Thierry Mugler died last week and I hate myself.
All I can think about is his Grindr profile,
which a friend showed me on New Years.
I lose my umbrella and buy another. I repeat this
every week through January. My brother says
happiness doesn’t suit her
and walks into the mouth of the subway.
I’ve been making hollow silhouettes of myself
on the bed. I arrange the hangers and wonder
if happiness suits me. I buy
red cowboy boots. Anne Carson reads
in red cowboy boots. I write a postcard
but don’t have much to say about my life in America.
A decade truly starts a few years into itself.
Maybe the same goes for people.
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Jo Urtasun is a poet and translator who grew up between the Basque Country and the UK. She recently completed her MFA in Poetry and Literary Translation at Columbia University where she was a translation reader for the Columbia Journal. She is currently based in New York.