Nights are the only times I think of love.
And even then, it’s so very heterosexual, I pretend

to be happy. I sex a man who I can call husband, who names me
after rare shards of glass

held tight in catastrophic dirt. I pretend
I know how to fuck him. How to hold his limp dick in my hand with some emotion

close to eye-candy delight. A hungry look
saving the erection for the greediest mouth.

A boyfriend in my day life once promised that would make him
the happiest man in the world.

And once I pretended I cared enough
to believe him, but his dick would never stay limp long enough.

So at night, when I think of love I have to find a way to save the erection
for the mouth. Because my dream

husband likes it like that, too.
Something about love growing and pulsing. Something

about children and naming them after famous jazz singers, muslims, and animals
in flock. One was Coletrane Akil Murder, but I soon forgot

about breastfeeding it. I had fields of flowers to cultivate,
breads to bake, laundry to plump & fold. I was heterosexual

and gardens were abundant. My husband was never
alone and the diapers were always wet. The sex

was less than remarkable. I had lovers. I was heterosexual. I couldn’t stop
fucking neighborhood women in tall oak trees,

maids and baby sitters. We built a canopy and laid out a huge tub.
I got stuck. I was pregnant again. And my husband wasn’t

the same anymore. This one was a white man who always tied me
by the throat. I said I liked it.

I meant it. Being choked. By a white man. Who was my husband.
Our children’s names were hegemonic. Dominion and Galactic, Hegel and Patience.

Then I woke from one dream and remembered
I was heterosexual. Daily, I chanted:

I am a heterosexual. I have sex with my husband. A white man
who only screws The Blacks.

Until my dream moved us to Cuba. Then he wasn’t my husband
anymore, but some other man who liked his dick limp

during football games. This heterosexuality was ceaseless.
Unsleeping. Unsilent. Under wraps, no? Alive & throbbing.