I’ll only like you if you tip. I’ll accept you blaming

a bad attitude on no coffee if you come back

after your coffee & apologize. Or if you tip

more. Your question, though repetitive,

isn’t stupid. I appreciate you trying to learn

my momentary language. I mean I love any name

that isn’t mine. If Carmen Sandiego beckons me to her

all-femme caravan of queer escape artists, I’m getting the fuck

out of here, the angry swan necks of my legs

honking & lashing, beaks en pointe.

The money from the safe will be stolen & I will steal it,

my Pluto in Scorpio in my second house swanning to erupt

shit. My satisfaction

knowing you can’t survive this

day without seeing a faggot handle your latte

smells like toast an atom before the knife

& its gentle spreading.

The sun, on the plane, spreading

across the seats, reminds me of The Sound of Music,

when flashlights sniff the bars in the church. I don’t want this.

The sun on the plane spreading across the seats speaks

to the sun’s right to our silly, dangerous planet.

To compare the sun to a Nazi is to play into fascist discourse,

in that white supremacist power becomes a victim

needing protection. An old factory,

renovated to house an ad agency & several obscure businesses

is a terrible omen, to say nothing of how any unsurprised

Walmart husk can be, unarguably, a cage.

A building is an easy thing, its haunt swift as a tongue

evicted from its mouth, or a color evicted to construct white,

or a child evicted from a parent. White people love tongues.

Taking them. Using them as retainers for our tongues, or

like a really cool phone case. Do you like my tongue? I can’t

tell you this, but an insect tapdanced

on the part of the countertop kissing your palm & policy

says I had to kill it so I did, there, at that moment. Before

that, in its previous factory, someone surely sobbed here.

The salt of a desperate sob will outlast even the cockroaches

when the apocalypse finally answers our spam

telemarketer ads. Last night—& the night before—&

in the afternoon relaxing before us—I put the tip

of my tongue in a wildly responsive asshole.

I wrote a new alphabet that requires

its elated puckering. It takes hours

to say love. On the other line, someone

should have already said hello.