"Control."
"In the Pornhub video, "Two Houseless Men
Suck Each Other on a Subway Bench," it's late at night,
but not late enough no one is around.
The people are outraged, call the men disgusting,
New York and humans disgusting, while they continue to record.
I have the space inside my body to feel
the two men, their commitment to pleasure absent basic comfort.
The one's face nearly neutral, as though his friend's mouth
and the sting of existence canceled each other out,
almost like a mannequin, just there.
On Hyde Street, yesterday morning,
walking briskly in no clear direction,
I saw a man on the opposite sidewalk, a motorcycle parked
at a right angle to his feet.
He put one hand on a handle, the other on his crotch,
and glared above the slow moving traffic, at me.
The question in his face, it's own answer.
When I tell you I don't know what to do with my life,
I mean I don't know how to stay inside it.
Joy, Gary says, is a feeling of profound gratitude.
And before I can ask for what, for having come how far I have
come, I celebrate my friend and think at once,
we should be grateful then for surviving
a country that makes of survival a victory and not a right.
We talk about our boyfriends, syntax, Nella Larsen's passing.
Gary leans across the couch to touch my chin.
We were lovers once, briefly.
I look at him look at me.
Try to love yourself, darling, he says.
You're going to be here a long time.