Poetry

Originally posted on Tumblr.



a.f.a.b., october 2019

a. f. a. b.

There’s a woman in my window. She’s staring at me and I’m not sure how I like it. I think she might be me...but it’s hard to know whether that’s acceptable or not. Acceptable. Acceptable. Do things have to be acceptable? Someday I may be that woman, but maybe not. I wonder what turns me off of her. Is it her face? Her womanhood? Her sureness, her unwavering gaze? She has eyes like steel, but soft steel, melted steel, but steel nonetheless. She wears a purple sweater and the glass is frosted so I cannot see her face if I glance out of the corner of my eye. She doesn’t scare me. But she is not my friend.


There’s a man in my compact. He doesn’t look at me. He avoids my gaze and twiddles his thumbs but he’s scared of something. I don’t know what he’s scared of. I don’t know if I should be scared too. I don’t like him. I don’t think about him very much.


There’s a person in my mirror. They quirk their eyebrows at me and they question me. Or do I question me? Am I the person? Am I the man? Am I the woman? They have hair like mine, buzzed on the sides but grown out a bit. There’s a button, or a sticker or something, stuck to their shirt. I can’t read the letters; they fuzz and blur and twitch like ants. 


I run my hands over my body and I freeze. Is this right?


I write my name and I write “she” and I say “any, it doesn’t matter.” It does matter. But I don’t know how it matters.


There’s an ocean somewhere, and to venture in it you need a strong boat. My boat is built of twigs. It’s not safe in the ocean, not yet. I avoid thinking about it.


—Who is the woman?


stage, november 2019

stage

womanhood, asks the man on the corner / i don’t provide

it would be nicer not to perform / two lines on my chest

cloth wrapped on my head / two people, one body

sometimes i think of two bodies / which one am i


two days before rosh hashanah 2019, november 2019

two days before

rosh hashanah

2019

there’s a swell to the voices—

four thousand years and I’m only hearing it now.

I’m shivering, and it’s not just because

I kissed you, and you’re next to me

I kissed you in the dark after the fire

I kissed you and your mother hugged me.

I’m shivering

and the notes climb

(your mother leads them).

I want to kiss you again?

I want to kiss you again;

I turn to Ruth and Naomi’s page

and I whisper the sounds to myself

something connects us,

us and them,

us, and them,

and the old people look at us kindly.


comp het, november 2019

com·pul·so·ry het·er·o·sex·u·al·i·ty

/kəmˈpəlsərē ˌhedərəˌsekSHəˈwalədē/ 

noun

1. crying in the passenger car seat, he puts a hand on your back, unsure of how to respond. “i just wish i weren’t straight,” and you’re crying, because it would be so much easier that way, it would justify everything, everything would make so much sense.

2. i’ll marry a man, you tell yourself, you tell everyone, and he’ll be funny and a good dad to my kids. in your journal you write your ambitions: to be married, and to be married to a man. why do you have to force yourself to write that? why do you have to reassure yourself?

3. you’re so nice, you’re such a great ally, someone tells you, and you smile, and nothing in the back of your head asks you why you like those books and those tv shows and those pictures so much. you’re just a really great ally. of course you are. 

4. one day you take out your journal, breathing hard, and you scribble in it

do I like like Carolina?

do I like like girls?

(i kind of want to)

5. of course you’ll marry a man. you’re such a good ally, but that’s all you are. that’s all you’ll ever be. you’ll marry a man.


hand in hand, november 2019

hand in hand


what connects us / is it our belief in the intangible? / is it our reverence and anger, intermixed and inseparable? / is it our disconnect, our distance from our homeland / or perhaps something else / when we met we fueled each other’s hunger / wanting to know what’s like, we wanted to know what it’s like / two strings, knotted, cannot be untied.


pencil on paper, october, november 2019

pencil on paper; october

i’ve got a page in a book

all the self portraits i’ve ever drawn

come on, then, and look

one is wearing only a bra


one has messy bob cut hair

one has a headscarf on and

one has borrowed headphones there

one is staring down at its left hand


in pencil one looks straight at the camera

with its neck so well-defined

one is happy, chin tilted down

its face might even be something like mine


my lover is my veil, november 2019

i hide my hair in the touch of her hands

i protect myself by laying near her

my body belongs to no one

but choosing her feels so nice

/

someday we’ll grow old

how does that old song go?

two cats in the yard

and we’ll wear each other’s old clothes

/

what kind of society tells you

that you’re a mistake

over and over

hit a man when she’s already down

/

but now i’m with her

something about that clicks

i curve next to her easy as 

unbridled delicacy


candelight, november 2019

candelight

“brucha yah,” and i welcome in my lover

the sabbath queen, the shekhina

dance as we dance on the kitchen floor


her people will be my people

i will follow her until my memory falters

and even then my fingertips will remember her skin


in vain, november 2019

in vain

today i shut my finger in the hinge of the fridge door

and as in pain i hissed g-ddammit i was pretty sure

that the name of g-d had been uttered before

in worse ways than this, condoning genocide, war

i was certain my g-d and religion were worth more

but yeah, i won’t take Her name in vain, it’s fine, sure.


sitting in the attic, december 2019

sitting in the attic

the world is kinder than you think

a little softer, a little gentler

a little less rough around the edges than you’ve been led to believe

there’s something around the corner that wasn’t there yesterday

and you’ll never walk the same road twice

the jazz music is playing

and the pages come off the printer

and there’s dinner on the stove downstairs

and life is good for a while

i think i’ll keep it that way

because while we may believe in a heaven that’s fake

the alternative is to believe in a hell


missing you is starting to feel like a permanent state, january 2020

missing you is starting to feel like a permanent state

one.

it’s unfortunate how it all happened

i asked, you declined, we tiptoed in a little dance

like tiny ballerinas in a music box, circling each other but

never touching.

two.

what a shame this is how it happened

we were orbiting stars and if only we collided

it wouldn’t have been much

 but a collision’s more than nothing

a couple kisses are more than nothing

three.

our lines look like a pair of chromosomes

(an ex?)

they nearly converge at a point but

then they separate again

clinical under the microscope. 

how unfortunate.

prayer for the genderfucked, june 2020

PRAYER FOR THE GENDERFUCKED

You are crooked, you are bent, you are ze and it and fae; you have the words of your elders on your lips and flames in your hands. You have shadows behind you and spikes on your shoulders and anger in your eyes. You have picked up the swords they have grown tired of and claimed them as your own. You name your stars in a universe that will slaughter you if you even dare to name anything at all. 

Someone will love you, crooked and bent and all; someone will take your mascara stained face in their hands and sing to you in a raspy voice and run their fingers over your chest and through your hair. They will kiss your battle scars and pockmarks, they will call your name and there will be power in it. 

Stake your claims, find your love, your loves, your lovers, pick your words, pick your battles, use the reaper’s scythe to hack your hair, draw your future, name yourself fifty times over. The utterance, the prayer, screaming into the dark: someone will fucking love you!

My Gravestone is Censored, August 2020

My gender is faggy dyke my gender is queer my gender is the rocks and stones that bruised me my gender is fuck you my gender is gay man my gender is lesbian my gender is bi pan poly sexual my gender is all my gender is none my gender is both my gender is neither my gender is if and but my gender is why my gender is why my gender is queer queer queer my gender is fairy fruit faggot my gender if queen my gender is poof my gender is homo my gender is aro ace spectrum my gender is fucking weird my gender is holes my gender is gender