Alex J. Cope

 

“On a beau se couvrir et recouvrir de masques, les farder, les regarder” - Claude Cahun, Aveux non avenus “In vain, we cover ourselves over and over with masks, painting them, gazing at them”

I’d turn the corner
and find you,
                 yr cherry robitussin grin
                 and lorazepam lullabies
moaning in the sink,
and locking eyes
you’d read me pages
and pages
of lyric manifestos
                 They have given us nothing
but the silver back
of a mirror and
                 the unyielding blue
of skyscrapers,
                 you’d say,
and I
long
                 as the day is wide

These nights
when we’d meet in the fog
and go for a walk in the house
with no name
                 The one with the hidden room
everyone forgets
so the fish are always drowning
in algae
                 These months neglected aquariums
and greenhouses trouble your mind
                 Your severe talismans
feathered lipstick
and fish bellies‒
                 and here I was wondering
if maybe it was our smell
that drew them
to us
                 like something caught in the drain
it came from beneath
the sink!
Green claw to your throat—
                 the boxes are empty,
Schrödinger’s cat has left
the building
                 and even Freddy Krueger
knows you change the forms
in dreams

Do you remember
the bloody basements,
blood on the dancefloor
                 There is nothing left here
in the cabinets of lost glamour
haunted chiffon
nightgowns
                 and puce moments slip

down the spiral
staircase

One mirror opens, another closes

We know there is a way out of this tunnel
We consult the bibliography
of conversations
                   where Beebo Brinker winks at us
                   from the shadows
of the twilight world
Beneath the lights
at the

⛤V

⛥A

⛥P

⛥E

⛥Z ⛥O ⛥N ⛥E

Cherry cherry boom boom
The clasp of a necklace
boils over
                 smattering the floor
                              boundless billiards
in my bed of beads the scheming
chaos
               of blue scuff marks
And when I get home
I huff the sweat stained sheets
of a repressed boyhood
                 curls cropped close
to the skull
                 to approximate
belief
                 I swish my listerine
as Poly Styrene serenades
my germ free adolescence

Chuis dans les vapes
in the twists of vapor
                 where our fingers
                 converge
There will be months,
years even
                 where we do our makeup
together and paint our lids
funhouse blue

Alex J. Cope (they/them) is a poet and translator based in Chicago. Previously, they lived in and around Paris, where they organized a multilingual queer and feminist reading series out of a dyke bar. They help organize a community writing workshop as part of the PO Box Collective's monthly Poetry Series. Work from their manuscript soft like a spider has appeared in publications such as Sixty Inches from Center, The Rumpus, Pilot Press London, and Hooligan Magazine.