First Spring

Grip the sheets in a popper haze listening to Frank
And Marvin scream about what’s going on
Your two penises rarely interact or touch
How trees assume proper shape alone
Lost, stung apiary researchers studying
Resistance reduced to organized party and protest
New York City is a sibling that changes
Every five to seven years
Romance the series of vanishing neighborhoods
Hand-cut your fettuccine in rented rooms

Hold to this riparian sunset that belongs to the building

The story goes:

An invisible monster terrorizes the town

It eats each yellow orange tree leaf

Flowers suck the heroes up through white hairy roots

The story goes and goes.

*

In a dream I was a washing machine.
In a nonfiction article, a Megalosaurus,
naked in a dirt hole. Nestle beside me.
My Dyson V8 Motorhead, my Seventh Generation,
my Purex power. The pages turn read
inside the book as you move under me.
Never exit. Please, please.

Up the West Side Highway I drive with my brights
in slenderized orbit around bascule and lunette.

I comb my two-headed heart. A door of light slams
with me and the better angels of this living city

that I am left strangers to, on opposite sides.
This, all in response to your question Why

I burden myself at the gym tonight with weights
As if dumbbells and not life are bad for any heart.

---

Kami Enzie is a Vienna-born, New Orleans-raised queer Black writer. He received an MFA in 2023 from The Iowa Writers’ Workshop. Find him online at @yungwerther.