Dear America, your streets sing with

blood/music/protest
arms swinging wide like
punch drunk baby gay
at their first punk show
grab ’em by the denim
and don’t let ’em go,
because hey,
they might slip into the silence.
you’ve made an art of silence haven’t you
America?
silence as bombs fall on
Tehran/Venezuela/Gaza

land of the free,
oh say, can you see
black oil raining from the sky like
they keep rescheduling doomsday
but hey!
here’s another reminder
on the calendar/news feed/neighbor’s body.
tune in for more at 11 p.m. to find out who
you are.

democracy reads a lot like anticipation
these days. Just a joke!
Yell it at your phone like we’re all playing
surveillance state redlight-greenlight.

I sat and watched as my body was illegalized over the last decade in the name of decency, all while my countrymen grew silent in the face of these monsters. Tomorrow, I will promise my partner that we will survive this, because we must survive this. Every queer ancestor is screaming for us to survive this. But my eyes are drawn to the news where a new bill has been introduced to find a new way to carve new misery into us. And again, there is the silence. Then the sound of bombs. A girl crying alone in her room half a world away…
or here, tonight.