That winter was long and full of records: 
         snow up to our chests and the chill deep in our cells, 
                  the forever rain and with it, the mud that dripped 
                           like sap and became a part of us.

         Then came days of 
                  grass as soft as fleece 
                           bees flying like comets and goats 
                                     rotating around the creekbend we followed up until

                                              water water water was all we could hear, 
                                      until wild wild wildflowers were all we could see— 
                    a galaxy of them twinkling 
                            their bright violets and yellows and oranges,

a reminder of what has endured 
        what has always been 
                   what is now ready to be seen.

—

Like a lizard, I bathe           naked on a rock  

          and let the south wind and let the waterfall

and let the buckeye            lead me.  

The horizon is a line I cannot yet  say.

       The screen shows me what I haven’t seen in months,  

what others see: curves and a blur.

       Not a thing, but any thing. 

Finally, I am the animal that I am.

Cause we’re not allowed in public, not really.
My mom thinks everyone is enamored with my beauty,
But I know they are surprised to see one of us
Living. Outside is a stage & I’m a pretty player.
I love what I see on the other side of myself.
A man tells my mother he couldn’t take the doll,
Because my heels, my legs, my tattoos stopped
Him from looking me in the eye. He wants to meet
Me, to apologize for eating me from my sole up.
He’s the worst I’m aware of, but not alone in lust-
Filled gaze givers. All I want to tell my mother
About me. How they like my parts. She thinks
I’m unclockable until I speak & I know she’s trying
Not to blame me for any danger I dodge. Desire
Is in the eye of the beholder, but I live in the empty
Hands of discombobulated bastards. Disintegrate
In their salivating. I am shards of selves
They wish to suck between their teeth.

I used to think my body craved 
annihilation. An inevitability, 
like the slow asphyxiation 
of the earth. Yoked to this body 
by beauty, its shallow promises 
I was desperate to believe, 
too fearful to renounce my allegiance 
even with its hand closing 
around my throat. When I chose 
myself, I chose surrender. God 
is the river that remakes me 
in its image. I didn’t know what 
was waiting on the other side. 
I swam through it anyway. 

All I ever wanted to be was a song— 
something soft and light held in the mouth 
sung sweet beneath the coming dawn. 
I return to that first desire—its gingham blouse 

rubbed against the heavy pull of flesh hovered
in a dark that I can only recall as that dark.
I ask what grace awaits that tender tendril’s suffered
stretch of green wide enough to tear a stark 

light out from under a troubled sky? I return
to the center of that smallness and sing its wounds—
jagged rasp crooned until edged out and earned.
I was the only boi I knew dreaming in soft bruise. 

And it made me as beautiful as the blood’s slow sprawl
at my knee, right before punching a bullying boy to crawl.

                                       subterranean
                                        dreaming grace roots
                                                                               we feast from (:)
                                 calls your hand tender
                                                   turned toward the margins
                                 in which we
                                                       stir ancestral / souls
                                       against hegemonic

                                                                          nerves

                                       with what found & forged love ,
                                                       if in alignment our /
                                  bodies defy
                           all the social could expect

                                    run seams im/possibility
 

             & all the flesh we’ve
                          fought for
                                       & the ways of being &
                                                     knowing & fucking        
 

                                                                  on history’s tide
                                                               receding , sure tears,
                                                                                             façades
                                                                horror , food ,
 

                                                                       umber busy pulling
                                  out of the ordinary, demands
                                                               , antinomies, borders
                                     in the composition of hands
                                                                   
                                     re:visioning
                    lay ripe heads as the sun
                                                             thins

                                                               dizzy scent’s course
                                       to place cupped on the chest
                                                                               for a kinetics of otherwise

I beg for invisible fire.

Every night I pray to love,
please invent yourself.

I imagine a place after this place
and I laugh quietly to no one
as the hair on my chin
weeds through old makeup.

When I go to sleep
I am vinegar inside clouded glass.
The world comes to an end
when I wake up and wonder
who will be next to me.

Police sirens and coyote howls
blend together in morning’s net.
Once, I walked out past the cars
and stood on a natural rock formation
that seemed placed there to be stood on.
I felt something like kinship.
It was the first time.

Once, I believed god
was a blanket of energy
stretched out around
our most vulnerable
places,

when really,

she’s the sound
of a promise
breaking

Come second heartbeat sounding in the breast
Come prismatic light dissembling
Come familiar spirit  Come bare-chested in the weeds
Come private imposter  Come hidden ballast
Come sudden departures  Come stress without shape
Because belief is odd  Come swaggering answer
Come invisible ink  Come beatific scrawl
Come as squirrels are climbing backwards
Come as dogwood blossoms come apart
Come strumming an unspeakable power ballad
Through a torrent of rain with cheeks flushed scarlet
Come down the rusty metal slide
Come belted kingfisher flapping
Come lavender asters wheeling
Come loose, a sapling lengthening
Come honeysuckle  Come glistening

again, playing with fire
unpleasant reminders burnt away
fumed extreme flat
again, playing
hollowed out body
boundaries left wall'd
status stand-ins
in cement house
where concrete slogans
armed with body conflict
expunge paradise
from later day subdivisions
clear of all excessive green
impending chaos classed encased
this sub communion
burns present state
planned projects illuminated
shop window redemption
burning impending chaos from
premiere profiles
surrounds geographic definition
again, something’s burning
a sentence interrogation
uniform playing fields
for level capital
for later gender compromise
unquestioned calculus
between country and ministry
heaps of miles
codes sent
which way
where, when
no since
since
it is the will
a burning universal

The villagers are
watchful

in their booths at
boston market

The boys living on
sulfur

and talking about
feelings

and memory The
united states

is the collective
process of

demanding feelings
and a certain

memory I would live
on synthetics

but i hate fragility
Lonely and afraid,

my women sing, there
is no father

in me They talk about
anything

a limit allows There
is hope

of forgiveness, but
my american

corpse has been such
a disappointment

I would live on
feeling safe

and spilling secrets
It is confusing

the plain people
passing

like potato blossoms
When i first

met a trans person at
age 7

she served us mashed
potatoes

at boston market
Mother winced

and statistically it’s
unlikely she

kept the job
I am worthy

of eating food i tell
myself There

is some hope of
forgiveness

for boys I would live
on their plastic

It is confusing that
words trick us