American Queer Leaves Browning Grass In Wake

It takes nine minutes for my feet to transform green lawns

into baked bask-spots for rattlesnakes and snapping turtles.

It takes a helluva lot outta me to make this body remarkable

every day but I swing it, dig it, dress it up, drag it down

sometimes to the dives on Fifty-Second Street. It takes

nine minutes for the light of our star to reach us, breach

our planet’s atmosphere like a man breaching me, reaching

into the deepest part of my history. It takes all of nine minutes

to decide if I’m in love or if I’m just hungry for something

quick and probably painful. The hiss of his history snaking

its way through me. He snaps the hinge of my throat shut.

He takes and he takes and he takes, and tomorrow leaves

like the clouds passing in the sky on a breeze blocking sun

from my eyes. I welcome the shade. I can see myself in the dark.

Sage is a genderqueer witchling from Western Massachusetts. They are currently a COMP Fellow at St. Mary’s College in California. Their poetry appears/will appear in Flypaper Magazine, North American Review, Penn Review, Pittsburgh Poetry Review, The Rumpus, and elsewhere. Find them on Twitter @sagescrittore.