Steffan Triplett
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REWIND
When two men kissed there used to be danger.
On television where there once was danger, there is now vibrant color.
Color bursts & vibrates on screen, even if no one is there to see it.
Have you ever seen something that buzzes inside you?
I am watching two kids encounter each other with pure admiration.
Television shows me alternate pasts in technicolor.
Glimpses of the past will make you imagine safety where there isn’t any.
Tense is a lie, what is your present is someone else’s future.
A show I adore made me feel like we were living a warm, pleasant future:
Two high school boys go on a date & their parents know.
A boy I adore takes me back to my adolescent past.
Most days I can distinguish between my own experience & a character’s.
Some days my own adolescence feels as if it were extinguished.
A me I love’s past is disappeared, so I fill it with my guts.
I am watching two boys kiss on screen, & for once there is no secondhand shame.
There are flames there. Right here there are burning flames.
Biographical Statement
Steffan Triplett is the author of the forthcoming Bad Forecast (Essay Press, 2024) and the essay chapbook Constraints (New Michigan Press). Triplett is the Managing Director of the Center for African American Poetry and Poetics and a Teaching Assistant Professor at the University of Pittsburgh. He’s received fellowships from Cave Canem, Outpost, Lambda Literary, and Callaloo.