Joss Barton
Blank
What is a death when the life is taken by pieces
Like bricks in a stockyard instead of exploding
Like the lotto where the final jackpot is becoming
A puddle of gristle and brains to weep over
And pass laws over and elect demagogues over
And forget how wealth is always manifested
By suffering and humiliation and you smile
As if you are not complicit in this terrifying world
Of unrelenting misery but you have enough
Moral indignation to say that the system is
Broken so why not burn it all down to the sewage
Drains where the black shit water of nationalism
Saturates the air and your teeth are white like
The men whose cocks throb with every dog
Whistle calling the wolves from their caves
And their reptile cum is smeared across the
Red sambo lips of black porcelain dolls
They cradle in their arms as they draft legislation
In ink that will birth their wet American nightmares.
Joss Barton is a writer, photographer, journalist, and artist documenting queer and trans* life and love in St. Louis. In 2016 she was a member of the first ever Summer Trans Women Writers Workshop at co-sponsored by Topside Press and Brooklyn College. She was a 2013 Fiction Fellow at the Lambda Literary Foundation’s Emerging LGBT Writers Retreat and a contributing artist for Nine Network’s Public Media Commons Artist Showcase in 2015. She is also an alumna of the Regional Arts Commission’s Community Arts Training Institute. Her work has been published by HIV Here & Now, Ethica Press, Vice Magazine, and Vetch Poetry: A Transgender Poetry Journal.
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