On The Queer Girl Fantasy

I say I love women & men’s faces crack open
like a jawless throat to swallow me

whole. They say, that’s hot. They’re thinking
sultry eyes, pay-for-more-action, queer

cured by cock. Body as sport. Eyes on everyone
but each other: a spectacle of choice.

Isn’t real unless a man is done proving
he can make a door out of an unopened envelope.

Question: if a girl kisses another girl with
no witness, does that revelation make a sound?

The catch in throat, trembling wrists, terror
blooming into wreathfuls of ribs, wearing

the future around her neck like a noose
— or the bullet caged behind front teeth

when gutted with a pistol in the mouth,
taught a woman’s place is with a cock

-ed gun in the belly if it won’t fire between
her thighs. The difference is when

the bleeding starts. Splintering drowned by
on-screen applause or dark-alley backhand.

I love women. I mean in the way that one
chooses her own murder over men.

Body softened with gasoline & ash. To be
unearthed by hands searching for rain

& crawl out of that grave into the story where
there’s no one else. Just her smile

set on bend of my skull, a coronet. Her eyelashes
the curve of two wings in flight.

Here there are no broken knees. No bent heads.
No dog chains. All open palm.

I will always love her like walking into fire.
She will always be the kind of pretty so sharp

it feels like loving a knife.