Aubade for Non-Citizens

Alien status, a blue bourgeouis dress, the hustle of Rome. A waltz—
zoom out—the citizen ingenue's cool, cool crinoline and persona
buckling in the silhouette the ahistorical hourglass. I have no story,
your shout into this century's solar wind, a yellow ribbon on a bomb
compromised by compromise, a citizen's birthright, a little box
xeroxed white, the alien body folded like a french flap in the epic
determination to predetermine the alien body in the here / now.
War is a feed. To be angry is to be fed up, and citizens eat blood,
education aside. I should explore, not go off. The future, the TV
vectoring the colonists' self-portrait, thumbs up for this handmade
family, zoom in—Citizen 2 karaokes in low gravity (Zou Bisou Bisou),
unlikable kiss shot to Earth besmirched. The camera winking, stiff
grafts in the ship's greenhouse untrembling at the speed of light,
turmeric tumescing quietly, and the brilliant soldier of a pear sapling.
Here on Earth, the rapist pledges, fear femmes my waist, wastes
sure as the sun is wasting. Zoom out—the atomic story is smooth
in places if no one is protagonist but particle in motion or minor
residue of emotion's creation myth. I don't know why I love us, I
just do. Zoom in. Citizen 4 weeps, eats a webcam, eff-you-s HQ,
quarantines herself to the brink with paper porn. Citizen 1 goes by PJ.
Kick kick, my grief is underfoot, empty bucket and an enemy on top
promised a drink of water for love, the landing we couldn't stick,
last zoom—every alien has a face. My face, a flipbook, a free pass to
outré worlds. Reassignment of number, denial of trial. A glass wall.
Might-be-colonists put the finger to the screen to zoom out or in,
napping on—baby, wake up, the foreign body just fell in the dream—




From The Bees Make Money in the Lion (Cleveland State University Press, 2016). All rights reserved. Reprinted with the permission of the author.