after Frank O’Hara
Published in BarBar
is even more fun than sneaking a cig with a priest
outside of a church before the sermon
or breathing the smoke out into the incense
partly because with each word it feels like I am doing something
reckless and sacred when I lend you these crumpled pages not knowing
if they will return to me or if I will have to put up a missing flier for them or leave them
forgotten
in some stack in some file
in some office in some building of some business
having a word with you is to give you many words
it is to show you an arrangement of letters and notes in an order
that I would hope that you find agreeable
to carve a name that I do not know in a tree that I will forget
to piss in a river that is flowing downstream
having a word with you is as easy as folding taxes
into ninety-nine paper cranes in hopes I’ll get a wish by the one hundredth
it is as easy as imagining myself
somewhere that does not exist yet
as someone that has yet to be born
and as someone who is already in an unmarked grave
it is as desirable as hearing a name
that sounds like mine shouted across a field
and realizing that whoever is yelling is not yet done
speaking and that they are going to say that name one more time
Jaden Fong 