Faggots Dream in Blood Glitter
I bag chicks like groceries
although in Cali bags ain’t free no more
like turn your chick to yellow m n m’s how my nuts inside her
like turn your chick to Damascus the way she blowin me up
like scored highest on the Kinsey Scale
like… pussy as a portal
like I crawl underneath her skin
a skin sheet over my androgyny
hide both lips
draped and dwelled inside her perimeters
let me in
let me stay
so please don’t die
b/c I am still fighting to love properly
bare fists still always healing
with crust
re-torn baby pink to sear and scar
any legacy in legs
we tangle spread and ignore
the place btw being gay and being straight
just being human being
human doing
human fucking and loving
dyke bitch faggot meaning I dream of you
meaning I long to touch you
dyke bitch faggot meaning can I have this dance?
meaning her parents come to the wedding
meaning they don’t watch us hold hands on the train
dyke bitch faggot meaning without disease
meaning still beautiful but dead
but today I am without exit wounds.
Imagine if JK Rowling got booty injections
Imagine if Hilary Clinton got tittie implants
Women will be clouds
We will be expelled in billows that puff
Of cumulus and cirrus
Born up to our necks in gasoline
With matches for lips
Waiting to be struck in the face
The rain drops
drop tops
Imagine if men’s penises dripped
chunky blood 12 times in one planet rotation
painting tags of King’s names
in maroon glops across city sidewalks
and wheat lined country roads
on tractors and trains
all spotted
with browning stains
the barbed wire of their bottom halves
chain linking their temperaments
in waves of rage and sorrow beating up and down
eyelids into floral tears
salt water to add to the ice caps melting
melting
melting chocolate on the double boiler pots
but the flame curdles the sweetness
into burnt streaks
striations in the foundation of the sauce
imagine
just imagine, if non-kids genderlessly still imagined
The Farmer in the Dell
Enjoy girls.
Enjoy, girls.
Scissors
scissoring ribbons in the sky
to curl tails
coiled pigtails
framing pink cheeks
this is how we juju on the beat
babe status
wined and swined
purple tinted teeth
slaughtering squeals
in a shed
in the back
from the back
behind the curtain
a form of scissors
scissoring
criss crossing legs over backs
slit slits
to hang upside down
and bleed out
the ribbons still curling
in rigamortis
Enjoy girls.
Enjoy, girls.
It’s all no one is talking about..
What if these fallen angels are really just homosexuals
fuckin similar bodies for celestial seminaries
this cohabitation
this
physical
this space
We get like 70 years or so maybe
and I drink plastic bottle whiskey too many days a week
smoke out of cotton candy corner store cigars
it is too short
not to hear how you feel
how I feel
it fluctuates
but I say it anyway
to change it up the next day
and this Jenn is really just the old Jenn
with more melanin
and that Daniell is really just
the old Danyell with more languages
on her tongue
less melanin
I want to be yours to suck out
w/ lemon & salt
to spit remnants in
a designated bucket
at the table of my own
fixings.
she doesn’t care my heart got it
wrong, she’s heating the burners
& slicing the onions to fry it anyway.
they say God has a plan for you. Don’t know who they are anyway.
gives you what you can handle
I wonder if the dead can handle it
Notice it
Or destroy it
(and) at the risk of not breathing
we the people believe in the idea that squeezing the pus out
is better than keeping
the pocket
in body
but the red gap
empty
holds more notice and questions
than the swelling of dirt
with sneakers on fire, incendiary
and those ashes of the dead held in sweaty hands
turns to smut streaks
in palms
smudges on matter already
formed diamonds
from coal
from pressure
from galaxy
godless and questioning
in dried fur shawls
of house caves
where embers
go to die
off without scorching themselves black
on any other pathways
unstruck matches
are the headstones
of smogged bodies
you’re beautiful, remember
furthermore beautiful
by the unaware fact
that you
happen to be beautiful
naturally
my eyes are cameras
I’m already enlightened without
silver trays
to reflect the rays
I capture every wrinkle of your face
in the wrinkles of my brain
everybody walking by me right now
will all be dead and soon.
bodies are the drama of our Earth
and I learn all your lines
changing settings each day and night
to set the table for
celebrating the dead of bodily concern
but each person has the right to be opaque
and today I choose to pray to the god of my mother
opaquely
how on Earth did the sun find its way home bc I can’t find my keys again.
Sometimes perception is reality. When it comes to mental health it can overpaint any picture, layering coat after coat of vibrant colors that distort the image, enhance the image, destroy the image, agitate the image, support the image. Mood disordering has ordered my poetry and life and I am both happy and angry about it all at all times. The complex layers cake on the canvas and I try my best to sift the abstract into a semblance of a narrative in both art and in navigating the world. Women are the thread that keeps my partial sanity woven together and matted to my chest. Community breads restoration-let’s connect and build in chaotic unison.
Danielle Bero was born in Queens to hippie parents, given a dose of Shel Silverstein, Tupac, Jazz and classic rock. She was the recipient of a Posse Scholarship, and nominated for the Daily News Unsung Hero in Education. Danielle taught in Indonesia on a Fulbright scholarship, the Bronx through Teach for America and co-founded a school for students in foster care. She received a master’s in English Education, Educational Leadership and completed her MFA at the University of San Francisco. Danielle has been a slam winner at Nuyorican’s Poets Café, Bowery Poetry Club, Lehigh Valley intercollege slam, and Ubud writer’s festival. She’s won slam competitions at Nuyorican’s Poets Café, Bowery Poetry Club and Ubud Writer’s festival. She’s a Jack Straw Cultural Center Writing fellow and is published in New American Writing, Sinister Wisdom, Lavender Review, Quiet Lightning, and Juked.
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