Find and share the perfect poems.
Hushed whispers in an undisclosed room
Take it out of the girl
a child, boyish in nature their smallness magnified.
Outcasted—the soft bodied animal you are
determined unruly animalia,
what survives inflation & inertia?
The body is a set of complex feedback systems
nothing is as it appears
the coexistence of a beard & breasts
evidence of the body’s willfully defiant nature
The body’s resilience amid the promise of perish:
somehow the child survives their own hand
the day’s weary edge inverted toward grace
A child, boyish in their nature & barrel shaped
survives sedimented against the residue
of dunes, soil, leaf litter, & the bodies of a lesser
What couldn’t be excised
your boyish nature
your untamed phylum, your small heart pulsing loud
notes against the night.
When they finished burying me, what was left of me
sent up a demand like a hand blooming in the fresh dirt:
When I’m back, I want a body like a slash of lightning.
If they heard me, I couldn’t hear their answers.
But silence has never stopped me from praying.
Alive, how many nights did I spend knelt between
the knees of gods and men begging for rain, rent,
and reasons to remain? A body like the sky seeking
justice. A body like light reaching right down into the field
where you thought you could hide from me.
They’ve taken their bald rose stems and black umbrellas
home now. They’ve cooked for one another, sung hymns
as if they didn’t prefer jazz. I’m just a memory now.
But history has never stopped me from praying.
When I get the call about my brother, I'm on a stopped train leaving town & the news packs into me—freight— though it's him on the other end now, saying finefine— Forfeit my eyes, I want to turn away from the hair on the floor of his house & how it got there Monday, but my one heart falls like a sad, fat persimmon dropped by the hand of the Turczyn's old tree. I want to sleep. I do not want to sleep. See, one day, not today, not now, we will be gone from this earth where we know the gladiolas. My brother, this noise, some love [you] I loved with all my brain, & breath, will be gone; I've been told, today, to consider this as I ride the long tracks out & dream so good I see a plant in the window of the house my brother shares with his love, their shoes. & there he is, asleep in bed with this same woman whose long skin covers all of her bones, in a city called Oakland, & their dreams hang above them a little like a chandelier, & their teeth flash in the night, oh, body. Oh, body, be held now by whom you love. Whole years will be spent, underneath these impossible stars, when dirt's the only animal who will sleep with you & touch you with its mouth.