Travis Tate

is a queer, black playwright, poet and performer from Austin, Texas. Their poetry has appeared in Borderlands: Texas Poetry Review, Underblong, Mr. Ma’am, apt, and Cosmonaut Avenue among other journals. Maiden, their debut poetry collection, is out on Vegetarian Alcoholic Press. They earned an MFA from the Michener Center for Writers. You can find more about them at travisltate.com

Love in Moonlight

Lunation makes clear the growth—

I wait, impatient for the sign of your body,

like some dumb stimaga, a holy sign from Bethelem,

to appear, grandly, in the wake of all this suffering.

There is what is left here. My fallen crisis—

I push myself out into the world. I don’t miss myself anymore. I eat the pale moon. I suffer the moon in the morning & late afternoon.

I’m liking what I see. A small vision of you, plastering your image near.

I wait for your arrival.

I dance the dance of the wild. I let it slip into the blood.

Something grows thin, the light eagerly pushing its way through—

It makes known the bully of you, the soft way you say baby.

O, how I pray to the way my body feels next to your supple voice.

O, I pray to whatever gods to let me heal myself on your wound.

O, wound. O, battered heart. O, monster healing in the dark corner.