Bodega | "The seagulls have no dignity."

I was feeling really good about my outfit
til I went shopping and I saw the mirror, and it’s all because of how
the only shorts I have right now—due only to a promise I made
to myself—are these skintight nonpainful elastic black ones that I’m hoping
that woman didn’t notice last night at Chris’s boss’s opening,
blue chip, at which we had to perch and kind of yell
over low tables like obstacles in a dream, and I did it
so that I could have my views heard on the possibilities of fashion
not just for art but suffering cessation oh my god!
Like I'm all talking just about how I have had
this liberatory fashion
revelation And I’m like wearing this ill fitting denim jacket
and like bike shorts It’s embarrassing. I couldn’t help but wonder
whether if I still had hair, it might have charmed her.
On the train
is a late transitioner: her thin precariously parted hair
styled in a neat chic pageboy, today she is featuring
a floor length dress with tiny blue diamonds on it
I am always looking at people’s outfits
and thinking about how disappointed Elizabeth Bishop would be in me
for learning neither the lessons of her successes or mistakes
For example earlier a woman passed me with her hair piled up on her head
bound by an orange strip of fabric, as is the custom here
She was with a stud wearing all black Champion
and this fag who had with her this somehow already really
fucked up looking lavender Telfar which—, bitch
How Because that color just came out?? Who even cares
How you describe a Telfar The whole point of one is you don’t have to
and Miss Bishop would hate that because when I do
do description, again, I learn nothing because all I can see is my thoughts
The train lady touches her hair too often,
fiddling with it and tossing her head, as if without direct manipulation
it might naturally fall in a better place I grew up in Los Angeles
And so I love to dawdle around the MTA feeling a magnetic combination
of power and grievance Like a woman whose place is a description of the eyes
of animals Like I tried to write in Cherry Grove before Elana made me come
put on sunscreen and drink water and wipe the white rings off my nose
without trying again with the seagulls
Without even taking notes
All I had was an opening line in an arch chatty tone and it talks about dignity
I didn’t want to be chatty I was accused of invisibility:
How many pictures of Lota do you see in a suit, for example, which was
apparently what she would wear mostly
More importantly (Bishop thought a lot about this
problem, though of course was unable to discuss it or describe it
even in art), more accurately, I’m unable to stop being seen

129 – September 2023

By Stephen Ira

"The seagulls have no dignity."