The Past Is a Drum

The blood made us human but the hunger confirmed it. Run it back, one-two-one-two, to us, to prairie edge summers with the white waistband pulled high. Materially we vampired, drinking our dinner in a beige kitchen, trading youthlight for a darkness that finally included us, but we rocked back and forth, trying it romantic before thinking better. The glasses got sweaty. A plane passed over low. A beat within a beat. There was a minor car accident down the street and we watched from the window. There was a new song on the speaker and a folder of stale memes on your phone. Do you remember taking a video? TV on, regret dot com. Later at the diner, we ordered burgers and laughed. It was all too much, you hanging upside down and me eyeing the dawn, you bottling shadows and me holding the source, yet the heartlines still sync. Couldn’t hold me down for a lease or a lifetime, but that night we got it right.

Teach Me How to Cry

The only road is a gravel one, 

but you know its crunch so well.

Coarse and ever-shifting, like

the hide of a dragon

on a hero’s wrist: it cuts you

invisibly, unfailingly, as much as it

returns you, a rear-chasing animal

licking cuts, to your calf 

accidentally touching the hot engine of

the motorcycle, the one

your father loved. Did you even

cry? In another life

you were a child emperor

walking halls of golden spoils. 

Delicate for a reason. Like 

a motorcycle, you learned 

to disappear around the bend

in a series of bends. 

Infinity Pool

He stands on the balcony and waits,

ignoring a sky that looks not unlike

the infinity pool below, lacking bulbs 

to betray depth. He looks down 

in his hand, but his phone is now

a fantasia of wants, swimming deep

and profoundly unavailable.  

From above, LA congeals and cracks into 

champagned fractals, a thousand coins

burnished by a dragon’s bosom. Is he just

another coin? He traversed the kingdom

but it’s not enough. His hair is shorter 

but the magic is fraught. Buzzing. Old hurt. 

Chatter and ice-click. Dry air, thick 

with need. He cuts through the dream, 

typing back some flirty nonsense—had anything

changed? A stirring at his side. Oh 

honey, the dragon whispers,

just set the damn boy free.

Jeremiah Moriarty is a queer writer from Minneapolis. His poems and stories have appeared in The Rumpus, Puerto del Sol, No Tokens, The Cortland Review, and elsewhere.