Out on the bar's patio, we learn that the body of another gay man was found in Brooklyn

Poetry by Daniel Brennan

Death with his
plump lips and

Lancôme-stained
teeth,

his cinched
waist and his

self-assured, 
smug catwalk. Look,

how his
nails glisten, filed

into an angler’s lure;
he is trawling 

through darkness
like a treble hook,

snagging on
scale and cheek. Tonight

he comes hot and heavy
like the first snap 

of thunder
in summer sky;

I smell his earth-soured
breath 

before his tongue even 
strikes the ground. 

I wish I were less frightened
then I am. Upon hearing the news

you light up 
a cigarette, your reluctant

habits, as if to say 
we must go on never-minding.

As we so often have.
I wish I were more

surprised 
by what becomes of us,

pinched between the world’s
uneven teeth. But we 

know our way 
around a precedent, don’t we? 

When you stretch
in a brief moment of

discomfort, I can picture our bodies 
hot and cold and then one day

below the soil, and
I wish, too, that my imagination

did not feel 
so comfortable with its

destinations for us. 
Huddled

around your Newport’s
ashing glow, 

we watch smoke rise;
your eyes betray

little when someone asks
did any of you know him,

because we all know him
in some form or another,

don’t we? Brother and
sister, slot his role

with any of us, any
of the men 

I’ve taken home
and believed I could love

as my patient heat 
found theirs. 

Tonight, we never mind 
that our bones host

prophecy, as if we have a choice
but to learn 

from ghosts, our past, 
all of us eyeing Death 

as he comes
stumbling in, 

all smiles and 
porn-star’s physique, 

chest puffed with familiarity 
and his hand spreads

to seize throats.
You ash the remnant stub 

on the patio
railing as the men around us

continue with their 
suspicions; I wish 

your eyes 
did not betray 

a shared fear, 
and that I could 

remove us from all this,
bring your body

into any quiet place
where my hands 

and lips and 
tremoring tongue

could give you pleasure
and convince us both

that perhaps we are not meant
merely to run down the clock.

But I see 
how you watch Death, how he

gathers like roiled clouds 
of hot air around us,

his terrible and
familiar silence, his

patience to play
the long game, your name

and mine
coming easy to him, a song,

the final hiss from the jukebox
as we close our tabs,

as you slip out the door
without even saying

goodbye. 

Daniel Brennan

Daniel Brennan (he/him) is a queer writer and coffee devotee from New York. Sometimes he's in love, just as often he's not. His poetry has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize/Best of the Net, and has appeared in numerous publications, including The Penn Review, Sho Poetry Journal, and Trampset.