1-4/30
1/30
Someone should have told her, the
child-me, her blue-turning held-breath-face
tantrum she threw for sugar, attention, the right
TV program, someone should have told her
what she wanted, if I keep wanting it, happens
and always wrong the terracotta vase smashed
on his kitchen floor, wife videotaping his bender,
I did that, because I sat in his class wanting him
for months, and wanting means wanting him
alone like this, broken, like my father alone
and turning towards me in terrible need,
this is what I wished, his loneliness, and the rest
doesn’t come, his trembling in my hand, never
never says because I know him from the red fluted hall
of the ribcage, I can come in where his wife
would never go, take up her empty throne,
someone should have told the child-me
about need, the poison of limitlessness,
how with that asking, there can be no reigns, a ship
studded with arrows, burning, no escaping
the escape, how I made him into the mystery
of him, the quarry in my head, and the lie
I told myself that wore his face is calling
I know what’s on the other side, the way
the granted wish is a curse, the bad djinn
twisting your want in his furious hands
2/30
Ode to Tranny Voice
praise the voice, the vocal folds’ mystery
apparatus, alchemy of air flushed
into a sound that is mine, praise
the muscle and harbor if it, praise that it is not
passable, that it tilts up at the end, and will not
be dissuaded despite my employment
of a specialist to coach it back down,
praise it for telling the truth, that I was raised
a girl which means inside of the syllable
is a second guess, an apology, praise the rote
and soulless speech pathology exercises
for opening the throat and praise my performance
of them even when I am unhappy, even
when I am on a subway platform
or walking in midtown or with my father
who parrots and mocks, praise it.
This juncture where silence
pours into you, the world you’ve swallowed
coming back out your own, whole, yes,
praise the bony cavities of sinus
trembling so rapid it troubles the air
praise the tongue whose small protuberance
is only the tip of a swath of velvet muscle
retreating around the throat, praise the catch
and buzz I can hear when I do not mean it,
which tells me I do not mean it, I have lied,
praise this means by which you know
I am here, you know
I have something to say to you
3/30
well, if I need it then I’ll die, I guess.
Volumes and volumes. Theory, metaphor, treatment.
Addiction is simple. There are two ways.
One is only the substance, that something is possessed
of such chemical magic that your body aches to rely
on it, to want more of it before it’s gone.
The other way starts before it starts, the hurt you can’t negotiate
then piece by piece you realize that there is something
you can do to not feel it, and then you make your life
into a church of that anesthetic, so you paint-marker
over the windows, shove rags under the doors,
so your devotion is total, no other world. And then, horribly
your god comes to its limit. If it is bad enough, and you are
lucky, and you work, you can, perhaps, put it down.
Learn a new lesson, that the world is survivable,
if you can stop resisting the pain, the pain of the resistance
will abate, and you’ll be left with pain itself. Which would
be fine. But what if nature doesn’t want me in it.
What if the power I got in the lonely church
was make believe and was still my only power
if without it, my original pain will wipe me clean
off the earth until I cannot breathe or wake, what then.
If I was right the first time, if it’s a love story. Me
and the mythic poison. Me and the bomb I have made myself.
4/30
here’s the shadow-lamprey who prefers
to curl in a posterior valve of the heart.
Its mouth, toothy ring, stuck to the red
velvet wall, and here the corner of artery
where it likes to set up its sofa, its bag
of Cheetos, its potbelly unrubbed only because
it has no hands. How do I know? The tiny fiber-optic cameras
proceeding through thoracic incisions
come to shine their little spotlights on his living room.
The lamprey says, “squatter’s rights,”
says it’s the owner’s fault for hoarding
so much shit in there and what can you do?
He’s running the show. Mayor of detritus,
reigning over all that you took into your body
and couldn’t love, sugarnumbed longing,
grease-marbled upholstery, see how he attaches
again the gauntlet of his teeth unfixing the red ribbons
from their corridor, their calling, and I’m writing
a petition to get him out, letters to the editor, the national guard,
some soldier to come in and carry the little bleeder
out by the scruff. But he won’t leave. Not
while he’s being fed. The camera seeping green
and dusk, him at the center,
explaining, he only eats what’s dead.
