Blissful moments in June
The sweet sound of reel
Baited line making delicate splashes –
Fantastic fishing bliss
The sweet sound of reel
Baited line making delicate splashes –
Fantastic fishing bliss
Father’s Day approaches.
I no longer have to worry
about the awkwardness
of spending time with my Dad,
but we still have to see yours.
Easter and Mother’s Day
were filled with
ugly political commentary,
transphobic rants,
and racism.
You have told me
I don’t have to see
your family again.
I don’t want to cut off contact yet.
You tell me
you don’t think
they’d act that way
if they knew I was trans.
I feel like we will lose them
once they find out.
Letting go of your family
is not an easy thing.
I have come to care about them
over the past decade.
I have bonded with your father
and we tease each other
like my grandfather and I used to.
You talk about
how he will miss his buddy
when I come out as female.
I don’t talk about how
he is one of the last father figures
I have left.
The family is not gathering this time.
We will have a private lunch with your father.
This somehow makes me more anxious
than the whole group being together.
Perhaps it’s the pressure to play the part,
straight cis male.
More attention on me.
I miss just talking,
just being together,
without having to hear
everyone’s politics
and prejudices.
Sometimes I wonder if it’s worth it,
potentially losing both our families.
I wonder if it’s selfish,
even though you are willing to pay the price.
I don’t know what to do
except to take this
one holiday at a time.
Upon revisiting the mall from my childhood, I found it had wizened
in my absence. A tacky indoor playground, open exclusively
Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays, has replaced the double decker carousel
I used to admire as my parents dragged me back to the car. Instead of cheery
plastic giraffes, display cases hawk Kraft gummies and other candy anomolies. Shops my family used to frequent, the Gymboree
whose memory lives on in polka
dotted boxes that hold Christmas presents each year, the Disney Store whose whimsical
facade I’ve all but forgotten, are gone, succeeded by unsellable empty spaces,
or worse, fast fashion outlets
and secondhand DVD retailers, these establishments no more permanent
than a dying man’s wheezing gasps.
Thank heavens for Great American Cookies, the feeble heartbeat
of the mall I remember. No matter how much Amazon’s convenience infatuates
us, we haven’t lost our respect for the humble biscuit. The sugar cookies,
are just like they used to be–crust coated with crushed rainbows,
chewy center soft from heat lamps, aftertaste
just sugary enough to make me search for a still-functioning
water fountain, but not too cloying for me to regret
nibbling on sweet nostalgia
before the mall of my childhood flatlines, exhales its last.
With paper and a pen
Write letters and create words
Words form poems, stories, and books
Some are true others make-believe
If you have a story to tell
Write your letters and create your words
Share your poems, stories, and books
Grab your paper and your pen
Now let the magic begin
The daylight hours stretch over the gap
between the knife wound,
do you feel it,
the two sides of you
so far apart?
So far
you’re still human
delicately,
tightroping the lines
of every neuron,
every sun ray
pierced into pale skin.
The sun sinks herself into you,
you slink out of your head
into the expanse of light,
do you trust it?
In the badlands of groundlessness
you are above it all:
the hobbyless,
braindeads,
the cars like pills,
rolling away.
Task after
task after
noon
you swirl
into mania.
The dangerous hours come
without warning, knowing
you’d never heed it and settle.
Do you fear them?
Do you embrace the way it comes,
knocks you into consciousness?
You’ll start shaking after sundown
like a shark caught in the gluttony
of new death.
Whirlpooling
into some
cold-blooded
train of thought.
Do you reassess
the names you collect,
wrapped in their translucent orange
cages?
Everything is
a cage,
your skull
is always
the prime example.
The walls start answering your prayers,
because you prayed for a response,
now you’re housed in some
god’s mouth, do you gatekeep
every secret you found?
Do the thoughts grow
and calcify around you
until they’re big enough
to live inside?
Push away every
dial tone,
sunshine child,
fish gasping
at the hit of
oxygen.
Become the last of your kind,
like a mantis eating the others,
undiscovered but do you care?
Do you care to exist at all?
Imagine you are standing on the side of the highway and it is a bright sunny day and you have your thumb out looking for a ride and imagine a car stops with a nice young couple and you look in the backseat and there is a birthday cake. But the voice in your head tells you not to get in the car even though it is a nice young couple with a birthday cake in the backseat. So what do you do? Imagine you get in the car anyway and they let you off a little ways down the road by an off ramp and imagine you get to the top of the overpass and you realize you’re not sure which way you are supposed to go and so you go the wrong way and later it hits you. That is why you shouldn’t have gotten in that car. It’s kind of like that.
in my sleep,
Summer will slip
through my fingers, inflamed
red knuckles, like sunlight
in a canopy of clouds overhead
The fields will ripen with reclamation
Fields of flowers will falter unto
uncontrolled unconsciousness,
as the wind wanders one way, only
There will be no rain, yet
no sun either.
On Monday, we broke it.
It slipped from my grasp. Or he inadvertently dropped his side.
I got caught up in momentum. Or he got distracted in stillness.
We didn’t smash it on purpose is what I’m trying to say.
On Tuesday, he stepped on a few of the larger chunks.
Ground them into the carpet as I ran behind with a dustpan.
Why I needed to dispose of the evidence is beyond me.
We were both fully aware it was broken.
On Wednesday, we attended to other matters that didn’t require it.
Stuff on our to do lists. Delinquent matters.
Matters of state. Statements of purpose. Proposals for new work.
Certainly nothing for pleasure.
On Thursday, we remembered what it had been good for.
And we noted the lack, maneuvering around the empty space.
We found other ways to get to the point. And established placeholders.
Fillers. Yes, we fashioned a bit of fluff on the periphery.
On Friday, we manufactored a facsimile from materials
on hand. It came out like a joke. Remember? Someone laughed.
I don’t think it was either of us. But, again, I wasn’t paying
enough attention. My memory can be quite hazy.
On Saturday, we started using the faux as originally intended.
The rhythm was clunky until I offered to grease the stuck point.
He had some sort of grease accessible in a back pocket.
We worked together to target the zones most in need of oil.
On Sunday, it just kind of slipped from our consciousness.
We took it for granted because, frankly, everything was going so smoothly.
I forget what the issue even was, to be honest.
And he seems to have misplaced whatever instructions came in the box.
Y’all, I’m so tired.
Aren’t we all?
Same story every day
another shot, another fire,
death, and toxic air
all while we work for the ones
sponsoring our collapse.
They cut us off at the knees
hoping we won’t notice,
but injustice doesn’t sit well
and it isn’t our job to please
those only serving themselves.
Let’s stand up together and
remind them we’re all people
we all deserve safety and delight,
hope for better, and a chance
to exist here on earth without pain.
