You are saying all of this with a paper umbrella
in your hair. You stuck it in when the margaritas came.
I was citing our order of operations, a fear that we are
so far gone from how things ought to go, and you counter
by invoking queer temporality. You confirm what we know,
like life during wartime. I distinctly remember my rhetorical
Who else do I write poems about? It’s opening day, the Yankees
are winning, the men out on St. Marks are cheering. You raise
your fish taco to your mouth. Please tell me I am not some guy,
please be the first mover, please burst our bubbles. I am bursting them
before us now. I live and die by you, our moments of magic and nonmagic,
your cum and period blood underneath my fingernails. I commit us
to film, but the gorgeous warm light could have been a trick, a reflection
cast from my gold sheets. I try to give myself up to our unspoken.
For all that you have an unmoving face, the rest of you moves toward me.

Ari Lisner is a poet, journalist, and researcher whose writing captures queer intimacy against the backdrop of New York City. Their work has been featured in The Brooklyn Rail, Peach, Triangle House, Wonder, GQ, Allure, and others. ONE SCHTICK PONY, their first chapbook, is forthcoming with Bullshit Lit in 2023. They are also the co-founder of the poetry press Touch Me New World and the host of the reading series It's A Sign at KGB Bar. Find them on Instagram at @arisbarmitzvah.

Born in Oregon in 1988, Brooklyn-based painter and curator Rachel Chaldu received her MFA in Painting and Drawing from Pratt Institute in 2016, and her BFA in Painting and Drawing from Southern Oregon University in 2014. In the fall of 2018 She attended the Vermont Studio Center. Recently, her work was shown in Fourth Street Show, New York. In the Summer of 2018, her work was shown in the group shows Allow Me To Reintroduce Myself and House Broke. Her work attempts to reclaim the landscape of her childhood growing up in the American West."