Steven Cordova

A PROPOSAL ON THE COLLECTIVE NOUN FOR TWINK

I propose twist as the collective noun for twink.

Tonight, for instance, a twist of twinks,

will take a stroll up 8th. Said twist

will come upon a score of bachelors.

Said score will get its collective panties

all in a bunch over the attractive twist.

Not too much later a sloth of bears

joins the fray & by the crack of dawn,

the twist, the score & the sloth are spent.

A dropping of pigeons, a ruination

of rodents and a yech(!) of cockroaches—

none of whom have the time of day

for the contemplation of collective nouns—

take back Chelsea. The gayborhood

was theirs to begin with.

Steven Cordova is a Brooklynite whose poems have most recently appeared in Poetry I$ Currency and Pleaides and are forthcoming in Grist.