How thirst does the work, then the eyes
How the whipped cream of a Frappuccino stands without lickable legs
How my eyes witness a straw behead the cream
How the cut is crude, but neat. And cutting casts pleasure hard to resist
How a beggar pleads outside
How his head lowers
How humility is landward
How my gaze rides on his back of eczema
How my gaze translates sleaze into pity, pity into power
How his becomes mine
How I need the power to feel good because I don’t often
How my gaze returns to the other, so I won’t be full of myself
How he keeps begging simple
How a cardboard says he’ll bring coins to Mars to debug me
How I will become less infected
How I can avoid the night and its weird-if-not-fucked-up sense of ratio and definition of skinniness
How victims are created to decorate peace
How I should say no to gamma rays
How I should botox existence until it blossoms
How sickles hammer and hammers hum
How not every note from a saxophone jazzes
How the reverse of white is return
How nations run out of colors for flags
How hope is six inches long and often needs replacement
How I should have loud speakers to see and feel the vibration of sounds
How saving accounts don’t spatially exist though banks do
How my vision doubles without a cornea transplant
How me | him, separated by a madness hinge
How a hand ghosts, steadies within this me-him
How his sexuality is knife-ready
How he slices his sexuality, puts it into a blender and drinks it like coffee every morning
How every morning is not new
How the act of waking up is a techno beat thrown away but comes back
Nicholas Wong’s next poetry collection is coming out from Kaya Press. He is an assistant poetry editor for Drunken Boat.