Alex Hall

for roses

i’ll splay myself out 
for you 
in the rain

cuz the wind smells like vanilla 
soft serve 
and midnight cum tree 

we were drunk, checking out the corners 
of the old house 
calling out our baby (dyke) 
names like conjuring the dead

i dream there are 
new owners ready to spray 
the gay away

of spectres once crammed into 
childhood closets, spackled shut with 
torn out pictures of sinéad 
and courtney love

we stain our teeth with 
summer silk in prep for renos 
for roses

we drink 
the swamp milk 
of a flooding city 
that’s banned us all summer 
from the nude beach like 
            a hate crime, 
god’s infinite colonic 
has no mercy;

our bodies 
a private subterranean unveiling 
now

            we will not 
            be clear-cut / we will not 
            crack like a sun 
            bleached reef 

we pray a solar flare is 
remedy, on our knees 
& summon a 2nd cuming 

but for now, a fly-by-night swooning 
of the queen cicada 
crying us out into the dark

i will build an altar from 
            HER GLOW 
and consent over and over to thick stems, 
& of bulldagger 
            dug 
into half-crescent

and where our bed sits on wheels 
we have declared our future like a pre-dawn 
premonition: 

kidlets kidlets kidlets, or 
            ‘The Splice Girls, a Lesbian Family 
            Travelling Circus’ 
they are prophecies of queertopias / of giving care / of 
fire dancing 
us back home and sweet