Category: Uncategorized

We were eating breakfast
at the hotel when dad got the call.
Rushed to the hospital,
opened the door to your room,
found your body on the bed.

Dad collapsed on top of you,
wailing from deep inside himself,
for you, his father, a sound
I’d never heard before.
It turned the Earth upside down,
like it was trying to keep the sun from going down

Full of life the day before, you woke,
asked the nurse for a bottle of wine
and a glass for me.
She shook her head.
You tried your best to laugh,
grinned and winked at me.

It’s that wailing that keeps me up tonight,
sitting at my desk, drinking
from a bottle of wine
staring at your picture,
wanting it all back—

The Christmas eves at your house,
on the carpet, your back against the couch,
I’m sitting next to you,
you ask if I love you like a dog or like a puppy,
your laughter booms across the room,
when I say both. You squeeze my shoulder,
say I love you with such a tenderness
it brings me to tears remembering the sound.
I can still hear the sound.

The apparition of faces in the crowd.
They pay more if they’re airport bound.

The apparition of faces in the crowd.
Invalid cards make lower sounds.

The apparition of faces in the crowd.
I did not think that Ezra Pound
Could so encapsulate my views
(On platform crowds, that is, not Jews);
Few faces are remarkable.
Did you just board? I can’t recall.

Come, friendly bombs that fell on Slough.
Petals, on a wet, black bough.

Clarice had a little lamb,
His fleece was white as snow,
Until the night they chopped him up –
When he got a blood-red glow.

Clarice can hear the little lamb
Still screaming in the night,
She tries to save him in her dreams
But never wins the fight.

Clarice loved that little lamb,
Thought it was a darling.
I love the way she lingers here,
My poor and injured Starling.

Clarice asked me what I’d have done
If the little lamb were mine.
I said I’d have ate his liver
With some fava beans and wine.

Queer as in Weird

Queer as in
unsettling adults

by pecking a boy with a rattail
on the lips
(my first grade teacher
calling my parents concerned
about my sexuality)

by fumbling with words,
saying that I felt like a boy
when I was around pretty girls
(my second grade teacher
telling me never to speak this
to another living soul)

Queer as in Strange

Queer as in

climbing trees in skirts
playing soccer in a sweater set
crossing my ankles over my knees
chewing gum with my mouth open

and hearing: “girls don’t do that”

wearing pink pantsuits and red lipstick,
a bisexual bob of neon peach,
a marriage of drag and comfort
to my brother’s wedding

wrapping my arm around my partner
in their green-brown faery dress

tucking away my amusement
tucking away my dismay
when I hear the straight ladies:
“I didn’t know I could wear a suit!”

Queer as in

patiently walking a new-met photographer
through the nuances of out-ness

and filing away the tenderness
his wondrous love for his wife
her smile like a camera flash
the purest language of artist’s adoration

and remembering the first time
I saw my beloved smile

Queer as in

unpinning their wig after a long day
drawing bobbies from behind their
tiny pointed ears like precious coins

smoothing my hand over their afro
hoping to soothe their tender roots

and them telling me: that
was more intimate than sex

Queer as in

choosing not to fight she/her
from people who don’t know me because
I have bigger problems than confusion
and casual indelicacies

Queer as in

most people want my complications
only to spice up the bedroom

yet I allowed no one to steal them,
family silver and gold tucked in my bra
no more painful than underwire

Queer as in

I am still here
and Wickedly Weird

Queer as in

I know the boring, straight, binary
skinny blonde I was supposed to be
is living it up under the hill

just as Strange as me

After Robert Browning

That’s my last Duke peering down the parapet
With his councilor breaking out in a cold sweat,
As he shows off his Frà Pandolf, his Brancusi,
Sculptures he neither made nor bought. Boozy
With inheritance, his orchards full of cherry
Trees stay well-tended, his banquet-tables merry
With goblets and grape-leaves stuffed with pork;
Conjuring the smell of duck roast makes me retch.
Thankfully I would have been made to fetch
Linens or flutes and would dally in the kitchen
Galley with simmering pots, never to pitch in,
Mind you, that would reek of liberal entitlement,
But rather to vex John Locke’s enlightenment
And dream of a hocking a loogie into the soup.
My raison d’être? Breasts that wouldn’t droop
And managing the arrangement of piano sheet
Music and staying silent, demure, agreeable, neat
In appearance, always deferent to the mighty
Duke, who lent me his name. But I’m Aphrodite,
Not a 1650’s housewife. My smile is my shield
Against—how should I put it?—what men wield
Implicitly and arrogantly as biological right,
Providing us the stale binary of fight or flight—
I chose the latter. See you later. Let him give
Commands to someone as secretly combative
As his staff, whose names, and children’s names
I know (not he), the one person who blames
Herself less than a flower. Yes, a faint half-flush
Springs from my throat, lilies from a paintbrush—
Monet’s, or an Edo Period master of ukiyoe’s
Lacquer-tinted woodblock prints of kabuki shows:
A transitory, infinitely sorrowful, floating world
Captured so perfectly wistful in a smile unfurled,
Though he failed to notice, it was never the same
Smile—sometimes it conspired to hide the shame
Of being disregarded or ogled again, other times
It curled contemptuously, plotting horrible crimes;
Rarely it struggled to comply or brazenly to flirt,
More often, offered casually as an untucked shirt.
Ironically, it was never a Duchenne smile—which,
Wife of a Duke and all—and still makes me twitch
To remember the last grin to crinkle the corners
Of my eyes with crow’s feet. Not a foreigner’s
Sense of having dreamt a destination before a trip,
But a leaf’s recall of once being a seed. Ownership
Is fiction, but there he is showing off his bronze
Neptune taming a seahorse and his stuffed swans,
The coat of arms with his nine-hundred-year-old
Name. Just ignore the trace and smell of mold
Never quite rubbed away fully with linen cloth.
Imagine once I was stuck in his jar like a moth,
And now I finger potter’s clay instead of sapphire
Cluster earrings and build my own roaring bonfire
On the beach where I scissor with a scullery maid—
No one will ever convince me I should have stayed.

