Because It’s Winter

After Ocean Vuong

you stall in the tacoma outside 

with the boys inside shaking dice into beer

& you having fed them this: i have things 

it’s december & it doesn’t taste like a break 

there’s a red notification 

it’s always that same 

blooming opium rush & a wand 

pointed at your head commanding desire

you drive to the walmart 

lot in galt which is a weird place to touch a

truth but she is waiting 

in a backseat with blankets & blackout 

curtains & broad shoulders & leopard print & claws

to mark you as not young anymore not 

tonight not when you left the boys to be

scratched this skin no longer a stringy mane

now the plastic thorns of a man 

you let desire lead you behind 

headlights on the same 

asphalt your dad drives to prison daily 

& you think we’re both steering 

into shadowless moments that don’t 

freckle the sun spotted world 

that one day this thread is worth 

a shovel but not tonight with the 

wand churning blood southbound 

until you’re a seated backseat silhouette

who expects the twist: when she says 

are you kinky & you say 

sure because you haven’t learned 

to say I want it & she says 

good I’m a girl & also not a girl 

so you close your 

lips & pretend he is pretending 

two cursive legs in a spotted dress 

& you pretend that this night 

isn’t truth but winter 

breaking

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James (he/him) is a poet based in Brooklyn, NY. His work appears or is forthcoming in The Arkansas International, Folly Journal, Kitchen Table Quarterly, The Under Review, After Happy Hour Review, Bacopa Literary Review, and Sea to Sky Review. Read more at jamesekenstedtpoetry.com.