J.A. Dela Cruz-Smith Playing Gay Chatroulette with No Luck

A torso sings into his mic, with

sweaty pixelated palms, as a gingko trunk

shakes all its leaves off for the wind, and one million needles

of longing conifers baptize our solitude together—

Okay then. Last night, I’m 22. The night before, I’m 19.

The night before, Sure, where you located daddy?

Fantasies legitimize a gravity grinding into kneecaps,

the blues in butterfly wings smeared to our faces,

masks of moths, their dusty souls kissing along long arms

like hills in the distance between us. A pang pushes through

our abdomen bushes like berries, until we’re made to sweet mess.

“I like the way you squirm! You’re so cute. Turn on the lights, mister.”

Eyes he hadn’t seen before, clichés and such pouring out

his mouth like food, “What are you?” And my microwave

hadn’t even chimed yet—Hold up. A different man appears.

Gum trees twirling their eucalyptus scents all over our keyboards again,

clicking pillows into place, and lamps turned over on their sides.

Sunlight breaks through our blinds as fat, black bumble bees

caught in between two window panes, wings warbling the surfaces, and

vases, cups all over the floor and in every corner of his vibrating room,

filled with the holiness of water. And shining there,

expanses spilling into lips like a horizon, the brain holds

at last in this shrine of our digital selves,

both the penis and extinction of bees. Perhaps,

is it in our fantasies these objects come alive?

All the lakes of this room—Those sexy eyes.

And his dick’s foreskin, which since I love foreskin so much,

thankfully froze once the conversation died down.

Was tugged at for eternity, however long it takes me to hit

Refresh, Spin again. “And by now,” he must have thought.

I stand under the plum tree when it rains and wonder

if it is indeed raining again. And by “again”? He hadn’t gotten there yet.

Or, maybe he was distracted… Liquid beads

off tightening, winking glutes to prove whatever it is they claim.

I wish to see masculinity’s many holes now—Let me see.

He heard that every night, exoticized, eroticized, it doesn’t matter

because when it comes out, it’s all white—seeing is believing after all.

Men, getting

tucked in or rather, undressed in bed and

hard off of what wasn’t said and

fetishizing faraway torsos with no heads.

Sexy screens, swelling chests and shoulders

separated by the unseen world wide web

of cut and uncut things. You know what I mean.

O, the agony until the world’s reprieve. Click, click, click,

click past all these queens.

He knows it takes at least three hundred fingers jutting downward

like upside down trees

pointing at the ground,

saying, Look, look at these,

before he gets to a man who doesn’t

seem, of all things, obviously gay.

originally appeared in Assaracus: A Journal of Gay Poetry