My Dreams are Commands (Diary Cento #3)
Dreamt that testicles were small skulls and crossbones
Discover that the hairs that have grown on my chest
form the shape of a bat
I take from G.’s cheek an eyelash
that I immediately place on my tongue to swallow
I don’t wonder about God, not ever
My fantasies replace softness with hard edges, difficulty, muscle,
not caring, daring, recklessness
disillusionment with the father figure
Become a wolf? My beard has never grown so fast
An inconceivable liberty
The pleasure of destroying one’s body
I cut my lips on it Teeth fall out in the dream
G. dresses before I do
I don’t even know if I’ve slept with him—
I mean, I’m not sure—
I don’t FEEL much different at all
What Could Destroy You
A game we used to play
while waiting for our breakfast at the diner:
one begins by drawing something, anything—
a carnivorous fish, for example,
that he then passes to his right.
He who receives it destroys what’s handed over
with whatever is drawn next.
For the fish: an oil spill maybe or an oversized hook
dangling from the bow of a skiff, or
eye contact with an attractive man, perhaps.
On the paper placemat it looked like:
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
No recourse for the fish. The man, too, is destroyed.
Eight little UV rays to bake him.
Timmy drew the sun. Nathaniel set it on a platter,
served it to a table of rail thin executives.
My turn came up again. I said, more coffee, please,
more damage.
We were three punks at the mercy of our late boyhood,
soft-boiled and acne-prone.
We didn’t make the rules, they were what they were:
the day spun us toward the next catastrophe,
we built upon our small revenge.
Geolocation reveals that the seagull rides a garbage truck
to the same parking lot each morning.
Just as I, stuck on boy, circle feelingly and on repeat.
Going forward, boy said, I think it’s better that we—
Friends as a municipal activity, an agreement
made with the atmosphere and for months
I could still taste him.
No legwork needed, just antecedent, lemons.
Available but —better how? Farther off…
Crosstown at the art house where we met
and kissed cinematically in the rain.
(Train cars clatter in succession overhead.)
Boy says bye and I say back tomorrow, circuitously
and with great effort, a headwind
in both directions.
Think of the gull’s aggregate miles on the interstate.
The easiest alternate route.
NOTE FROM AUTHOR: The "diary cento" that appears here is composed of lines from my own diaries, the published diaries of trans activist Lou Sullivan, We Both Laughed in Pleasure, and the published diaries of Hervé Guibert, The Mausoleum of Lovers. I received permission from Nightboat Press to excerpt lines from these texts for this series.
Nico Amador poetry has been featured in Poetry Unbound, Bettering American Poetry, Poem-a-Day, PANK, Pleiades, The Cortland Review, Hypertext Review, The Visible Poetry Project and elsewhere. His chapbook, Flower Wars, was selected as the winner of the Anzaldúa Poetry Prize and was published by Newfound Press. He holds an MFA from Bennington College, is a grant recipient from the Vermont Arts Council, and an alumni of the Lambda Literary Foundation's Writers Retreat.