Doomsday preppers stock
their bunkers with all the best
shit, all the brand names.
They bury years of trips
to Sam’s Club in the sand
then die because it’s so easy
to lose a door when it’s buried
in the sand. In the post-apocalyptic
future that awaits everybody
who believes in a postscript
to the apocalypse, we will
recount the noise a VCR made
while destroying a tape.
We will unearth time
capsules and find them filled
with CD-ROMs bearing the newest
version of America Online.
The sun will turn despot-angry,
and when it burns his cock
a white man will complain and still
have it better than the rest of us.
I will take his reddened crook
into my mouth and bite clean through,
as Cosmo taught me not to do unless
asked. This is my late-capitalist moment—
I’ve killed and eaten everything else.
Unlikely Femme
Once, I owned a t-shirt
that stated A wizard
has turned you into
a whale. I’m thinking
of this shirt while
masturbating to a podcast
that calmly describes
how a whale can
be suffocated with a latex
balloon or a plastic bag,
something small enough
to enter a blowhole
and expand like a torpedo
dropped into the exhaust port
of a Death Star only I guess
this is no Death Star—
this is a whale, and every
whale is a tragedy.
Every night here is rough,
but this one is also
low: the first time
I’ve touched my hand
to my cock like this
in months and it won’t work
like it used to because
of my new estrogen
payload or the lack of this
or that magic wand
left at home in the nightstand.
Checking mother’s couch
for my underwhelming
cumshot, I wonder at
her relief that I feel
sexually uncomfortable
about men. It’s weird,
she said. Men, I mean,
who are into that.
If you put lipstick on
a dinosaur, you must
be the kind of person
who sexualizes dinosaurs.
I’m not trying to kinkshame:
I’m just looking for
a shade that will make
my young bones fuckable.
Problems Only Introverts Will Understand
I watched a TED Talk about people
and how they are likely to be taken
more seriously if they speak assuming
a power pose. I think I’d rather do
anything else, be anything else: my own
tongue or ribcage, something human
but not crowded by humans. Here, look
at these 21 animated GIFs I’ve curated
to explain my calamity. Note how we
are all born with force fields
that can be broken by literally everything.
While waiting for the bus, a fedora-wearing
preacher presses a thin New Testament
into my chest. I tell him that I love
sucking dick, and now he’s the one
all offended. Prometheus was shackled
to a rock once. He’s about the only
dude who’s never co-opted my space.
Colette Arrand lives in Athens, Georgia, where she is a student at the University of Georgia. Her poetry has appeared in Whiskey Island, BOAAT, Hobart, and elsewhere. She can be found online at colettearrand.com and fearofaghostplanet.com