anna kiss

Michael the Archangel

In the drunken glare

of dormitories

a boy lies

in puddles

of foreign language,

in soups of

invented sounds,

and scrapes his cheeks

up bathroom walls,

smears

hair dye

with fingernails

on mirrors

and smoothes

the wrinkles from

his blouse

like gilded

gold-lamé torsos

in gay bars

on Tuesdays.

This next drink

is for the boy raver chick

who silences rooms

with over-zealous

cries and gallon jugs of wine.

He is the vegan child,

the unintelligible boy next door,

the prophet sent

with unknown verbs

to challenge girls

who giggle more than he does,

and he loves his mission

and he breathes his mission

into blackened lungs

like whip-its into the La Brea Tar Pits

and his mission

does not compete

with schoolwork in the slightest.

He wakes at three in the afternoon,

stumbles toward the daylight,

(only wearing sunglasses at night)

and repeats the same lines again and again...

“I will never...”

everything here copyright anna kiss