Poems by Trevor Plate
Snakeboy
Ghost cat,
You no my other grandfather was a typhoon
*know
You know my other grandmother was a girl
who drank the ocean with her tongue out
——————like a pit-bull, like a termite swarm++++
Ghost cat,
Let’s break into the zoo
Let’s steal the elephant and the tiger
Your brain as sex as my stripes
*sexy
——————I only every told you the truth
*ever
——————so why do I feel like snakes
Why I choose to be saddddddd???????????
*do
Ghost cat,
speaking to you now
——————————is like catching a cold~~~~~~~
——————The ice in the gas
*glass
——-I want to like up your condensation
*lick
lick up the length of your skin
Ghost cat,
If you can look me in the eyes
If you can find them
I’d let your blood into veins
*my
Ghost cat, I promise
I’d love you for this moment stretched to the end
100 Hundred Years of Dirt
Safe among shelves of lube and ibuprofen,
I deepthroat a stick of florescent light–
I want to impress you.
My ribcage glows white, here on the
25th hour at
the 24 hour gas station.
Spitting(oh) and breathing(uh-huh)and smoking(ooh) and laughing(uuuhhh).
I’m bad for the environment, you’re good for nothing.
One of the cashiers acts offended,
the other one doesn’t even try.
You cu/t your tongue on a can of coke,
drool blood down my dirt white t.
I know that you masturbate to lost causes,
I see it in your teeth,
the riddles in your red teeth.
I don’t need my stomach, I need yours——-
I don’t want healthcare I want to stay sick———————
WHEN YOU EAT DIRT
YOU GAIN ITS POWER
THE POWER TO DECAY FOREVER
I’m not a capitalist I just like to suffer—————
I’m not a human being I just get to suffer
Deliver a ruthless blow to my chest.
Light shatters inside of me.
I fall into
———–dry doughnuts and infatuation.
You smile deeply, blood clinging to your lower lip.
Rising to you like a puppet or a grim reaper,
I gather the pieces of your body in my arms and
jump into the window———-It doesn’t break————
We bounce off it and smash into the ATM.
20 dollar bills rain down on us.
You start to vomit and I think my appendix has burst.
Contemplation overcomes me.
————————-You affectionately
stuff 200 dollars in my mouth.
One of the cashiers calls the cops,
The other one doesn’t even try.
Trevor Plate is a Chicano writer who grew up on the island of Guam. Halfway around the world now, he resides Minneapolis, MN where he continues to write poetry. His work has previously been published in Dreamnoir and Boston Accent.