when i say genderqueer i mean confusion. for you, specifically.
fuck you for the fun of it, specifically.
but i always get so attached
to the armrests on a good reading chair broken in by unknowable bodies passed around
like bourbon
drank straight from the mouth because we’re all mannerless animals
and our mothers didn’t raise us right
so there’s no point in trying to be good.

genderqueer, i mean i
learned to take showers in the dark and hide in crowds and choke myself
in winter with twelve foot scarves knitted on my own slip stitch ribs,
sometimes scarves in the summer too (thinner, I’m not an animal)
and now i think i like the feeling
of a gartered hand
around my throat
kinda queer

i mean i am a burning
bookstore kinda queer
body broiling on softwood cedar floors like salmon pink flesh for you, i mean
leather-bound and spine-scarred, records scratched in skin, i mean silkscreened
on your most hated shirt, i mean i get
restless
on city streets
as if it couldn’t happen anywhere
but on cracked concrete with the confidence of a man who thinks he knows better than beasts with
broken collarbones and wrought nerves
and a talent for baring teeth
and none of this is easy
none of this is fun
but I’ll make it
leather and gin and blonde tobacco
boygirl beauty, a beast
with a glint in her eye
and a body never meant for the good
kinda queer