This beautiful poem from Jenny Johnson which is accidentally so perfect for poor Orlando.
In the Dream
I was alone in a dyke bar we’d traversed before
or maybe it was in a way all our divesmerging together suddenly as one intergalactic composite,
one glitter-spritzed black hole,one cue stick burnished down to a soft blue nub.
Picture an open cluster of starsmanaging to forever stabilize in space
without a landlord scheming to shut the place down.Anyways, I was searching for someone there
whom we hadn’t seen in years—in whatcould have been Sisters, Babes, the Lex, the Pint,
the Palms, or the E Room? but the roomhad no end and no ceiling.
Though I could see all of our friends or exeswith elbows up or fingers interlocked
on table tops zinging with boomerangs.Maybe the tables were spinning, too. I can’t be sure.
But just as a trap that trips beforehammering a mouse is not humane
the dream changed—or the alarmthat I carry in my breast pocket in my waking life
was sounding. Because in the dream,three people on bar stools, who were straight
or closeted? but more importantly angryturned and the room dwindled
like a sweater full of moths eating holesthrough wool. Or they were humans, sure,
but not here to lovewith jawlines set to throw epithets like darts
that might stick or knick or flutter pastas erratically as they were fired.
You could say their hostility was a swirlnebulous as gas and dust,
diffuse as the stressa body meticulously stores.
Like how when I was shoved in grade schoolon the blacktop in my boy jeans
the teacher asked me if I had a strawberrybecause the wound was fresh as jam, glistening
like pulp does after the skin of a fruit ispeeled back clean with a knife.
I was in the dream as open to the elements,yet I fired back. And I didn’t care who eyed me
like warped metal to be pounded square.I said: Do you realize where you are?
And with one finger I called our family forth
and out of the strobe lights, they came.
Gorgeous.