Elephant in the Burning Dress

There is no god for the gay unfortunates
The abomination stuffed in the black dress, chosen because
the frills hug everything a father could not
or chose not to
Fathers burdened with being the talk of the holiday party
Blessed with the son carrying a lisp
To be the hollow flame lit under the dull pilot burning
down the entire room
Hair still soaked from the gasoline piss of the last man-
made/father-made/lover-made sin
Binged drunk on sweat
Secret letter stitched in between the lip
A man’s hand learning to unbraid the seams
And say here I am
Still skeleton in a corset laced to the gums
Are you proud yet? Do you love me?
Inked to the back of the tongue
My full parade dancing off my hands
Ivory dripping from the crevices of the fingers
Carcasses of an outdated text left in the motel covered in
spit and semen
And I just remember assigning a new god to every part of
his body
nothing being more divine than that
And maybe I lost a father in between those sheets
Or maybe I’m just used to being a flame they load with wood