No amount of performance
of gender
will ever be 
enough
for the idle gaze
of the wretched 
moral binary

I apologize if this is an affair,
If these months of true love turn awry,
But if your softness and warmth means anything
Then this connection must be stronger than love,
In a world of billions, I’ll choose you everytime,
No matter how you look,
And I know they say what’s on the inside is what counts,
But that’s also not true,
However you look, whatever’s inside,
I love you because of who you are,
Your aura of family and warmth hits my heart every time,
And whether you’re from velvet upholstery and tuxedos
Or flickering lights and mismatched plates,
You are what I want.

It’s soft behind my eyes again,
I suppose it has been for a while
Drums pushing blood,
Squeezing it through hoses
Sugar-blood pools on meat
And I begin to rot

Pressing into deep shades of violet,
Into stars and lines

The engine starts behind my ears again,
Grinding gravel through gears
Powder and shards
Sift down to soak everything up,
To stop the bleeding

A ghost in a calm home, a practiced smile, ever-shifting.

instructor Lolita
we work out to her energy
lost in her storytelling

I don’t always have     a poem in me. 

    Sometimes, the writer’s well

I draw from     is shallow

   and my bucket    comes up 

empty. I dip     and I dip,    but

    the word water     remains

out of my reach.     So,

    I pull up the bucket

and sit it     in the grass

    and wait     for the clouds

to fill it up     with rainwater. 

    Only once it begins 

to overflow     can I shape

    the water into words

that glide     and     wave 

        across the page.

And once it is empty,

    I can finally     rest,

having purged the restlessness

    that surges     in my stomach

and begs to be     tapped

    or else it will explode.

my favorite is one by Jusepe de Ribera

i guess you don’t just stop being Catholic

          in the eyes on your baptized skin

          in the catechisms piled like receipts

          in the memories of sorting through saints

but no one can stop you from getting worse at it

i look at the narratives like a pagan in the crowd

with a face made like a fist, a fist raised like a spear

pleased to see he is as breakable as i am

i look on the devotionals

like a sadist

someone paid to have Christ look handsome, to make him haggard

miserable or unflagging

someone paid to make him look their way when they pray

a white brand of white skin, a cloak like suffering

someone paid to put him man-made, man-made-low in their room

but here he is

not demure nor ecstatic nor passionate

instead he stains you with a gaze like a bruise

a gaze that suffers unabsolving on its own

I am comfortable in the chair why can’t I stay in the chair why do they keep pushing me they know I can’t stand and I sure as hell can’t walk but they are taking me to physical therapy again and that male nurse is telling me today is going to be the the day and when we get to the room I see the parallel bars waiting to fuck me but here we go they are positioning my crutches so I can practice “staging” as they say, balanced over the crutches pressed under my arms as I prepare to transition to the parallels, one arm, then the other, letting the crutches fall away as I grip the bars and keep my arms flexed so I don’t fall again and it doesn’t take long before my arms begin to burn and my fingers tingle and the therapist is telling me to focus on swinging my hips in an alternating pattern even though I have no more feeling in my hips than I do my legs and I can’t even make my dick swing anymore and that male nurse is saying you did it you did it I saw you take a step and I almost believed him and the therapist is telling me to slide my arms forward and let gravity be my friend and I tell him I ain’t got no friends and I am done and he says no you’re not and we are staying here until I reach the other end which is ten feet away but might as well be ten miles and I think about crying but curse instead and slide my left hand forward four inches and lean my torso and slide my right hand forward and my dead legs dangle beneath me and I straighten my arms so my heavy shoes, made to swing like a pendulum with the least movement, can shift foward and the therapist is pretending now, too, but he and the nurse and me all know this is bullshit and the chair is where I am going to be in ten minutes and in ten years but I will be back in here tomorrow trying and I remember when I was nine I had a paper route and one year we had snow and my mother bundled me up and my dad said get your ass out there and deliver the papers and the snow was eighteen inches deep and each step felt like one giant leap for mankind and I thought I would die in the drift that morning and I quit my paper route and I swore I would never go through that again and now here I am newly paralyzed, scarred face, dead passenger, and my ass is back out in the cold and the route is ten feet long but really ten miles and now I am deciding I will not give up after all and I will move my legs move my legs beg them to move pray to God they will move and I can’t hear the therapist or the nurse anymore and I can’t see my arms gripping the bars I see only the blizzard and I think that may be the sun over there and I guess my soul does take a step and I think my body says okay this will work and I lift my arms to say praise Jesus and my legs are there and something shifts inside me and the light changes and my mother takes my right hand and the passenger takes my left and they whisper to me today is the day. you did it, you did it, we saw you take a step.

Okay first time driving on the highway so…

my vehicle is about twice as wide as yours but here we go and mirrors and we’re getting up to speed and merging and minding our lane lines and giving trucks extra room and one car length per ten miles per hour is a good rule of thumb to give please keep it below eighty honey okay now you’re in both lanes I know I can’t help gripping the door it’s an instinct yeah that warning light is telling you to consider taking a break because it can feel the car veering off and 

             back and you 

    jerking the steering wheel to 

                            correct that and oh-

kay

that’s 

some

heavy 

rain

wow

slowwww it

down and 

here just

let me turn on these

hazard lights and 

I really should have checked the

radar I guess

yup it’s blinding water okay just

aim for the headlights in

front of us

yeah the sirens are scary but help is on the way

eyes forward cuz the wheel goes where you’re looking remember

no baby don’t just try you gotta do 

use the

braaaaaake

Jesus honey

this must be THE longest stretch of I-75 without an exit in sight

oh praise

okay start looking to get in the off ramp

lane and

swing it into that parking spot

deep breaths

great job

trial by fire

let’s get out and I’m just gonna trade and give you a break. 

Yup.