Kurt David

Community Pride

for Isaiah

Anna Tsing digs mushrooms out of the soil, asks 
us to pay attention. On the bike trail this morning,

an old lady squatted to pee. I caught her eye. 
Bodies, Tsing says, are ninety percent bacteria.

Yesterday at the park, the emcee told us we could 
take our titties out. The water was free. The librarian

in lycra gave me his number, a daddy 
ring across two fingers. Kids painted, 

playing win-win games, as fat women 
and bearded queens stripped on stage.

Later, I watched epic sci-fi with Isaiah, 
his eyebrows streaked pink. Not subtle:

the eyebrows, the movie, the glimpse of elsewise.
Fuck subtle. Drops of ocean pooled at our feet.

with reference to Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing’s 
The Mushroom at the End of the World: On the Possibility of Life in Capitalist Ruins

Kurt David is a current MFA candidate at The Ohio State University and former Macrorie Fellow at Middlebury’s Bread Loaf School of English. Before moving to Columbus, he taught at a public high school and agitated for social and climate justice as part of his teachers union. Also, he ran a queer book club called Reading Rainbow. His recent/forthcoming publications include Foglifter, Gulf Coast, and LA Review of Books.