August 2026 Poetry Contest Winner
Cis Gays Stop Licking Boots The FDA Isn’t Tracking Food Borne Illnesses Anymore
Kes Maro
Cis Gays Stop Licking Boots The FDA Isn’t Tracking Food Borne Illnesses Anymore
If there’s any value in that slippage of the sun’s path through the stars,
it’s what they call low-mean politics, the path souls follow to the land
of the dead; it’s piping plover nesting grounds, setting washed up moon jellies in the surf; it’s the impulse to write
adoration on a bathroom’s compounded plastic stall; it’s in making the bathroom a kind of altar for transness.
Sharpie de-trans-mutes wonder. Simple. Plastic -to-silver-to-plastic. Makes the sand sludge
on the floor fragrant. Illuminates piss on the seat. Makes my ass out pejorative, though it’s been out all day. Makes the cops
a flea infestation. Makes them all a couple inches taller. Makes the thin blue line marring the bottom of the flag pole more blue,
more thin, more More than the memorial flags, pride flags, canopies. & the sharpie has been scratched at by dull edge. & this is just a bathroom. & I have to pee
before I sit in the car for an hour. I think about the sky where the constellation Aries used to live, more than two thousand years ago. About dogs that bark
at the back doors of houses they no longer live in. Gays Against Groomers. Isn’t this the most compelling & complex form of identification? Do you think
they’re going to love you? The cops, the state, mommy & daddy, do you think if you can just be one of those good gays, the kind that work for Palantir,
investment firms, dentists’ offices, that get it, really get it, are so reasonable, really, with your dog bellies exposed, drooling & pathetic. Do you think the boot can love you back?
Kes Maro (they/he) is a poet and visual artist based in Brooklyn. Their work has appeared or is forthcoming in ____figuration: An Anthology of Trans Writers, Passengers Journal, the Portland Dirt, Blood+Honey, and elsewhere. They were a member of the 2023 and 2024 Mill City Speaks slam team and have received support from Assets 4 Artists and the Fine Arts Work Center. Kes is a co-founder of the Mill City Writers Retreat and current MFA candidate at NYU.
