DEAR LONG HAIRED WRINKLED BUTCH WOMAN WITH A COCK WHO I AM GOING TO BE

[Poetry]

pleased to see you in my dream last night on a

bike in the center of a dim kansas street

to see your gray hair hitting your shoulders and your

arms old and muscled in a tanktop, sunspotted

i will do my best to get out in that sun for you. pleased

to do it, as soon as the wind clears out the cold

and i can live on the lake, deep green sun flat against lilypads,

grit in my toes from hemlock dust

turning to mud on the rocks. fly out to l.a. even,

a mystery of surreality and too much sun, i’d rather

too much than not enough and this applies

to most these days. pleased to hear your voice deep

and scratchy with use. i’m trying to talk more. there’s a

way to open up my tongue so it fits you in it

right in the center, spider’s egg waiting to open in my mouth.

you might still fit my blue suede coat

good for a walk, for an interview, for a ph.d. pleased to see

where you take it who else you kiss

in it. kissing is always a moral good and a positive health outcome;

conditions of employment include

wage scales, vision and dental and a kiss

on the lips. pleased to see you check your phone impatiently

sometimes i go on with a joke too long. if i’m talking

to myself, which i am. pleased just to see you tonight stuck

in kansas with me, two single-speed bikes to spin us impossibly back

along the highway away from empty football field-blue

and the chase that’s going to start when you wake

me up. and pleased to see the stubble along

your chin, i’ve been wondering when i

will start to plant it there grown like those lilypads along the turquoise

like two shades of sun on my shoulders and the weather spots next to

my eyes, already started. hey you say i’m all for reflection i know

you’re in a weird place but we should get outta here before

the chase starts and i say yes sir you ask

if i know how to hotwire and i say no sir

and you roll your eyes, say just hold this i’ll do the messy parts.

i hold your phone flashlight and you do the messy parts

and we throw the bikes in the trunk and you drive

and the sky gets bluer and blacker and you reach a somehow-tanned

hand toward my shoulder and wake me up

so the chase can start.

Taylar Christianson is a poet from western Washington State. Their work has been published in Rogue Agent Journal, Sinister Wisdom, Sweet Tree Review, and Jeopardy Magazine, where they were awarded the Don and Elaine Westhoff Jeopardy Magazine Award for Poetry in 2024. Their poetry tends to return to patterns of viscera, saltwater, repetition, junk, and women with problems.