Notes to Modern Census
with the soft light of an autumn afternoon.
i am every side effect
that the doctors foretold.
i wake to the sound of television
and bleach my teeth
in the fluorescent sheen of a laptop screen.
i am bought. i am updated. i increase
in value for less of a price.
my body is chiseled to user preference.
i am designed to feign satisfaction.
my asshole is puckered and tight
as a lily-white fist.
i am submissive. i bald in all the perfect places.
i perform masculinity
in a theater near you.
i read the modern novel. i am a modernist.
i say the future starts with me.
i am sophisticated. i am forthcoming.
i am luxury served with gold cutlery.
i have a taste for the finer things.
i have all my chips
on the table and a knife in my pocket.
i dinner. i protest. in court-
ly fashion i am punctual as the proverbial moon.
i am endless possibility on the morrow. i vote in mid-
terms, democrat and early. i vote for the woman unfailingly.
i serve my interests. my interests
are public. i write
about identity politics. every story is mine to be told.
i am the disorder that fogs
my glass of iced lemon water.
i have an affection for white tile, bathe for hours, and prune
slow and loose, ripe as the juice of summer’s blonde fruits.
i pass out money like contagion. i summer
in the hamptons.
wanton in my little world of want
it’s just me among the jet skis, the green lake i ride
greening sickly, and so many men
in tuxedos who toast, cheer, and choke
at bowtie-hold.
my eyes ignite, reflecting the plight
of the mansions’ floodlights.
overhead planes dazzle
in the dawn-dark like stars and fade.
a flock of murderbirds casts its princely shadow
across my plate of salted meats and eggs.
beyond the willows, i eat my breakfast in the shade.
What Does the Moon Mean ?
for SOPHIE
full in dull reproachment of the day
we wanted to know how to love each other more , make our vague hearts ,
wild with a selfsame lust for money and fame , give more , do more ,
though the idea of love felt more abstract to us
with the arrival of every new and alien day hey ! what can we make of that ?
a study of queerness is a study against form , a way of letting the body grow meaningful
for all it refuses to do
whatever ! let’s make it new !
i found a felicity in life cruising the nightclubs in brooklyn ,
meeting friends who fucked like friends and danced , formless under strobe lights
that throw around their garish light like suns
approximating an artificial morning
under that adornment , where do i exist ?
every place has a soundtrack , the dancefloor
of our lives is made and made of sound
i wanted to make something loud when the club-lights click off
and we go home alone , together , from another ordinary night
crowned briefly with our anonymous love , who can say who we were
to each other ? where do the versions of ourselves we’ve tried on and discarded go ?
i have a song in mind it goes :
i am not the man my mother loves
i am not the woman i’ve yet to know
tell me , where do i exist ? this brief encounter , a life
of sitting on the curb outside the club
admiring the full moon , “ immaterial ” blasting out the door ,
our american spirits forgotten
in the jean-jacket pocket of a perfect and temporary friend
there’s not enough day in the day for all the life we’ve lost and want to live ,
so we made a new day to reproach the day ,
where we live carelessly without ideas of who we are or what we are able to love
( i could be anything i want )
( i could be anything i want )
looking at the moon you knew
David Ehmcke is an MFA candidate in poetry at Washington University in St. Louis, where he was awarded the Howard Nemerov Prize in Poetry. His work has appeared in the Black Warrior Review, The Adroit Journal, Peripheries, Hobart, and elsewhere. David is the poetry editor of The Spectacle and serves as a poetry reader for Guesthouse. He was selected by Megan Fernandes as the winner of the 2023 Maureen Egen Award from Poets & Writers and was selected by Diane Seuss as the runner-up for the 2022 Black Warrior Review Poetry Prize. David is a member of the team at Dorothy, a publishing project and lives in St. Louis.
