BIO
Patrick Mullen-Coyoy is a queer, Guatemalan-Irish poet and college access advocate loving, living, and picking it up in Ann Arbor and Ypsilanti, MI. Along with increasing the number of students getting to and through college, they love stitching together poems about pop music icons like Ariana Grande. Their writing appears or is forthcoming in Barrelhouse, Gayly Dreadful, LIT Magazine, Tinderbox Poetry Journal, and Underblong Journal. You can follow them on Twitter (@aguacatemalteco) for more pop culture poetry, pedagogical geekery, and critical musings on their love life.
The Miracle of Living
i.
I want to live in a world where queers don’t die
and maybe that’s unrealistic, but
it happened in Black Mirror
so how far off can we be from that synthpop world
where two queers can drive off into sunsets of teased hair
and trying to kill yourself doesn’t end in annihilation, but
your arms around me, tides
crashing against the shorelines of my shoulders
reminding us that heaven can be a place
on a server
in a warehouse
on a television
out of reach
ii.
I want to live in a world where queers don’t die
but have amnesia hard-wired into us
like Janelle Monáe in Dirty Computer
and everything would be music
synapses sparking with
neuroplastic neon choreography
recorded over recollections of us
running from oblivion
and grooving to beats stored in the cleft
between my neck
and your mouth
our bodies electric
transmissions beyond
these soft reboots of
Ctrl+
Alt+
Delete
iii.
I want to live in a world where queers don’t die
but if they have to, it could be like that book—
you know, the one titled
They Both Die at the End—
with eleventh-hour warnings and
twenty-four-hour chances
enough time to live
out
a day full of eternal futures
with no closure
beyond us
in a karaoke bar
your fingers warm
in the crucible of
my palm
our life lines
crystalizing into star-crossed synastry
a romance
spread out over an eight-minute instrumental
the final harmony resolved
in the grave
iv.
I want to live in a world where queers don’t die
because I’m so tired
of everybody telling me that it’s not enough
to want a world beyond our survival
where I can dance
and you can jive
and we can implore the bass-boosted gods of your car stereo
to gimme gimme gimme a lifetime past
this present
just one dawn past midnight where you can lay your love
over the rhythm of my syncopated heart
the soundscape of two queers whose living
is miracle enough