Daniel W.K. Lee
At Risk
1.
Cuddling
(You) would not let me
finish the last dirty dish
greased from last night’s
mole; instead, (you)—
naked, white,
seraphim-skinned,
tugging me away
in retreat from morning—
beckoned me back
beneath the bedcovers
There (you),
like warm milk, slid
inside my bends:
fitting so well, I
could have,
like loss,
mistaken myself
for complete
2.
Conversion
You
medium of unbraided desire
you alone
unresisted
are my assassin
if
I mistook
you
for protection.
3.
Remembering
…you,
I will mistake
for everything
worth living for.
Daniel W.K. Lee’s work has appeared in journals including Agenda, The Boiler, Chiron Review, Dialogist, Floating Bridge Review, The Gay and Lesbian Review Worldwide, Lodestar Quarterly, Mary, Narcolepsy Arms, Off the Rocks, Psychic Meatloaf, Shampoo, Vice, Weave Magazine, and others. His work has appeared in anthologies including Between: New Gay Poetry (Chelsea Station Editions, 2013), In Our Own Words: A Generation Defining Itself—Volume 8 (MW Enterprises, 2010), Multi-Culti Mixterations (CreateSpace USA, 2010), Eating Her Wedding Dress: A Collection of Clothing Poems (Ragged Sky Press, 2009), Poetic Voices Wthout Borders 2 (Gival Press, 2009), The Queer Collection: Prose & Poetry 2007 (Fabulist Flash Publishing, 2007), Poetic Voices Without Borders (Gival Press, 2005), I Do/I Don’t: Queers on Marriage (Suspect Thoughts Press, 2004), Take Out: Queer Writing from Asian Pacific America (Asian American Writers’ Workshop, 2000), and Time After Time (International Library of Poetry, 2000).
Daniel lives in Seattle and writes cultural criticism at JAKE Voices and daniel extra.
This poem is previously unpublished.