nearclose your neck on the couch,
watching the late news together
we see Russian spies, radioactive
espionage—but all I can think of is
nearclose your neck, unable
to make sense after midnight—
uncomfortably reaching
the late red of you,
trying to subtract your
dark theories, make negative
your eyes (double crossing),
your lips, sink them down into
nothing—as if deriching you could
somehow put me in front of the line—
but my body frozen, unable to move
or do the right math at zero dark thirty—
I wish we should stay like this all the time—
nearclose your neck, it’s Putin on the TV
pitted against a little hope, a little yes,
a little maybe and real soon—
then you demur like a foreign
magic trick: the equation itself cancelled,
brought to a fast close, almost devoid
of questions and of answers—
the tale of us always a quick disappearance,
incalculable shrugs, CCTV footage
skipping, never in the proper sequence—
our plot, allegedly a goodbye without history—
then suddenly, in between
one for the road and let’s call it a night,
I begin to vividly remember two winter dreams:
late Christmas wishes for us,
(youandme) disassembled
into easy-to-follow instructions
for bomb-shelter love,
buried deep in a smile—
here comes polonium-filled
warmth-in-a-box—

poor Litvinienko

first there’s the one with you and the rifle:
you are wearing a red hunting cap,
it is snowing and I’m coming down
the stairs of an old, cheap motel—
a cold morning somewhere deep in the mountains;
you are standing on the parking lot waiting—
I can clearly see the nuclear void in your eyes,
a hot glowing, perfect green menace—

boom!

I stare straight into your far-gone and untraceable
sad-like-a-dead-fish eyes as I fall to the ground—
you shoot me dead twice—also,
I’m a much older man in that picture—

boom!

here lie cancerous jingles,
blue-heavy, deadly—
gracious and plenty,
poisoned sushi and tea—
made just for us; make sure to
swallow it deep, B

poor Litvinienko, swollen in the hospital bed and bidding adieu

in the second dream
we are in what looks like a church,
somewhere New York City—
the structure is large and round,
like a proud coliseum in medieval times—
we are sitting next to a large crowd zealous
with god love—it was your religion, not mine—
we found ourselves in the midst of a Sunday service,
full of jagged-looking-white people, esoterically
swaying their bodies back and forth,
in the middle of a gibberish prayer,
they’re chanting yaddayaddayadda
dabbadoo…it is snowing again—
then you slither over to me in pure secrecy
and propose the scheme of a murder—
but I refuse to partake in killing your kin,
and before I know it, the scene cuts to the exterior,
we are now outside the excalibur-stoned walls of the temple,
and you start strangling me right in the middle of the swarming avenue;
you are mad, your white hands so quick upon my brown neck,
and as no one comes to my rescue, I think to myself:
choke me harder—

kill me faster so I can tuck our battered hearts in, dear—
lull them softly into underground sleep, dear—
keep fighting the good fight, dear—
keep the daily vitamins, dear—
secretly snuggled right below
nuclear fantasies, dear—
keep searching for can’t and for far, dear—
this is not as it should be, but we’ll continue
the dreams incongruent, dear—
this was supposed to be lovely and weeee, dear—
but something greater than ourselves got the best of us, dear—
so we struggle senselessly, dear—
climbing up this sisyphean hill, dear—
against the darkening of the dull, dear

cut back to tonight: nearclose your neck and
I’m absurdly hypnotized by your deep-sea
fish eyes and their tight grip on the hour—
my dreams in nightmare and dyscalculia,
nowadays jumping forward on me,
thrusting me back and forth through
our spacetime continuum, forcing
me out of the humdrum, entering
once more this drunk realm
we both scour— and all I can
think of is anytime now,
murder, my own.

Goodnight, B, goodnight sweet, sweet B

Angel Correa is a poet and actor living out of Orange County, CA. Although Angel is Mexican-American and gay, he does not consider himself a gay Mexican-American poet. Just a new poet. He lives with his husband and mom, and a tuxedo cat named Lulo, who shares the home office with him.