Point-Based Queers for B.O. and Travis Sharp \\ Magna Cum Laude

CW: homophobic violence

Point-Based Queers
for B.O. and Travis Sharp

1. I’m low on queer points
masking passing
too masculine from years
of all-boy-school male bonding
now they make fun of queers
             when they’d pass you by
didn’t K suck AJ off in the bathroom?
I remember their file officially notating
“subject” and “object”
“Faa’il” o “Maf’ool”
even bureaucrats annotate who’s a top

2.If you liked the smell of prayer halls
you’re queer now, 
rose-watered
on your knees
remembering the ritual removal 
of socks and glistening forearms
foreheads a-glimmer

3. when I eat with dad I eat too much
stuff my face so no air can escape
and listen to ***** say 
how Queers deserve to die

4. “I’m low on Queer points” I tell B
but I’ve witnessed queers hanged in public squares
industrial cranes hooded bodies
how many points does that earn a baby queer?
how many points for **** who doesn’t even listen
(sadly non-expendable, sadly essential to my being)
sadly the one whose bitter indifference
cements on his face
as glaciers race past the window
tectonic plates form new continents
and…
no emotion
none yet
B calls it “Violent Ambivalence”

5. Angels of artifice
tell me I’m peopled with many others
Muslim queers who pray as talismans
to manifest nostalgia for the non-existent
mother emotions too early and orphaned
at the hands of geography

“I’m low on queer points” I say
erecting walls
spending years carving a crevice
to build a door
only to build a lock
heavy enough to keep intruders behind

Magna Cum Laude

“we sleep until the staggered minarets

divide the
four A.M. air” -Moez Surani

I’m talking to him, thirsting
I sip the last drop of wine
trickling down his moustache
dripping onto his chest hair
I slurp it with a strand of slobber

thirst. that’s it, thirst.
I’m thirsty for lips
and a clawing of the spine
the beard that /
scratches
along my cheeks
in the whip of a single glance
from my lips to a glass of wine

chest hair round finger
touches ruby-red /Lip
as if reflected
in glass of wine 

that’s how Bihzad liked his men
ruby-red-lipped and cypress statured
and Rumi wrote 3300 ghazals thirsting
too
a young boy round face
brilliant like moonshine
an object of desire
and his naive Sufism
of the cum-throes
counting as the most transcendent
this duality of function
this holy impatience
this ejaculate conception
of the sufiCUMdivine