In the evening as we lie in bed, Bill sweeps his palms over the contours of my head and down my spine, along my arms and legs, grazing my skin as if moving over a Ouija board. This has a soothing effect on the muscle pain that clenches my body.
Imagine if a company offered to sell you nerve gas to spray in your living room, or if leftover Agent Orange, watered down, was slathered on the grounds where your children go to school.
In a setup that was far too Oedipal, I was sleeping in a small room with my mother while visiting my sister in D.C., when I finally blurted out the news that I had a girlfriend, that I was bisexual and maybe gay.
Long before I became disabled at age 23, I had encounters with the unseen. Being queer gave me an innate sense of when to come out, how to hide, and how to recognize evangelistic rage.
Everywhere I go now there are crows, following | me like innuendo, their feathers fanning out ominous | as police fingerprints. | With evolutionary anthropology, | they are condemning me.
These are plague years. Governments, insurance companies, even scientists—we, the people, too—are scared. Who’ll fall ill next, who’ll have to pay?
“…the woman in the pictures was her friend and collaborator, Clover Morell;…she could not go because of her illness. What illness could keep someone out of the Czech Republic, I wondered?”
nighttime at the hitching post of the sun | the absence more present than the presence | and the presence of something | previously unknown but familiar hovering
there’s a god point she said in the limbic brain | with the ability to soften perceived threats | white lawn care vans for example | into feet tingling joy pelvis goes with that | the bowl opening to receive
I have to live a life immaculately free of chemicals: a bubble life. And by chemicals, I mean, the crap that has infiltrated almost every known product since WWII.
