Flamer
This fever has cooked baby birds
into jerky, cured stiff for the gash
of puppy
teeth. O-hail the crab grass needling
sockets wet with pond, the skin marks
like a solar eclipse. And Temagami
still burns. We’re laying insects
to rest. We’re using a puppy as blotting
paper. We’re charging our Pride outfits under the solstice’s
sticky bright gloss; a way to ward off
a phobic forecast. The Sun is the original
flamer, giving us hir all. The gaytriarchy
is a drag queen
body slamming a lone lez
on an empty dance
floor. You release your witch heart
as hound. And your bra, as talisman
to 3 am. The bar floor
plays prophet; milk-beard
smoke signals through thrifted mesh.
Your neon lights will shine
for you,
Xanadu, now we
are here, sweet peas blooming
crisp spines to jimmy open dawn’s
pink jaw.
Cold Meat
A house can be its own ghost. As a child, I felt
mine try to wait; aren’t we all just living
for that after life?
I practice devotional dreaming, now a gutted
victorian
blowing into its own hollows; it's ass
up in the night like an ant
ready to kamikaze itself into
goo. It will never again know
what it’s like to live
with us inside it.
I cure & swallow its
cold meat; dunkin’ dot morsels
of marble,
radiator, the scent of wood expanding in summer.
Repeat her communion, all night/every night
‘til the whole house agape
whines back
from inside your soft body, &
your pussy hair
stands on end.
Alex Hall received her BA in Cinema Studies from the University of Toronto. Her poems have appeared & are forthcoming in Underblong Journal, Dyke Queen Zine, Grimoire, Occulum & Room. She lives and works as a dog walker in Toronto, Ontario.
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