» Poetry

On the Megabus from DC back to New York, 7:00AM

Newly conscious in Union City,

that so-Jersey place with all-Spanish signage

my parents grew up in and around.

We drive by a huge blue-logoed highwayside gym

that used to be a Toys R Us.

My brother and I often begged to go

when we still lived nearby. That spot

housed all our dreams.

Here my eyes clock

the person next to me’s left knee against my right one,

its tenderness

a babe

of our mutual rest.

How rare to feel cozy with a man neither friend nor fuck,

face half-viewable, stubbly, his skin a few shades lighter

than mine, a small, thick left hoop earring

I think is diamond.

I imagine his mother wears

or wore similar ones,

that he respects women.

I imagine we are two brown queers sharing this row.

How we might otherwise have met awake

at Papi Juice

Bubble T or some other

Brooklyn brown queer party.

Man and his are, of course, projections

much huger than the rest;

also can’t recall if I saw them wearing two earrings

when they first sat beside me in DC,

or which ear is the gay ear. Still asleep, their legs shift away

and our babe slips down the gap.

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Kyle Lopez

Kyle Lopez is a poet from Montclair, New Jersey, who lives in New York City. He graduated from the College of William & Mary in 2017, where he won the Goronwy Owen Poetry Prize. He is a TuCuba fellow with the CubaOne Foundation and a current student of New York University's MFA program in poetry, where he is also a Goldwater Fellow. Kyle is Poetry Editor of EFNIKS, a media space for queer and trans people of color. His poems are published or forthcoming in The Boiler, Argot Magazine, Cosmonauts Avenue, Capital Pride DC, and elsewhere.