Kristian Sorensen

Hi. 

It’s been a hard day. 

My hamster died in my hand this morning - 

Seized up right there in my palm. 

Next to a piece of broccoli. 

Then, my chameleon turned all white and face-planted off its favourite branch. 

My chinchilla choked on raisins. 

My rat got stuck in its toilet paper tube and starved. 

The class guinea pig unlocked its own cage and fed itself to a stray dog. 

The dog choked on the guinea pig - the students watched. 

I saw a cat leap from the top of an electrical post – it did not land on its feet. 

My sister’s bird hung itself from its little rope swing. 

A neighbour’s turtle buried itself in neon aquatic gravel. 

Another’s tarantula crawled too close to its heat lamp and caught fire. 

My mother’s bearded dragon committed seppuku with one of those mini-swords that you get in tropical cocktails. 

Her clown fish leaped out of the tank and into the filtration system. 

Her Mahjong partner’s echidna rolled itself into such a tight ball that it suffocated. 

A chicken tried to cross the road. 

My snake ate a box of nails. 

A goat rammed the generator and was electrocuted. 

AND!  

ANDANDAND – 

Love-Letter To The Queers of Chechnya 

I wish that I could walk you

Into the forest

And hold you

The way you dreamt of being held

When you were just tipping

Into adulthood

And your heart skipped beats

Over the way you were

Because my heart did the same

And I shouldn’t presume what your heart did

But, for the purposes of this poem, I will

And I just want to hug you

In a forest

Because you like boys

I just wish that I could

Bite your lip

And whisper I love you

In a forest

For being stronger

Than entire nations

I wish that this was not happening

To You

In a forest

Another headline

On the news

To be scrolled by

Eyes roll by

What is real anymore?

If a queer falls in the woods

And nobody is around to hear

Does the queer make a sound?

I think so

I heard you

In the forest

While I was flying by trees

Collecting twigs for our love-nest

More beautiful than Titania’s bower

And I will be your               

Bottom Or Top Or Vers

Really Good Friend

Or Kind Stranger

Whatever you need

But you have to hang on

A little longer

I love you

In the forest

I’m running

Through the forest

I’m coming

Through the forest

Hold on.

Herbert & Leah

Herbert was his name. His wife I named Leah. Herbert and Leah, together forever.

I plucked them from the right side of our wooden porch one foggy afternoon. There were always interesting creatures hiding in the damp dirt there and, on days when I was especially bored, I spent hours on my knees discovering terrifying and tiny living things - the Earth and its wonders. Herbert and Leah stirred a new feeling in me. Their swerving paths of slime were both fascinating and disgusting. I was captured by the bobbing antenna, which whizzed around above their heads in strange individual orbits. Such odd bodyparts! Could I even call them bodyparts? They were unlike anything I had seen alive and moving before.

I loved them and I hated them and I decided to keep them.

The first trick was getting Herbert and Leah past my mother. She was hawkish and could sense a wrongdoing from a mile away. I decided on scooping them up and placing them both in my pants pockets, Herbert on the left and Leah on the right. I stood, turned, and plodded into the house looking as innocent as I possibly could. Once clear of my mother and her reading chair, I bee-lined for the kitchen to find some sort of house for my new friends. 

A mason jar full of pennies sat stockily.

I swiped it off the counter near the telephone and went straight to my room when I felt a wetness moving through the lining of my left pocket, slinking across my thigh. Unpleasant. I could see my door now. I grasped the handle. Turned. The door clicked behind me. Safety.

Wet, wet, what is this wetness?

I turned my pockets inside out. It was Herbert. Something must have upset him, for he was oozing foam. I placed him in the cradle of my palm.

“It’s okay, Herbert. Calm down.”

But Herbert would not hear me. Foam shot from his bright green pores. His antenna twitched and dove.

“Stop, Herbert!”

Foam, foam, foam!

How could this tiny creature make such a mess?

“STOP!”

Herbert wasn’t listening to me. Why wouldn’t he just listen?! I certainly could not put him in his mason jar in this state. He would ruin it all. He would fill the thing with foam, tarnish the pennies. My hand! Ouch. It stung.

“Herbert, what did you do to my hand?! What is this stuff?!”

Suddenly terrified, utterly betrayed, my hand stinging, I felt a hot rage rush through me. I rescued you, Herbert. I loved you. A new buzzing pain coursed through my hand. He was poisoning me. I inhaled and quickly made a fist, crushing little Herbert for hurting me. I heard my breath now, fast but deep. I turned my fist over, released my grip, and let little Herbert fall to the wooden floor. Staring down at his alien mass, I felt a wetness moving through the lining of my other pocket, slinking across my thigh. Unpleasant.

In Which The Fish Revolutionize

The sucker-fish has agreed to keep watch

Glued to the tank’s glass edges

It knows and reports on

The choices of those on the outside

The shifts of policy, the peddling of story,

The constant barrage

Changing tides

The shrimp build a center

For organizing

Moving one tiny aquatic pebble at a time

To the tank’s far corner

Constructing a beautiful

Meeting place

They build an immense pebble-throne

For the icon of their coming revolution

But the Lion Fish reminds them:

No charismatic leaders!

So

They dismantle the throne and create 100 perfect little pebble-seats instead. 

At feeding time

There is an agreement

The Gobis collect fish-flakes

In their tiny arms

Lowering them into

A bowl made of sand

Where they may be distributed evenly

As requested

By those who most need them 

The star-fish

With its million little suction cups

Keeps its five limbs

Firmly planted in reality

While

The jelly-fish floats

And dreams

Of infinite possibilities

Passing through its body

Like a pulse

(The two

Entirely different

Became fast friends

When they realized

They pushed each other

In fabulous directions

Creating fierce currents

The others rode)

The cuttlefish and octopus, pessimists, crack jokes

While waving their

Alien tentacles

About just emigrating

To another planet already 

The angel fish brings its sense

Of the theatrical, honey

The drama, darling

That grabs and pulls

The storytelling weaving

Wondrous connections

Sense-making and awe-inspiring

Simultaneously

It keeps, unfurls, protects

The stories that have been

Historically squashed 

And the Mantis Shrimp

With its most powerful tail

And swiveling eyes

Seeing possibility, possibility, possibility

Awaits the signal

Clicking its many legs

In anticipation

Ready to smash the tank’s glass

And begin

The great flood.

On Coming Out

It was on the couch
In the rental on Alamar Street
That I first said,
“Mom, I’m gay.”
Tears winding their way down my cheeks
Ribcage pulsing
Clutching at oxygen.
“I know”, she said.

I had one lesbian friend in high school.
I told her and she told others.
It was what it was.
Cataclysmic.

I came out en masse via MySpace Bulletin
Remember those?
I used to
Put an “&” before each title.
It was my thing.
“&I’m A Homo”
(I’m pretty sure)
Sometimes
I now think
It was cowardly
To do it that way.

My dad had to ask me,
Point blank.
Coming out to a gay man,
My father,
Was the one I most avoided.
I’m a Taurus.
I’m stubborn.
I am my own.
Nature versus nurture
Kept me up at night.

Each attempt was a run and jump
A forced shoving of myself
Off a stark edge.

Over winter break,
We sat in a movie theatre,
My ex and I,
(both now queer as can be)
We talked about
How cute x, y, and z were
(Genders akimbo)
And it was
Magical.

I had it easy
And it was still far from.
Have patience
As we unfurl
And find the thing
That opens.