Another banishment

of-the-eldest-son story, he says

            he was the coal burning

his family’s hatred,

            the son who wouldn't stay

for his mother's madness.

He walked with the mute girl

            out of the locked ward

one summer afternoon into a field

            where she looked

in slow motion, pointed to the hills

            and sun, bent

down to finger one blade of grass,

            then another. She picked

a daisy.

            Flower, she said.

Then

he took her back

locked her in.

Ah’m sick, doctor-man, Ah’m sick!
Gi’ me some’n to he’p me quick.
    Don’t— Ah’ll die!

Tried mighty hard fo’ to cure mahse’f;
Tried all dem t’ings on de pantry she’f;
Couldn’t fin’ not’in’ a-tall would do.
    An’ so Ah sent fo’ you,

“Wha’d Ah take? “Well, le’ me see:
Firs’—horhound drops an’ catnip tea;
Den rock candy soaked in rum,
An’ a good sized chunk o’ camphor gum;
Next Ah tried was castor oil.

An’ snakeroot tea brought to a boil;
Sassafras tea fo’ to clean mah blood;
But none o’ dem t’ings didn’ do no good.
Den when home remedies seem to shirk,
Dem pantry bottles was put to work:

Blue-mass, laud-num, liver pills,
“Sixty-six, fo’ fever an’ chills,”
Ready Relief, an’ A. B. C.,
An’ half a bottle of X. Y. Z.
An’ sev’al mo’ Ah don’t recall,
Dey nevah done no good at all.
Mah appetite begun to fail;
Ah fo’ced some clabber, about a pail,
Fo’ mah ol’ gran’ma always said
When yo’ can’t eat you’re almost dead.

So Ah got scared an’ sent for you.—
Now, doctor, see what you c’n do.
Ah’m sick, doctor-man. Gawd knows Ah’m sick!
Gi’ me some’n to he’p me quick,
    Don’t—Ah’ll die!

               1

Thank god he stuck his tongue out.
When I was twelve I was in danger 
of taking my body seriously. 
I thought the ache in my nipple was priceless. 
I thought I should stay very still 
and compare it to a button, 
a china saucer, 
a flash in a car side-mirror, 
so I could name the ache either big or little, 
then keep it forever. He blew no one a kiss, 
then turned into a maw.

After I saw him, when a wish moved in my pants.
I nurtured it. I stalked around my room
kicking my feet up just like him, making
a big deal of my lips. I was my own big boy.
I wouldn't admit it then,
but be definitely cocks his hip
as if he is his own little girl.

               2

People ask me--I make up interviews
while I brush my teeth--"So, what do you remember best 
about your childhood?" I say
mostly the drive toward Chicago.
Feeling as if I'm being slowly pressed against the skyline. 
Hoping to break a window.
Mostly quick handfuls of boys' skin.
Summer twilights that took forever to get rid of.
Mostly Mick Jagger. 

               3

How do I explain my hungry stare?
My Friday night spent changing clothes?
My love for travel? I rewind the way he says "now" 
with so much roof of the mouth.
I rewind until I get a clear image of myself:
I'm telling the joke he taught me
about my body. My mouth is stretched open 
so I don't laugh. My hands are pretending
to have just discovered my own face. 
My name is written out in metal studs 
across my little pink jumper.
I've got a mirror and a good idea
of the way I want my face to look.
When I glance sideways my smile should twitch 
as if a funny picture of me is taped up 
inside the corner of my eye.
A picture where my hair is combed over each shoulder, 
my breasts are well-supported, and my teeth barely show. 
A picture where I'm trying hard to say "beautiful."

He always says "This is my skinny rib cage, 
my one, two chest hairs."
That's all he ever says. 
Think of a bird with no feathers
or think of a hundred lips bruising every inch of his skin.
There are no pictures of him hoping
he said the right thing.

not back, let’s not come back, let’s go by the speed of 
queer zest & stay up 
there & get ourselves a little 
moon cottage (so pretty), then start a moon garden 

with lots of moon veggies (so healthy), i mean 
i was already moonlighting 
as an online moonologist 
most weekends, so this is the immensely 

logical next step, are you 
packing your bags yet, don’t forget your 
sailor moon jean jacket, let’s wear 
our sailor moon jean jackets while twirling in that lighter, 

queerer moon gravity, let’s love each other 
(so good) on the moon, let’s love 
the moon        
on the moon

Nothing today hasn’t happened before: 
I woke alone, bundled the old dog
into his early winter coat, watered him, 
fed him, left him to his cage for the day 
closing just now. My eye drifts 
to the buff belly of a hawk wheeling, 
as they do, in a late fall light that melts 
against the turning oak and smelts 
its leaves bronze. 
                             Before you left, 
I bent to my task, fixed in my mind
the slopes and planes of your face; 
fitted, in some essential geography,
your belly’s stretch and collapse 
against my own, your scent familiar 
as a thousand evenings. 
                                       Another time, 
I might have dismissed as hunger 
this cataloguing, this fitting, this fixing, 
but today I crest the hill, secure in the company 
of my longing. What binds us, stretches:
a tautness I’ve missed as a sapling, 
supple, misses the wind.