♫⃠

winds tore through forest park
and this gay bar in the grove
is still sorted by color.

i was going to hang myself
in my air bed and breakfast
but there are children around.
there exists a future of ignorance
where utopia is relevant
yet humidity broke the blinds apart
and i’m staring at a family
who can afford a home.

I’ve gone back to choking myself.
No metaphor, no literary device.
I’m locking my knees and
pressing my thumbs how I was taught
in the lampe park bathroom.

I couldn’t care less about a dictatorship.
fuck food stamps and slumlords.
my greatest threat is me.

nothing’s more selfish than ambulances
on residential boulevards.
like, hold on. yesterday i spent
twelve minutes blackening my right eye
with a crescent wrench, and you think
i wasn’t in a rush? breaking apart
things made by man takes time.

rarely do I write about being indigenous.
rarely do I think about it
except when I have to point on the doll
where I’ve been touched,
then I have a field day.

here they’ve built the Icon
and there’s where he yanked my hair
and asked me to be a good girl.

somehow
the moment someone stole my body
was the most I’ve felt decolonized.

you’re outside 5 star with bag and key
like bjorn never died and
carlee didn’t bite her tongue off.
six years later you’re no better than me
but you gotta stop forgiving me when i dream
cause i know you won’t.

These are stark and intense Willard, gritty with their sense of reality behind them, they manage to pack a punch in their succinctness.

I like that in "7th & hope" you just go ahead and call out "No metaphor, no literary device." - the poem isn't "prettied" up to be "gentler" - it just absolutely is.