on doubt
for my next
trick a swaddle of
caterpillars released
onto a table
cloth
//
if you don’t
put your name
on envelopes
then what kind of ghost
would live inside them
//
not writing is as
easy as porn
i can feign all sense
of pleasure
but when i’m rejected
all i do is scream
//
a loaf of snow warms
a field with reflection
for months
//
i want to open
a kiosk for scarves
striped white dotted lines
to write about absolutely
nothing
//
even God
had to rewrite the world
every tumbleweed
of eraser shavings
thousands of bodies
//
the one time
my mother bought the family
a coconut
we broke it
so hard
milk plumed like
a torn napkin
and never
again
//
hesitation is a suture
of honey which drips
onto my keyboard
and i create one
continuous word
//
before you
doubt
there was me
my sleeves full of dogwood
so full i shed
what looked
like scales
//
praise
the cairn of books
the Norwegian poppies
of crumpled paper
praise you doubt
for your praise
you who have followed
me so tirelessly
that i must believe
you love
me more than i do
//
my father once wrote
an essay for me
due the next day
his humor flitting
constantly out of tone
but at one
point i added periods
and my name
was just a
dot
//
in my favorite poem
Spencer Reece says good-bye
to Richard Blanco
whom i too have met
lost in a city
its mountains ineligible
while wandering its veins
we wear Miami
like a shirtsleeve
unpinned to our wrist
we too
blessed the ocean
for it to crease
ripple
form a new language
only we can understand
shot
for the victims of the Pulse Nightclub massacre
“And the last thing that I heard before the police said…
‘Move away from the walls.’” – Patience Carter
My
friends
I wear your lungs
like a porch flag
the tangle of our breath
starch with sweat
Oh how we make light
dance until
its purple blanch wriggles
beneath our hair
Oh how you my friends
bless me with the tickle
of Svedka like sipping a
burnt cinder block
We only know hell
because it breaks
its looseness like a mutt its roped lease
a kind of blessing
There are too many ways to name freedom
and not enough
to color it without red
Friends have you ever
said the word heaven
without thinking of a place
we must heave ourselves toward
without running to save
I never want to run again
let my calves girdle extra fat
anchor my toes to a new lawn of scrape
say what kind of music
beckons an epiphany of doves
say what kind
of music do you hear when light
emboldens within light
drill ‘n’ bass like a machine
gunwaled
to its own demonology
I burst out laughing
you know this
my fave beat
swivel of my hips around
you
like a straw choking on ice
I hold my glass as a hand
holds a stone
which too is a kind of mirror
that creates more mirrors
all of us a child of someone
else our lineage
too immense most buildings are not
as tall
as forty-nine
bodies
what i mean is
I never knew a drum
and your chest could sound so
inhuman
a splash of punctuation that pops
a question mark
on body after body after body after body after body after body after body after body after body
after body after body after body after body after body after body after body after body after body
after body after body after body after body after body after body after body after body after body
after body after body after body after body after body after body after body after body after body
after body after body after body after body after body after body after body after body after body
after body after body after body after body
until no matter what I ask
it just ends
in ellipsis
LIAM STRONG is a Pushcart Prize nominated queer writer and studies Writing at University of Wisconsin-Superior. They are the former editor of NMC Magazine. You can find their works in Impossible Archetype, Dunes Review, Monday Night, Lunch Ticket, Chiron Review, The Maynard, Panoply, Prairie Margins, and The 3288 Review.
Twyckenham Notes 