by Pierre-Luc Landry

cette langue m’appartient et j’en fais ce que je veux

i.

it’s a lonely life of train rides
it’s a lonely life of hearing other people’s conversations
it’s a lonely life of drake songs and stomach aches

i’m so fucking sad that you didn’t come to my book thing
i’m so fucking sad that i’m calling it a “book thing”
i’m so fucking sad that you didn’t even text

un jour je dresserai la liste de ces moments de détresse
dans le stationnement d’une station d’autobus en Ontario
sur un banc des Champs-Élysées
dans une maison de banlieue à Gatineau
et je tenterai d’expliquer pourquoi i’m so fucking sad all the time

i’m so fucking sad that i’m not a poet
i’m so fucking sad that i’m never gonna be good enough

i’m just some worst-case scenario
for when there is no other option available

everything hurts all the time always

ii.

the radio tells me it’s the first day of summer and i should celebrate
i’m all alone
i can’t take the pressure
summer is cancelled

i sit as far as possible from the window
so i can forget the time of day
because i have so much work to do that will never pay off

i went to the gym four times this week and now i can barely walk
i’m so fucking sore
i want to do some kind of social experiment where i would only eat food from the dollar store
i would call it a performance
but in fact i’m just craving dill pickle chips
white bread
and sour gummies

today i caught myself dreaming that i would buy an income property downtown
that i would get rid of the carpet
that i would install new kitchen cabinets
i don’t know who i am anymore

at the same time i want to spend all the money i don’t have on a full-body tattoo
and my shit is flying everywhere

today i went to the pharmacy to use concealer from the test tube
but i picked the wrong shade for my red nose
and that’s all anyone could see when looking at me

iii.

our queer bodies are not public furniture
you are not welcome to comment on our weight our clothes our gender our modifications
to the dude in the change room: i’m not telling you how stupid you look in your white grandpa underwear you buy in bulk at sears
so shut the fuck up about my hat being “distinctive” because i hear it
i know you mean i “look gay”

i do not exist to comfort you
my queer body doesn’t give a shit about what you think of it

 

[Pierre-Luc Landry is the author of L’Équation du temps (Éditions Druide, 2013) and Les corps extraterrestres (Éditions Druide, 2015). The latter was translated into English by Arielle Aaronson and Madeleine Stratford and published by QC Fiction under the title Listening for Jupiter earlier this year. He is a professor of French Literature at the Royal Military College of Canada.]

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