inside an organism
inside an ecosystem
I used to study biology
because my father
forbade me from pursuing
literature, moving to Montreal,
being gay, eventually
I accomplished all three
it’s okay now
a lot of my poems
refer to salt, the only residue
The Fish
Hunter says they’ve never
had their heart broken—
I didn’t know I’m not supposed
to use heart in a poem—
I don’t think that’s something
to brag about
if all the queers of East Van
braided their hair together
we’d have to look
sexual tension in the eye
on a chart that roughly maps
the gender spectrum
I select femme and dirtbag
instead of masc and dapper
I wear a disco ball with wool
socks to the wrong party
no one looks at me all night
I cave and eat molasses
I cave and do push-ups
once when I was a kid
I lost my shit
because the story about the fish
whose tail went swish
came to an end
my dad told the story again
and then lost his shit
I don’t know what came next
look, I just want to talk
and talk and for that talking
to feel like a lucid dream
or the heartiest fish
you’ve ever fried by a river
Victorian Quartet
When I told you I was a writer
you showed me your one poem
that spat kalamata pits
into the Mediterranean
like a thrifted Durrell in oxfords
wandering the twenty-first century
you took my photo on both coasts
I took your ghostliness
and mixed it into a muddy drink
a monk’s offspring brined in a jar
its snarl tooth breaks the glass—
we’ve a curse on our hands
let’s say there’s a daughter
in the jar like a portrait on a desk,
that the brine reeks of coriander
this daughter in golden light
and dress brings you a rosemary
crown as your father drunkenly dons
a wolf pelt, your mother dreams
of a daughter to ask her ghostliness
questions, to count American bills
under the bed, maybe you’re twins
and with your brother you’re triplets
stuffed into a canvas pouch
then thrown in the gorge,
this daughter who is not a daughter
is a sister, is a spy who demands:
either tell the story four ways
or not at all
Sudden Landscape with Interior Joy
God, falling in love
feels like waking too early
having to pee, gazing slack-jawed
at a tall landscape—
meaning lives there,
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