Someone should have told her, the
child-me, her blue-turning held-breath-face
tantrum she threw for sugar, attention, the right
TV program, someone should have told her
what she wanted, if I keep wanting it, happens
and always wrong the terracotta vase smashed
on his kitchen floor, wife videotaping his bender,
I did that, because I sat in his class wanting him
for months, and wanting means wanting him
alone like this, broken, like my father alone
and turning towards me in terrible need,
this is what I wished, his loneliness, and the rest
doesn’t come, his trembling in my hand, never
never says because I know him from the red fluted hall
of the ribcage, I can come in where his wife
would never go, take up her empty throne,
someone should have told the child-me
about need, the poison of limitlessness,
how with that asking, there can be no reigns, a ship
studded with arrows, burning, no escaping
the escape, how I made him into the mystery
of him, the quarry in my head, and the lie
I told myself that wore his face is calling
I know what’s on the other side, the way
the granted wish is a curse, the bad djinn
twisting your want in his furious hands
2/30
Ode to Tranny Voice
praise the voice, the vocal folds’ mystery
apparatus, alchemy of air flushed
into a sound that is mine, praise
the muscle and harbor if it, praise that it is not
passable, that it tilts up at the end, and will not
be dissuaded despite my employment
of a specialist to coach it back down,
praise it for telling the truth, that I was raised
a girl which means inside of the syllable
is a second guess, an apology, praise the rote
and soulless speech pathology exercises
for opening the throat and praise my performance
of them even when I am unhappy, even
when I am on a subway platform
or walking in midtown or with my father
who parrots and mocks, praise it.
This juncture where silence
pours into you, the world you’ve swallowed
coming back out your own, whole, yes,
praise the bony cavities of sinus
trembling so rapid it troubles the air
praise the tongue whose small protuberance
is only the tip of a swath of velvet muscle
retreating around the throat, praise the catch
and buzz I can hear when I do not mean it,
which tells me I do not mean it, I have lied,
praise this means by which you know
I am here, you know
I have something to say to you
3/30
well, if I need it then I’ll die, I guess.
Volumes and volumes. Theory, metaphor, treatment.
Addiction is simple. There are two ways.
One is only the substance, that something is possessed
of such chemical magic that your body aches to rely
on it, to want more of it before it’s gone.
The other way starts before it starts, the hurt you can’t negotiate
then piece by piece you realize that there is something
you can do to not feel it, and then you make your life
into a church of that anesthetic, so you paint-marker
over the windows, shove rags under the doors,
so your devotion is total, no other world. And then, horribly
your god comes to its limit. If it is bad enough, and you are
lucky, and you work, you can, perhaps, put it down.
Learn a new lesson, that the world is survivable,
if you can stop resisting the pain, the pain of the resistance
will abate, and you’ll be left with pain itself. Which would
be fine. But what if nature doesn’t want me in it.
What if the power I got in the lonely church
was make believe and was still my only power
if without it, my original pain will wipe me clean
off the earth until I cannot breathe or wake, what then.
If I was right the first time, if it’s a love story. Me
and the mythic poison. Me and the bomb I have made myself.
4/30
here’s the shadow-lamprey who prefers
to curl in a posterior valve of the heart.
Its mouth, toothy ring, stuck to the red
velvet wall, and here the corner of artery
where it likes to set up its sofa, its bag
of Cheetos, its potbelly unrubbed only because
it has no hands. How do I know? The tiny fiber-optic cameras
proceeding through thoracic incisions
come to shine their little spotlights on his living room.
The lamprey says, “squatter’s rights,”
says it’s the owner’s fault for hoarding
so much shit in there and what can you do?
He’s running the show. Mayor of detritus,
reigning over all that you took into your body
and couldn’t love, sugarnumbed longing,
grease-marbled upholstery, see how he attaches
again the gauntlet of his teeth unfixing the red ribbons
from their corridor, their calling, and I’m writing
a petition to get him out, letters to the editor, the national guard,
some soldier to come in and carry the little bleeder
out by the scruff. But he won’t leave. Not
while he’s being fed. The camera seeping green
and dusk, him at the center,
explaining, he only eats what’s dead.