Standing Dead

i’m at a party
(can you believe it?)
saturated w/
hyperpop
transxendance
a pretty girl
in a floral dress
asks me how
many books
i will have to write
to account for all the
US war crimes
HA i didn’t mean
ALL of them
I meant the
WAR ON TERROR
fragment
AFTER
the infrastructure
shudders
i wait for it to
take me home
the theatre of
war papered
everywhere
i say to my lover
it’s almost a fulltime
job to yearn
& crave
love OF COURSE
(unlike labor) a
dyke imperative

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“‘Standing Dead’ juxtaposes the standing dead trees of climate collapse with the standing dead bodies of unnatural disaster: war. The poem calculates the force of U.S. military violence, where queer desire persists amidst disaster.”
—Andrea Abi-Karam