after G & S, for F & C
Is St. Macho———
nose like a lime
-hound’s, unsound Gen Y mind———
genuinely het
up about my ending
three lines of ‘At Seven Mile
Beach’ on the
definite article
or is it that he can’t stomach
the poem’s looping allusions to
Apollo’s embroidering a flower with gay
abandon? Is all he knows the shattering
of a criss-cross ring
set with rose-cut YAG?
On and on his message
parades, triple-glyphosated fields
of sugarcanes. I chew the stalks, make ink
from the juice, paper from the megasse.
I imagine him watching
a trumpet recital,
wanting me to straighten
by taking fourteen small steps towards Homosexuals
Anonymous. His rage gift
was utterly unasked
for, but I don’t feel exposed,
as if on stage,
don’t imagine him modelling Milo x Speedo
briefs. I dismantle superbrands. I adore
the weaving life———
kneading the spark
of an idea or
keeping tectonic plates
spinning. I imagine my grin
soothing tin roofs for his credal
green-eyed felids.
I imagine a great fig
letting its hair down, a curse blown
from a garden’s gates.
An attentive web-threaded nest, a
dozen. Brown and blue crowns,
zizzing and wing-chat,
indefatigable yellow petals,
yellow love gifts. A sunlit solo, a
multitude, a crescendo in
eight parks. In loathsome Hobart’s parks
the magician with words
versed me in queering
rules; in the blessed city’s parks, my partner. Nate’s
his coolest pseudonym. For him
I play the sax loose, hum
spools of high notes. Why should I fray
when he draws a Queen———rig
-ht hand bearing a rising sword———
from the pack? Superb fairy
-wrens who pair-bonded in kin
-dergarten, we incandesce or
iridesce. We joyglide. Overland. Narcissus
River’s skyward eyes, the runic sass
of buttongrass and a Cradle
Mountain-peak leaf-viewing
buoyed up by cloudcards’ Hi from
the nacresphere! xo leave us naked.