keeps glowing. Déjame un pedacito de ti: pegajoso y fragrante, como el vello entre tus piernas
I Take—and Keep—My Flesh
I think my friend is in love
His candy shell Falcon, a ‘65
Is red retro—an old romantic
My, that hurts
The Beatles grip a rage, glowing
in my throat—a lighthouse in the daytime
My friend is used to handsome alleys
I am a passenger, my leather
a crashing view
Silent streets remember
Lap belt marks on my thighs
And while I am
not my mother, I am
her skin
I am this door
Its candy apple stripe and so much steal
A dashboard burns anything
It wants you to think
This friend's car
is my ride home
We are gelled-down
and pat friends
I fall out his door
Thanks, I say into my brushed denim
My skirt curls away from the
freeway sun. Jaws clutched
Talk to me
Talk because
a chain-linked high
is hard on the knees
And though he’s used to ignitions
I burn. We are
friends and gasoline
Should my driver four my body
and make me half, tell Amá he
crooned me, this racer, his ride
I’m sitting in
The Falcon is parking
his claws careful and far from my tips
He leans into my hot looks and where
he’s darker, a pimple once picked
Drunk-out in love
This lap is alive —backed into the seats, I take
and keep
my flesh
Overheard in a Garden
A mother tells her son to wait alone, outside of the orbit. He pouts. Looks inside the metal. He was being naughty. So he waited, what else. Now they’re holding hands and that’s it—that was the whole fight. And then they have repair. Things don’t stay broken. Their nature is ornamental
I’ve never asked nature for answers, only miracles. Please take all of our children out of cages. Turn them into a photons or pollen: dispersible, untakeable
That’s what I asked and the robles brushed. The polka dot finch zizzed. Not everything means something. Sometimes an answer is more questions and a rejection of your imposition
One sound inside me is a giant dripping faucet. Another is an ice cream cone melting
How many household items did those women in the Parisian book insert? Candles. A skinny chair leg. The stem of an alcatraz, the most natural thing to put inside yourself. That way, you are growing something from within. My insides are Valerian. Peonies and calzones
My brother rolls mom’s wheelchair into a short, wire volcano, its frame threaded with passion fruit vines. A spray of water mists her face. It’s so hot that she sighs in relief, Que rico. Vente, she tells my husband. He smiles from outside the explosion. I am so glad we all can fit in here
