Reading Queer in the GTA (2)
KHASHAYAR MOHAMMADI
Pillow’s Kiss
(excerpted from Moe’s Skin)
Pillow’s kiss past midnight’s stroke and doze down the fugue
of highway tunes. Up, up and away — past mall-lit windows we
migrate between, bootleg DVDs and cider house blues where
hatred blossoms in plastic-bagged opacity, past the hooka-smoking
girls lustfully eyeing lustful men in blue.
Feel like a god, but slip on Moe’s Skin.
A new motto for massage chair afternoons:
“Don’t frown! You’ll slip.”
A single leaf behind an iPod case;
a Djinn in each passing eccentricity.
I fly where the water poured.
From up here all is bright — neon dots
splashed against god-stricken shacks,
shackled. Fluttering glitter, dashing
along the five-lane Serengeti. Highway
windows hold Mystery Men of Blue, half-
knit to cascading lace curtains, puffing away
exhausted cigarette smoke. Purring cars
bow to laundromats, an exhibition of
teenage mothers freckled with nocturnal
blues. Yanking shirts and slamming doors:
another bed left unshared.
I fly back to trace
our blasphemous steps.
My back to the blinding sun,
I smile a masculine smile
and bludgeoned by my adaptive nature
you spin.
Ticker taped by rain we stride,
counting down to the promised flood:
two boys dipped in the absurd;
two mystery men in blue.
Pillow’s Kiss
appears in CAROUSEL 42 — buy it here
