By Karla Lamb
for Vanessa
An army of lovers shall not fail. — Rita Mae Brown
How do I enter this poem? Do love justice? A party is a party is a party. We mark our territory, knock over piles of TP rolls at sapphic nights—in gay sports bars. & someone in the bathroom line has a new crush, & you see someone else you know, & all our friends are here, but all we want is each other. & no one cares we’re gone 20 minutes, but you have all the drink tickets. & we slow dance to fast songs, & everyone’s ex is waiting for us to finish finger fucking. & it’s Aries eclipse szn, so all the girls are out in their villain eras, on the prowl, gay panic ensues. But—I just got here. & we’re sucking face already, against damp tile in gentrified neighborhood bars, insatiable, like this is all we have to live for. Butch in heat, moaning in your ear, nauseous with hope, chafe from Dickies’ jeans. I’m clawing at the walls, ravenous, obscenely yours, tagging your name, leaving our scent. & as the bathroom door slams open, I remember to breathe. I remember everything is a poem, is a poem, is a poem, & this is where the poem does what it wants: It’s having a midnight snack. It’s remembering self-care, after the party, still ringing in my ears. It’s raining in L.A. now, & my tits are a shelf for my chin, on the breakfast table, leaning in. Listening to you talk about how dicks are fucking weird, & to please, get those things away from me. But yours is my favorite, double-sided, & every time I sub: a subversive act against patriarchy. & every space we walk into: Queer. Ours for the taking, & every bathroom: gay now, because we can’t keep our gay hands off each other’s gay bodies, can’t help but start small revolutions against imperialism. Ass up, pressed against doors, heavy breathing in tight stalls, uncouth & undeterred, derelict daughters. Proud to hold your hand down Vermont, to drown you in desperate kisses at every red light, to watch the eclipse reflect off a dildo coated in a tiny mosaic of disco mirrors. To dance on every sticky floor, to close out every straight bar. Every night love, every night revolution, fuel for the fodder. & when we finally peel off each other, post sleepy sex mid-afternoon, skin stuck like medical-grade double-sided tape, pussyfog so dense, that there’s only one god damn croissant left, in this entire godforsaken city, on an overcast spring Saturday—because every hipster-raided coffee shop in Silverlake is secretly homophobic, but we spend our hard-earned freelancer cash there anyway. & the neurodivergent person experiencing homelessness in America, mutters the cops are coming. & sure enough, our almond lattes come with a side of high-speed car chase down Sunset, & we live for it. We thrive in the drama of it. We want it all. To crash & burn. & the adrenaline coats our empty stomachs with the pure shrill of it. & the wind blows. & a marquee light bulb bursts. & you grab my hand—& say, let’s go. Make love. Again.
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This poem originally appeared in Fruitslice Magazine Issue 4 (p. 146)
This piece is from The Feminist Toilet #3. To return to the table of contents, click here.
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