I was a scrappy little thing,
short, no-fuss hair,
T-shirts & jeans,
questionable hygiene
the term then was tom-boy
I don’t know what they call independent, strong-willed, opinionated little girls now

He was the neighborhood bully
big and smug, followed by toadies
I can’t remember why I nailed him but I surely did
I straddled him, held him down
and saw the fear in his eyes
that was enough

I knew I was supposed to be sorry
but I wasn’t

It was a dark and stormy night
When everything changed.

It was love at first sight,
Things were new and strange.

Swore I would never fall
For I am clever as a fox.

Hit reality like a brick wall,
Felt pain strong as an ox.

For all good things
Must come to an end.

Time moves on
And time is not your friend.

Of course sticks and stones
Break your bones.

And boy his words
Sure did hurt me.

But all is fair in love and war
And he honestly was a bit of a bore.

Only a matter of time
Before I got over you.

Simply went out to find somebody new.
A method tried and true.

Not quite head over heels.
He’s a bit of a diamond in the rough.

But brave as a lion
And there where the going gets tough.

They say all’s well that ends well.

Could be happily ever after
Or the calm before the storm.

Time will tell

(For Rowena Hill)

I

That dark night
You left them
To their variety

And stepped out
In the rain
Beyond the threshold.

Would they ever guess
What you search for
In this strange hour?

Would they ever know
That forest paths
Grow into nights?

Not for them
The knowledge
Of the wild deer:

Behind the eye
The rending tiger,
The burst of blood.

You called out
But the pitch
Of your voice

Was not for ears
Grown dull with
Casual sounds.

Ah, woman,
The forest listens,
Stops in its walks

And waits…waits
For your approach,
Hesitant, anxious.

Under the first tree
You stand transfixed
As night drips on-

Crystal drop after drop
The sky. The tree,
The path and you.

II

Green upon green
Adumbrate till
Darkness is all.

Strand by strand
Your tresses spread
One with night.

Only the fireflies,
Those mocking stars,
Dare the beast.

The drunken laughter
Echoed behind you
Oblivious to all:

The cry of the stag
Summoning its heard
Away from the prowl,

The shriek of the nightjar
Freezing its victim
Before the kill,

The silent feet
That forever run
Past all that run.

All, all ignored
By hearts that shut
The night out.

The cricket rubs
Its wing again
Softly yet it rains.

The first tree stood
Hesitant on the edge,
Hesitant were your feet.

Beyond the edge,
Deep within,
Resonates the growl.

Fear strikes its
Adze upon the bole,
Nothing else is heard.

III

You are an imprint
Of deep darkness,
A tree of night.

The beast of prey
Crouches on your branch,
Silent walks the eye.

Upon the back
Of a rearing forest
Slither the rain drops.

The salt of blood,
The sweet of flesh,
Wake the fire.

Only a kill,
A smothering leap,
The crunch of teeth,

Breaking the skin
In a gushing red
Can soften the breath.

You crouch there
All sinew and memory,
A placental night.

Beyond the trench,
Within the walls,
Talk the masks;

Safe in their
Assumptions of time,
Of day, of night.

Irreconcilable
As the glacial lips
Of yawning crevasse

They talk of you
Beyond their reach,
Laugh their hatred.

You are that hint
Of deep darkness,
The tree of night.

Two feeds diverged on a blue-lit screen,
And sorry I could not check them both
And be one user, long I leaned
And stared down one as far as seen
To where it spiraled in endless growth;

Then took the other, just as fair,
And perhaps with content more enticing;
Because it was trending and full of air,
Though as for that, the views seemed rare
And had me too much time mispricing.

Both that morning equally lay
With likes and shares that none could save.
Oh, I kept the rst for another day!
Yet knowing how clicks lead on to stay,
I doubted if I’d come back and behave.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two feeds diverged in a web, and I—
I took the one with memes to try,
And that has made all the dierence.

In this house, where walls feel close,

I juggle school and chores, barely compose.

Cooking, cleaning—tasks never cease,

While my thirst for knowledge finds no peace.

They say education should light my way,

But my studies are scorned at the end of day.

This life feels like an unexpected cage,

Where joy and growth can’t take center stage.

I’m always afraid: what did I do wrong?

What sparked their anger, made them respond?

They think it’s stress that clouds my mind,

Or am I doomed by traits of my kind?

I’m strong enough to weather this storm,

But for others, I must keep up a form.

To shield them from this life so cold,

While my true self starts to fold.

How can I give what I’ve never known?

A peaceful life, in this house overgrown

With fear, worry, and endless tasks,

Where simple joys are hard to grasp.

This home, a maze of constant dread,

Leaves no room for hope ahead.

I long to break free from these chains,

To find a place where my true self reigns.