Dane Slutzky
Kindest Regards
I hope this email finds you well. I hope it finds you
healthy and safe from harm.
I hope this email finds you wrapped in a warm blanket
wearing hand knitted socks, whether you got them as a gift,
or from a thrift store, or made them secretly under your desk
during zoom after zoom. I hope this email finds you looking
at your screen but really thinking about spelunking
in deep caves, or wondering what royal jelly tastes like.
I hope you have twenty-seven browser tabs filled with searches
like “what to bring to caves” or “videos of bees
feeding queen” so that you can start a packing list
and then relax to the sounds of attentive buzzing.
I hope this email finds you on a canoe in the middle
of a river thinking about how ancient a technology the canoe is,
how people once made them out of hollowed out tree trunks,
both in the place where you live and on the exact opposite
side of the globe, as far away as it is possible to go
and still remain on our planet. And how those ancients
traveled across open ocean, rowing from island to island.
Maybe you’re wondering what tools they used, or whose idea
it was to start painstakingly carving, then eventually
push the hewn log into the water, jump in, and watch
the coastline recede. I hope this email finds you attaching
snaps and buckles to the least useful places on your coat.
Or maybe a grommet that goes in with a satisfying punch,
since you never know what you might want to hang
from your sleeves when you’re going on long, circuitous
walks. I hope this email finds you blissed out
from wine or edibles or smokey bourbon or
from watching a puppy licking a lemon.
I hope this email finds you when you’re up
in the middle of the night, pacing your kitchen, unable
to sleep, and––having tried melatonin and valerian
and guided meditations to no avail––I hope it bores you
right back to bed. I hope this email finds you in a grove
of bamboo thinking about whether Atlantis ever existed
and whether Moses was a real historical person
and whether he really touched a sparkling hot
coal with his infant mouth. I hope this finds you
with your head cocked, listening to the wind.
And while I may write that I hope this email
finds you, in my heart of hearts, the inner chambers
within the vaulted corridors of my outer heart,
I hope you’ve thrown your phone in the ocean
and walked backwards into the forest.
I hope this email never finds you at all.
Ode to the butch TSA agent
who saved me from a pat-down
from the frowning man
who punched a gender
into the body scanner machine
& concluded
that I might have a bomb
strapped to my chest. Praise
the queers who work
in customer service, who see
our documents
in some distant call center
& don’t switch mid-stream
from sir to ma’am to sir again.
Praise the only woman in sales
at the car dealership who
cut us a deal without posturing,
since we never learned how
to posture. Praise the knowledge,
from the List of Important Things
That Nobody Tells You,
that all trans people
should spring for TSA Pre
to avoid all this groping
in the first place. They say that
a gratitude habit rewires
your brain, & after
a day in security lines,
boy do I need some rewiring.
Praise the trans lady who sold
us that bulbous silicone
enema kit, who told us:
it’s not her favorite,
she’s still searching
for her favorite––
her room is filling up
with enema products both
baroque and futuristic,
bags & bulbs, spouts & syringes,
her drawers overflowing.
We would never trust
anyone else.
Dane Slutzky
Dane Slutzky lives in western Massachusetts. His poetry has appeared in Moon City Review, Heavy Feather Review, Zócalo Public Square, and elsewhere. Dane holds an MFA from Warren Wilson College and has received support from the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, Juniper Summer Writing Institute, and Vermont Studio Center.