Revlon

by Peter LaBerge

For a week straight, I dream of New York
uncapping itself for me.
 
An unapologetic moon on fire. Just
how I like it. Fire—
 
a version of the body to which, as the sort of man
I am, I am supposed to be kin. & it isn’t entirely
 
untrue—like the singed moon, I sometimes crave
to be smooth, genderless. Tonight
 
slurs from place to place, as if recorded
on a 90s Panasonic, through the bottom
 
of a ribbed glass, slipped in a photo album
marked NYC though clearly not taken
 
in New York. For most of the night I wear
only a soft face and a voice to match. I don’t ask
 
anything of gender. I secretly aspire to trap it
outside of the departing L train. But nonetheless—
 
curiosity cannot exist without its spouse. So what if I am
comfortable when I don’t need to be? That’s what it means
 
to be queer. If it is possible
I think I am comfortable wearing someone else’s face.
 
Or my own face, perhaps—Revlon matte, fresh.
 
 

Season in Which I Have No Body

after Christina Im / for Derek Whitener

 
It’s always nearly April—
The black poppy dangling from God’s clean mouth.
 
Whitener: Actor (gay), swollen. Texas. Surveillance footage.
 
Whitener: Outside Target, man against the sidewalk.
Cracked against the night’s star-chipped bowl.
 
In this brief season, there’s always less moon
Than mouth. Less destiny than gangrene.
 
Except when I house on fire. When I child again
In the womb of a sleeping mother.
 
When I body almost: night-horse, calm ghost.
 
The way the river doesn’t touch the barn
Is how I think about God.
 
In Texas, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Texas—
I boy the way the rivers boy. No freeze, all run.