Nights shipwrecked / in nameless wanting
The city a floating glass
garden / to be lost in
Banished from the blinked-out streets / we put
our dollar-store faith / in the claw machine
wager our best luck / on a dinosaur with a cotton
heart / as if for once / we both want the same thing: to touch
extinction / to see if it’s loss / if it’s kind
This brand new / desire: refashioning
childhood / from a less intimate ruin
If we could, we’d live forever / in arcade fluorescence / we’d live
forever in worship / of a neon god
Out in the familiar cold / we lift
up our faces / for the moon to tiptoe on
Somewhere the war has begun / we don’t
hear about it / though we feel the eloquence
of sulfur in our lungs
How lovely it is / you say / to have
a bed to forget yourself in / in a city
that doesn’t love you
Key moans in the door lock / and we’re back
at ground zero
Against the slow / pollen of pre-dawn
we unbutton our skin / to reveal the youngest
muscles in our bodies
Between our naked limbs / an almost-blue immediacy
unfurls its petals
image: Dorothy Chan
