Terrance Hayes

I’m sure you won’t believe this,

but if a policeman walks behind me, I tremble:

What would Shaft do? What would Shaft do?

Bits of my courage flake away like dandruff.

I’m sweating even as I tell you this.

I’m not cool.

I keep the real me tucked beneath a wig,

I’m a small American frog.

I grow beautiful as the theatre dims.

When I am fat,

Ladies sipping diet colas will whisper:

Look at him. My God how’d he get so big?

And beneath those questions they’ll think,

I wonder if he still makes love?

I wonder what he looks like naked?

Love me skinny girls,

As you love jenny craig and vegetables,

Love me fat girls,
As you love insecurity and everything filling.

I’ll let you kiss my triple chins,

I’ll let you swim in the warmth of my embrace.

I have a goddamn for every blade

of snow. You’re not even to the road

before it’s clinging to your coat.

Said I wouldn’t write anymore

about matters of the heart,

so I’m writing about the snow –

God’s cryogenic rain; cold trick/le

of repetition falling quietly as ghosts.

Is this what Etheridge meant?

Walls blacker than a throat;

Poet dying at the window;

Flakes / covering your tracks as you go.