🆂🅴🅲🅾🅽🅳 🅷🅰🅽🅳 🅻🅴🅰🆃🅷🅴🆁 🅹🅰🅲🅺🅴🆃 ٩ʕ◕౪◕ʔو

Ethan Viets-VanLear

Fingering a second hand leather jacket asking them about their favorite riders at a shallow pool dive bar.

We tiptoe around the gullible belief that they're still as holy as they were the first time we touched skin.

Tells me about the

shirtless heathen headed to sturgeon

that they adorned

On a highway that felt like a cathedral

Surrounded by banshees

Straddling

An engine like an angel

The wings of iron

Brake pad boots

So many wrinkled little stories peeling off of their flaky hide

Heavy from sweat they drank

by Sticking fibers into the flesh of their tattooed hosts

Sucking the very radness from their eager to give backs

I carry you home with me

throw you on a chair on the back porch and drink orange wine while I hold you

in the morning I leave you at a strip mall on a corner with two gas stations between two

buildings where you'll be picked up shortly after I’m assured

My body has to get used to the weight of being alone again.

My name is Ethan Viets-VanLear. I am a black abolitionist poet born and raised on the far north side of Chicago. I am also the co-founder of Stick Talk, a mutual aid association co-created by young Black and Brown people who are both authors and survivors of gun-related harms, and the author of Antidote, my first completed collection of poetry. I am currently working on my second collection of poetry Code Switch.

@softsummerpoem