“How to Host the End of the World (A Queer Guide)” by Daryl Bruce
Poetry Pause is the League of Canadian Poets’ daily poetry dispatch. Read “How to Host the End of the World (A Queer Guide)” by Daryl Bruce.
Sonnet for the First Day
By Daryl Bruce
The guest list writes itself: anyone who has ever slipped between names, anyone who has ever kissed in
a dark corner knowing the night was watching. Dead poets RSVP first. They always do. Sappho brings a
date who never stops changing shape.
Send out invitations scrawled on old club flyers, napkins stolen from bars that donโt exist anymore. Fold
them into paper airplanes and throw them off rooftops. Someone will find them.
The dress code is rupture: sequins and leather. Someone comes in a wedding dress two sizes too big, a
belt of undone rosaries at the waist. Someone else wears only a tattoo: Tell God I Was Here.
Music? The kind that makes you ache. The DJ remixes the moans from a 1979 backroom, sets them to
the hum of a VHS tape left running, to the static between stations.
Set the tables with chipped glasses, lipstick ghosts on the rims. Serve last meals: communion wafers and
poppers, a single grape passed from mouth to mouth, a drag queenโs laughter thick as honey.
At midnight, someone pulls the fire alarm just to watch the water ruin us. We let it. We say yes to the
flood. We dance in our ruined silks and wet velvet, knowing the party is always ending, knowing it never
really does.
Copyright ยฉ Daryl Bruce
Daryl Bruce (he/him) is a queer scholar, poet, and writer based in Kjipuktuk/Halifax. A recent graduate of Concordia Universityโs Creative Writing MA, he is currently a PhD student at Dalhousie University. His creative work has appeared in The Malahat Review, The New Quarterly, PRISM, and others.
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