i can see words thin                                                                               
greasy crackle of onion SKINS.                                                                                                  
toes in cold                                                                                   
bathwater          
ARE sensual organs.
                  
DYING pants with coffee grounds                                   
pummel of undernail oranges.
                     
SOFTENING into surrender                   
which is to embrace environmental cutlasses.
                        
EVERYONE going to smoke           
on their respective timelines. 
                                               
all pelvic prayers 
butterfly, 
toes SANCTIFY
HESITATION as it's breathtaking, 
it's unsure, new butterfly blood

creases fill with creases 
if we spare a day 
we spare another 
reaffirm IT 
FEELS GOOD
         
 

Vigil wax pourover monarch wings I 
Flutter too, I zilch. Like so I’m sealed to the desk 

In the preparation: unaligned pelvis
Compelled crossly to bear like an unticked timeline

Ritual oil of greens 
Rituals of smell basins
Rituals of chewing consideration 

And casting off nails rituals of debasing 
Based mucus like which calcifies the virus 

Rituals of shedding blood 
Onto cotton, useful blood. Some people believe in families 

Some intimacy believes 
We need need, each other, unfolding protection in mucosity 

Human insides. How can we hold enough
Back, how can we protect 
But say enough to say yes? 

Manifesting. Now
Let the people come 

pulling nuance from our breath 
as light teases a prism 
into revealing itself 

falling and rising 
worried wings melt down 
to arrogant wax

waxing and falling 
relaxed resistance 
as one examines another for tears 

I will make happiness fall out of your ears  

(your dwelling) I am here 
I am here (your dwelling) 
I am here! 

Jackass asking me if I'll help pull a bike rack 
Onto Hennepin. Clang of metal on asphalt 

Is right and wrong, 
like screaming the answers during a standardized test.

Jackass asking me if I'll hold the chain-link open for him 
To slide under, his face close enough that the icicles in his beard 
melt into my ear. He tags the concrete AMIR LOCKE 
Murdered by MPLS cops
He tags Shoot back! and squirrels to anonymous safety.

Afterward, a medic on a bike tells me that this squat embarrassment
adorned in chain link is the 5th precinct.   
Then they give me a burrito
I use it as a handwarmer. 

Night of suspicious openings. Wary of being kettled with that 
Helicopter threatening the sky. 
Amir Locke written in dust on a party bus 
Party bus parked sideways blocking traffic. 
A man runs out of Popeyes and joins us, bless him, 
most drivers avoid our eyes  
as we weave between their frustrated vehicles 
dragging traffic cones 
and recycling bins behind us
like caught fish.  
Helicopter stalking us from 1700 feet, but 
Why won't they meet us in the street? 

Rarely have I felt as powerful than with J on my left 
and O and K on my right staring down stopped traffic and then 
Oh happy accident 
The gardener who tended the flowers 
In George Floyd Square 
Walks by on a Friday night date 
And he moves to speak of warmth and his everywhereness 
Our everywhereness 
Shivers come into me 
Until I'm dancing

Amir Locke in the red paint someone launches over the fence
at the precinct. 
Why won't they meet us in the street? 
There's nowhere to escalate, and  
the cold 
so we disperse. 

In the somber car home
K moves to speak the truth: 
Our four white bodies should be background at an abolitionist protest. 
Yes. And- I would rather be background here 
Than anywhere else. Our numbers kept us safe. We keep us safe.  
This was a structure test - A test that makes us stronger. 
Reddit says there was rioting in downtown MPLS over the weekend -  
No. This was no uprising. This was a structure test - That day will come. 

I'm circumstance, 
inducting good luck 
out of ash snow. 

I'm lull, 
basement pianos
sunk in rhymed windows. 

Sensitive is the cell
that tells you right from wrong. 

Touch the thick hair growing 
on the shower wall. 

Festival, whose god is dead? 
Not mine. 

I'm the prowling countryside. 
I'm the living sculpture, the maternal sigh
enveloping 

The built world 
The uninhabitable world
The male world. 

Under ammonite stars 
Under amniotic waves 

Alert for parousia, 
which always arrives. 

My god is of us 
unveiling by the hundreds. 

Note: this poem is in conversation with Luce Irigaray’s 1982 lecture “Love of the Other,” reproduced as an essay in the 1984 book An Ethics of Sexual Difference.