It's 1987, by which I mean
I’ve been born,
though barely, while in the heart
of Harlem strutters peck down
a runway & speakers
fray on about love:
park benches with no streetlamps,
examination rooms
with no rubber bands
to bulge the veins blue. Time is elastic:
either it’s 1994, or it’s 1980,
or it was just last night,
it makes no difference: someone slips out
the back screen porch
of their parents’ home
for the last time, someone leaves behind
everything they know
about how this will end
to the future to stand outside
those warehouse doors,
bass crushing their chest.
They might be a vision, then,
if they could enter. They might
reapply mascara in the greased
bathroom mirror or duckwalk
the runway, their hands
two birds bickering above
their hair. They might make out
with a ghost, they might
twirl like a disco ball, spraying
this room & everyone in it
with flecks of lit glass
until the host, clacking fans
with both hands, declares: The old world
has passed away—
Behold! All things have been
made new. But for now it’s not yet
the end of the century,
by which I mean
they have no reason
not to believe her.
