prayer of a queer poet

May my words always strike discomfort in the hearts of transphobes.

May my story always make prejudice mouths reconsider their earshot.

May my definitions of sex, love, memory, and family always bewilder the cissexist.

May the space I take up always be filled with soft touches, the scent of hair and sweat, conversation and consent.

May you always feel appreciated for having lit a fire in my ribcage that warmed my hands and spilled onto paper like this.

May you feel unlocked, inspired, renewed, and less alone for having known me.

When they try to bring you down with their meanest slurs, darkest fears, and loudest threats, may you remember to be kind to yourself while you apologize for nothing.

post traumatic stress dysphoria

what's a voice without breath
what's a wound without skin
what's art without memory;
a phantom limb clenched in pain and
a sober life that never held much potential for us.
there's a grinding ache in my groin where he grabbed me
telling me it wasn't real where he dug his nails in
whispering that I wasn't a real lesbian
because he didn't know how to tell me
I was the hottest genderfuck whose mouth he ever watched
cradle half-truths about hearts and bodies and sex
he felt the ether, it was tangible,
he didn't know how to worship it so he tried to take it
tried to survive by forcing himself inside my head
like a nail traveling in a tire,
like an air bubble in my brain
and he drinks himself to sleep at night so he doesn't have to watch
me eating slices of my own queer heart with perfect table manners,
a reminder that raping me didn't win his homophobic family back.

queer conversations around fifteen feet of flames

I. Whiskey shots in lime green cups lined up on the headstone
make us loud and then quiet. We smile wide to pay our respects
to him
and the stories that entertained him that are gone forever now.
Because we cannot, will not, return to those dark days
the armor weighed us down so we left it behind.
But these stories made him laugh for a while, and he gave us many wonderful things.
Tonight we will try to enjoy them.

II. Your time in the military makes me want to tell you everything I know
about being lonely and being afraid,
being erased and silenced and threatened.
But I don't want to remind you of what you're trying to forget tonight.
I'm glad you're here not there
even though there are worse places to be.

III. The smoke from the tires tastes sour and burnt,
the way I feel when they say "boy parts" and "girl parts"
lazy words to hide their discomfort with sex and honesty.
I'm not sure quite what it is they're trying to say
but I know it has nothing to do with me.
My breath is sweet like booze and fruit when I try to explain
with a story that's bitter like drunken bile
in a language so common it's background noise
that no one will understand, let alone remember
when they just hear incoherent pain.

IV.  The half moon watches us congregating in a midnight field
dying embers and hoarse voices, just like every summer for the last ten years
the last ten thousand years
and momentarily I imagine that she's smiled down on queerer bacchanals than this
where there was a version of me in less desperate torment
who roamed more freely but was no less fluid
and maybe even proud of this body, maybe celebrated
on this very same grass.
Maybe she's someone I could meet someday.

V. He remembers me like a good dream from years ago.
We talk about money and passion, the future.
The more hopeless I get, the more enthralled he seems.
I get more and more corporeal until I ache from skin to spine
while he becomes a ghost I can see through without ever even wanting to.
There was a power in this for me when there was no other power to be found.
But now that I've moved people with sentences far simpler than these
he provides no solace or amusement, no victory for me.

butch is a word

Butch is a word my mother growled at me
when I was a teenager who reminded her too closely of the adolescense she barely escaped
it was my purple nailpolish and thick chain necklace
and each tear I shed was a reason I thought that was my feminine side.

Butch was a cloak that kept teachers and counselors from seeing my rape
in the crowded hallways filled with other shadows my cries were drown out
by what, I couldn't quite tell from down there on the chipping tiles
but butch was the dent, ever so small and shallow, my skull made in the grey metal locker door.

When I left my shell of a body to fend for itself between 2002 and 2008
my butch went with me.
I was replaced with a doe-eyed robot that I couldn't quite love
but couldn't truly hate.
She still knows her name and answers when I call out
in my sleep, remembering and reliving the feeling
of being both at once invisible and a target.

Butch is a word I whisper to myself in the mirror first or second thing in the morning
it holds my hand when I travel my own curves
like a desert wasteland strewed with the bleached bones left by scavengers
their glaring whiteness a testement to how long ago they were judged by the birds as unfit to eat.

Butch is a place in the shade, sheltered from unrelenting questions, like
Is anyone strong enough to hold you?
Are you deep enough to embody the love you need?
Will anyone read all the way to the last line?
If nobody does, then what are you doing here?
Is this still a poem if only some of the words rhyme?
Does anybody swoon over a butch?

couldn't say

_{*excerpts taken from Cats, Atoms, Gyrons, Aether, and the Universe: Something for Everyone by Frank M. Meno}

the origin of prayer

I pray to the monsters with their fangs in my brain
because nobody else is coming.
Their mad eyes swirl as they listen to me
pretending they understand english.

I saw the giant pendulum and forgot it just as fast.
I was allowed to see the future but I had to leave my past.
No memories for souvenirs just  strange scars by the score
For every vision I've forgotten I will have a million more.

Explain rape.

Explain rape. Explain lesbian sex. Explain boundaries. Explain paralysis, explain your silence, explain the gaps in your memory. Expain being small and queer and female in a big, straight, male war zone.

Explain your feverish, terrified responses to other people's expectations. Explain your anger. Explain your shaking limbs. Explain your nightmares, explain your trust issues, explain your panic triggers. Explain the lump in your throat, explain the distance in your eyes, explain where you go when you're not really here.

Explain how you survived those suicidal thoughts. Explain that people said you were 'too cute' for anyone to hurt you on purpose. Explain the evil in the eyes of a rapist who knows no one will believe you.

Explain how you left town to get away. Explain the explosion of feelings and memories and tears and relief when you realize you're queer. Explain the worry that people will disregard your identity if they find out what happened to you.

Explain that the fear will never fully dissipate, explain there are only good days and bad days. Explain any part of your existance without referencing the above.

what are you doing write now

1.
I am mu
because of foot and finger prints
apologies and accusations
and cliches.

2.
I can read and replicate,
listen and legislate,
but it's all useless
because of that goddamn river metaphor

3.
I would help you get whatever you need
to be whole again,
buy back what they cut out
this lack of specificity is treason.

4.
I took notes on my hallucinations.
The implications are endless.
Let's study.