By Dyson Smith
Tomboy ballet you are the dreamscape
the space between spaces the SEGA video game
that was too good to remaster Tomboy ballet you
are the bones the bones specifically of the decapitated
animal smoking on an interstate Tomboy Ballet
you are the interstate the magnetic field
the friendly confines the grounds crew
the invisible labour that makes everything pretty
Tomboy Ballet you are pretty you are everything
the everything shower the flower the rose
that arose from the Concrete that Tupac made
to be a metaphor to about overcoming deep racialized
American poverty but y’all make it about y’all selves
just like y’all did the moon Tomboy ballet you are the moon
the the sickly child spoonfed applesauce which at one point I was
Tomboy Ballet you are the decision boundary
that gave me the false agency to judge what makes
a metaphor a bad metaphor Tomboy Ballet
you are the bad metaphor and just bad if we are able to
call anything in this life bad Tomboy Ballet you are
the overfit model the unnecessary non-parametric method
picking up trends in the data that don’t exist
Tomboy ballet you are the internet microtrend that doesn’t yet exist
lucrative enough to change someone’s life to the point where
their home becomes commodified, a house
Tomboy Ballet you are every house party I’ve ever been uninvited to
and every step I’ve stumbled over and still I’m stumbling
you are the antithesis a liar wrong in your judgments
tattering at the treads the horse at the rusted stable gate of a Midwestern farm show
Waiting for a fifty five caliber pistol to shoot open the rusted gate to let you
run around in a plowed over vast dirt enclosed circle
Tomboy Ballet you are free to run you are free