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seeing too much

      uncertainty, she said

      I see it too but somehow

      manage to pluck

      a way forward

      and then there’s the way

      you remember everything

      I’ve ever said, how you

      register every gesture

      I wonder if you remember

      all the things you say

      when we’re fucking

      Rebecca served me honey

      cake for the Jewish New Year

      in between my train

      from Toronto to Montreal

      and flight to Vancouver

      my ideal is to touch

      all three simultaneously

      but it’s Montreal

      whose fever brushes

      my cheeks, whose arms

      hold me while I shake

      in my skull

      I left Sara and her black

      cat in Toronto that morning

      her mother worried

      about her daughter’s

      indecision over which dish

      to make for Rosh Hashanah

      autumn knocks a dent

      into her depression

      that winter packs with ice

      I’ve written to you like this

      before, I had forgotten

      some of the awful

      moments like how

      my anger turned you on,

      the radius of your

      free fall

      you seem kinder now

      age humbles as it dulls

      we left the hotel

      in the late afternoon

      and I could feel a sweetness

      rising in you, some sort of

      flag unfurled

      you ask for my favourite

      Emily Dickinson poem

      it’s the one with mermaids

      where the sea trespasses

      her belt and bodice

      she feels his silver heel

      at her ankle

      before withdrawing

      he gives her a mighty look

      I hope your students

      like Emily Dickinson

      I’m afraid of what days

      actually look like

      with you

      not these nights

      where we dive

      into morning

      I will say

      the sweetness

      felt hard

      and earned

      Burn It All Down with Water

      I’d like to float on okay

      but then I read about

      the singer from Modest Mouse

      I like to joke the upside

      of an abusive father

      is it teaches the absurd

      tethers of obligation

      love sometimes dwells

      with violence, even though

      that isn’t really love

      which is what Irene told me

      when I was twenty-six

      a revelation I haven’t

      fully internalized but live with,

      a cell with a semi-permeable

      membrane inside an organism

      inside an ecosystem

      I used to study biology

      because my father

      forbade me from pursuing

      literature, moving to Montreal,

      being gay, eventually

      I accomplished all three

      it’s okay now

      a lot of my poems

      refer to salt, the only residue

      The Fish

      Hunter says they’ve never

      had their heart broken—

      I didn’t know I’m not supposed

      to use heart in a poem—

      I don’t think that’s something

      to brag about

      if all the queers of East Van

      braided their hair together

      we’d have to look

      sexual tension in the eye

      on a chart that roughly maps

      the gender spectrum

      I select femme and dirtbag

      instead of masc and dapper

      I wear a disco ball with wool

      socks to the wrong party

      no one looks at me all night

      I cave and eat molasses

      I cave and do push-ups

      once when I was a kid

      I lost my shit

      because the story about the fish

      whose tail went swish

      came to an end

      my dad told the story again

      and then lost his shit

      I don’t know what came next

      look, I just want to talk

      and talk and for that talking

      to feel like a lucid dream

      or the heartiest fish

      you’ve ever fried by a river

      Victorian Quartet

      When I told you I was a writer

      you showed me your one poem

      that spat kalamata pits

      into the Mediterranean

      like a thrifted Durrell in oxfords

      wandering the twenty-first century

      you took my photo on both coasts

      I took your ghostliness

      and mixed it into a muddy drink

      a monk’s offspring brined in a jar

      its

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