A sky full of starless city yellow
poison tonight while the moon decides
whether to push or pull. These open streets
were lighter once, because no one left them.
to winter. Your body is Indiana
strung between better states.
You found a man who thought
everything worthy was broken,
wanted to fix roofs and engines
haute couture, touch parade, codex of refusal, faux doughnut, authentic glaze, fat white, flat cat
hair, stick & poke baby, poetry is willing the infection out the page, a strain of silk like a virus up
the esophagus & into another’s mouth—
rust hanky, not the cowboy but his horse, femme gays, t-girls & t-boys, stone butch lesbians,
genderfuckers, anarcho-queers, those who have yet to be, those who wear poetry like a tear in the
there is life here…
if you look hard / drink hard
an intrinsic brightness of being
to the gas-station dreamers
You wash your hair with the soap Perla. You get dressed in a long-skirted baro’t saya. You have a
red typewriter, one you borrowed from your Lola. You arrive at school, one of three women in a
class of ten. You raise your hand for your American teacher in recitation. You think your
seatmate is muy guapo.
I love your crusty right earlobe, pressed into a suitcase of sleep,
rinsed clean like a dumpling under steaming shower to stave
away arthritis nerves & wanting; Remi, I love your micro-penis, curled
& dangling like a secret in thrush & thicket, engorged from years
of hormone creationism; Remi, I love your flat chest sprinkled with hairs
these aren’t my woods anymore / the trees I knew were cut down / and replanted by something / domesticated / malleable / for the paper factory / down the way / the wild tangle / of snarling underbrush / tilted saplings strong enough / to survive hurricane season / creeks rising from the rocks / then sinking into the marsh / sloppy roots crisscrossing over / exposed limestone / in the soil
One mother gave her child to the sea //
another gave it to her 24-year-old
daughter // one swallowed witch hazel
My mother tossed me into Boy Scouts,
where I scouted the boys,
eager to rub sticks and start a fire.
I hated balls (sports balls),
but she wouldn’t give me Barbies.
A drop of blood in the river fades,
red dusk falling beyond the water.
Remember how the moon threw silver
at our tongues? I loved you for the way
you cared for speckled things: our dappled
First a tarmac, strangers deicing plane wings
my father at arrivals, a worker yelling sir
as he leaves the car to come hug me
then we’re driving & he’s telling me
Danny’s not really alright, how he fell into a literal hole
I think now of leaving something
behind without my name.
This house, with windows just replaced
to last another twenty years
It was loud, almost a crack,
like a shot—not a gunshot
but a shot-put shot dropped
on a stage. My mother’s forehead
hitting the bathroom floor.
Each word of my eulogy lingers.
Punctuation carries the most weight.
Punctuation holds most weight in the mouth.
My tongue untangles from its sentences.
thought my glass smelled like puke
or maybe the whole bar or maybe
the guy leaning over me no he
smelled like cologne smelled like
this other time at a bar smelled
i hope it follows you, circling like a bird of prey. i hope it sticks to your shoe like dog shit. i’m not doing well, and i think you should know. i hope this email slithers over the tile on your kitchen floor and sinks its teeth into your ankle.
I pull my curtains open, lean on the sill,
sweating. Headlights bob uphill toward me.
Randy’s car, rattling tin an hour late,
swerves to park across the road: flicker
through the windshield, thumps of rock radio.
When you died, the grooves
in your back turned to rivers
on which I set sail everything I stole from you:
trope is unhinged femme / prevents me from writing / Annie Wilkes hobbles a man because bipolar, because obsessive / Dr. Robert Elliott murders because transgender, because toxic masculinity, because self-hatred
dawn at the train station:
hushed voices scatter last night’s news
into the air like goldfish the
morning light plucks it pours
it over pillars & swims at your feet.
One way, you pass a house with chickens in the yard and you think, “Ah, I’ve always wanted chickens. I’d be better with chickens.”
One way, you go everywhere by bike and live in a flap tent alone. Your thighs are sculpted like marble.
One way is full of bubbles: bathtubs, gum, champagne, Jacuzzis.
Twenty three from you, my mother
half my body/mind
for sure my blue eyes
but not my right-handedness
which has made my life easier
I have always hated writing about myself
I’m not photogenic
And I am afraid that my horniness
Would get in the way
But this is where we’re at
my neighbor drapes the strings the first weekday in december,
neon gold cords for inflatable mickey, santa, & snowman
melted simulacra until sunset when the front lawn descends
into a madness of bright blue icicles, rainbow garland
across the garage, pink orbs of love encircle a glittering present,
Faces fixed in separate
boxes, lips stiff,
eyes flat with fatigue,
I am so often smiling.
A lot of black people live [here]
And they – got big houses
And the houses all look kind of
the same
The minute the bullet pierced his face
the sky so moon-flooded collapsed into a rhapsody
and the city swales swelled with lilac wildflowers—
it was a winter of untameable fire
and bitter nostalgia, brother. . .
As of this hour, the sun has been up some time and is bright as August begins
and an invisible hand moves among leaves, tickles them in their deeply green
luster. I’m thinking of you, the look in your eyes—weary. I want to fill this house . . .
On this tepid day
while the COVID clock ticks past
one-hundred-eighty-thousand casualties
we are digging shallow holes
into a Vermont hillside to lay down a line
of low-bush blueberries [. . .]
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