Koss
Koss is a queer non-binary poet/writer/artist with she/they/them pronouns. Find their work in Hobart, Cincinnati Review, Spillway, Diode Poetry, Five Points, Anti-Heroine Chic, The Lumiere Review and many others. They also have work in or forthcoming in Best Small Fictions 2020, a Diode anthology, and Kissing Dynamite’s Punk Anthology. Koss’s hybrid book, One for Sorrow, is due out in early 2021 from Negative Capability Press. Find more Koss on Twitter @Koss51209969, Instagram @koss_singular, and http://koss-works.com.
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A Dyke Cowgirl Takes Herself on a COVID Taco Bell Date
All the single ones in the Taco Bell parking lot,
cars strung in a line, like beach people, lonely
in the COVID cluster. One guy sips a Coke through a crook
straw, occasionally checking out the others, flings chips
at the seagulls through an open window. They say
Mexican pizza is on its way out. Another thing to feel
sad about. I only occasionally indulged, once
in five years, but attach my sadness to its demise--
like flies on the week-old taco bits, curb-blown, missed
by the gulls. The drive-thru is jammed from dawn to close,
a not-quite-palpable girl voice calls me “honey bunny,”
eager to take my order. Two bean burritos with sour cream,
diet Coke, light-on-the- ice—less than five bucks.
I was always a cheap date. Hand a five to a large hairy man
in glittery bunny ears fixed to a plastic tiara, singing into his mask,
hump dancing, and in-the-moment-happy. They work sixty hours
with overtime that inches them just out of the poverty bracket
if you discount health insurance. Essential American fast food
to get us through the pandemic. Disposable workers. Yet here I sit
in my car, and this meal is all I’ve got today.
The honey-voiced girl passes me my Coke
and sticker-sealed bag in a plastic, no-touch container.
I feel a bit like a shit, as I, unlike them, am not essential,
and am without song, without bunny ears shedding
their glitter into the exhaust-filled air.
cars strung in a line, like beach people, lonely
in the COVID cluster. One guy sips a Coke through a crook
straw, occasionally checking out the others, flings chips
at the seagulls through an open window. They say
Mexican pizza is on its way out. Another thing to feel
sad about. I only occasionally indulged, once
in five years, but attach my sadness to its demise--
like flies on the week-old taco bits, curb-blown, missed
by the gulls. The drive-thru is jammed from dawn to close,
a not-quite-palpable girl voice calls me “honey bunny,”
eager to take my order. Two bean burritos with sour cream,
diet Coke, light-on-the- ice—less than five bucks.
I was always a cheap date. Hand a five to a large hairy man
in glittery bunny ears fixed to a plastic tiara, singing into his mask,
hump dancing, and in-the-moment-happy. They work sixty hours
with overtime that inches them just out of the poverty bracket
if you discount health insurance. Essential American fast food
to get us through the pandemic. Disposable workers. Yet here I sit
in my car, and this meal is all I’ve got today.
The honey-voiced girl passes me my Coke
and sticker-sealed bag in a plastic, no-touch container.
I feel a bit like a shit, as I, unlike them, am not essential,
and am without song, without bunny ears shedding
their glitter into the exhaust-filled air.
Commentary
Koss on “A Dyke Cowgirl Takes Herself on a COVID Taco Bell Date”:
Loosely based on real events (a small-town queer’s small COVID adventure)—and a poetic expression of how capitalist values manifest in the pandemic, this Taco Bell poem touches on labor exploitation, pandemic isolation, consumerism, and the absurdity of these junctions, while simultaneously celebrating the power of the human spirit.
EIC Christine Taylor on “A Dyke Cowgirl Takes Herself on a COVID Taco Bell Date”:
The editorial team loved Koss's "slice of life" piece as soon as it came over the transom. And some of the big questions that Koss deals with in this poem are ones that I myself have been wrestling with since the start of the pandemic, namely what defines "essential" and what space does that hold in our lives, both privately and publicly? Our essential workers are often ill-paid—how are we justifying the risks that they take on the frontline every day?
Loosely based on real events (a small-town queer’s small COVID adventure)—and a poetic expression of how capitalist values manifest in the pandemic, this Taco Bell poem touches on labor exploitation, pandemic isolation, consumerism, and the absurdity of these junctions, while simultaneously celebrating the power of the human spirit.
EIC Christine Taylor on “A Dyke Cowgirl Takes Herself on a COVID Taco Bell Date”:
The editorial team loved Koss's "slice of life" piece as soon as it came over the transom. And some of the big questions that Koss deals with in this poem are ones that I myself have been wrestling with since the start of the pandemic, namely what defines "essential" and what space does that hold in our lives, both privately and publicly? Our essential workers are often ill-paid—how are we justifying the risks that they take on the frontline every day?