Goethe's Last Words Were "More Light"

for N, a golden shovel with frank o’hara

there’s heaven, and there’s you. standing in the light and
holding a tupperware of soup. kin: the sound of someone
leaning against me in the late afternoon—this evening, it is you
and not a woman to kiss alight coming into my living room. love,
i know—we keep trying to die at the door of heaven. then, god enters.
america taught me: being an immigrant is to kill the 
person you used to be. in this room
the december light dies in my lap, like the days i used to dream, and 
isn’t being queer saving ourselves from dying? my father says
gay is sin, sounding like the chinese word for heart, and wouldn’t
you also hear: light is dimming while you 
stand in it? the apertures are opening and closing. like
the visa officer’s window. like the technicolor of my imagined life. like america, the
light keeps changing its mind. i had faith once, and healthy eggs—
now, i offer my fingerprints and a scan of my face for a 
brightened evening at the bar. you and the hours cool across the little
booth. maybe heaven will be different 
this time tomorrow. maybe it’s this: more time. more today.

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Janelle Tan was born in Singapore. Her work appears in Poetry, Michigan Quarterly Review, Cincinnati Review, No Tokens, and elsewhere. She lives and teaches poetry in Brooklyn.