his future was in his face,
mine is in my crouch: a laundry-list
of menial prostitution, bracketing the old crushes
and old trauma and old men (hovering
around the desk, watching
me work). i am reselling myself
day by day, in twenty-twenty-one,
trauma is profit
trauma is business.
he thought he was terribly
original: pretty boy, fucking the system
and then me after. next time
i will tell him: hey asshole you aren’t
napoleon you’re a mentally-ill teenager
like anybody else. what happened
to storming normandy, you sick
motherfucker you cry in public
you couldn’t even storm
yourself.
also, you look like my
father — why do you think i
stuck around and let you hit
me? / i am revolutionary i am
woman blah blah i am a
clot in the drain getting high
off the fall; too bad you aren’t
napoleon, i am sexually aroused
by the coup, the bestial man,
the verisimilitude.
the last pavilion 