Lament to Iowa

Surrounded by cow shit

Immolated meth labs and Midwest machinery

Corn stalks swallowing all visible light,

The scratchy tassels morphing a mirage

of early morning farmhand decapitation

On the backroad intersection

Dust billowing behind the car

A barrier to clanking beer bottles and marijuana

seeping into the upholstery

Punk music deafening sounds of summertime cicadas

La Dispute

Our safe place:

Cruising the backroads—

an adolescent homage

with no destination.

In the front seat, yelling over the radio

Talking radical politics

Stone Butch Blues

Driving to Chicago to live in a

Boystown shoebox and never coming back

Someone mentions the Village People

the leather daddy dancing on a U.S. Navy ship

Someone compares the gravel road to a free vibrator

as the wheels drift dangerously close to the ditch

I wonder if they knew how gay culture would adopt

the YMCA anthem—

saunas and bathhouses

discos, drag balls

—the dangers that came with cruising in parks and alleys

unknowing who or what might meet you

steel toed boots, pipe wrenches

a mouth and fist of slurs

The night we drove past the alley

Walnut and 4th Street

March 2016

On our regular 2am cruise

We were stone-cold sober

Chain smoking a pack of Marlboro Red’s

When they found your body

A blood-stained bra

Pink trash bag handle tied around your throat

like the wrong gender marker

Wind rolled off the frozen Mississippi River

Choking itself against the floorboards

At the port of Burlington,

We cried until our tear ducts gave out

Grieving another one of our own

Dehydration mind numbing

Throats burning

Like the bleach forced into your mouth

In court, it took a 300-page document

to describe how they tortured you

Calling you a faggot in a police interview

And still, Iowa statute could not rule it a hate crime

Kedarie Johnson,

You were just two years younger than us

We only knew you like

we knew any queer teenagers—

fearing for your body and safety

Only a mere 16 years old when

Two men followed you home,

Catcalling profanities

Staking a claim to a body you had barely

just discovered as your own

The name Kandicee omitted from gravestone.

How desperately I wish we could have shielded you

Shown you our bruises and broken ribs

The word “dike” carved into my car door

Spelt like a river dike

The sand from the levee clumping in my throat

Contemplating suicide by the water

How those late-night drives saved us

The community we built mile by mile

Carpooling through Midwestern hate