LGBTQ+ Poem: Brief Summer Forever, by Yatharth Rajput

Listen — we’re only so much wrong
until we’re forgiven.

Listen man, I’m sorry I get high on moonshine
only to cry about ripened dandelions

or whatever, really. Gus,
I am the product of a crowded youth.

And we both know we grew up on Boys Don’t Cry
in sunny farm outhouses, shirts wet with sweat.

Tongue wet of ruff and rum and thirsty enough
to get high off dry handholds and nothing else.

We are the residues of 70s soft rock
trying to get the fuck out Germany.

& could you punch out early today
this eye nothing but a shiner —

Waiting to look into yours
& live quickly. Hastened. Minute-hand.

I think it works out in another life —
To be nothing of boys or of skin.

An offhanded comment about summer
and I’ll know it’s you. My hand under your Bauhaus tee.