10/3/2014

at high noon, and
i think, high tide
She looked up at the shy pisces sun, which is never brilliant,
tripped over a brick, traced her long shadow on the sidewalk
with her finger in the air
and i had to remind her I was standing right behind.
she'd say "right, that you are" I was tempted to
add that I wasn't quite sure about that.

I noticed our shadows were contorted, stretched
like papyrus,
I was remembering how she'd announce at times with no
order: "I am happy" or "I'm sad" while watching T.V.
or walking down the lane.
But now she didn't quite seem to say much.

And I was always asking "Amy you happy? Amy you sad?
Amy you OK? Amy you fine?" Amy you ok? Amy you ok? Amy you ok? Going well? Fine?
It was like that

we held hands in a modern art museum is how we met
"It's a good picture," she had noted of "My Grandparents, My Parents and Me".
I had looked sidelong to its neighbor, a picture of a trashcan
trying to desperately scream about some societal ill
lost in translation forever.

I had already given up when she had given me a 'goodday'
I didn't care about seeing her anymore
but it still hurt.

My name? Jane. Bryant Jane. Born a man
or at least Earth Planet tells me my parts belong to a boy, whatever that is.
In second grade kids teased me and I went by my middle name
as a form of protest against them.

Looking back, I was feeding them.
Or was i starving them?

I read once the name Jane is considered bad luck
in English royal life
I entertained this just as I did my taut masculinity
this 'girl' Amy found it cute. but

remember how i had ended up asking for her opinion on everything in the end?
because she would not say it on her own volition?

10/9/2014

   It might have not happened,
for fear of it happening long ago.
   I can remember it well with varying
degrees- I cannot at the same time.
   It was hot? Sweltering? The Hoosier lake
that after independence day
   Everything lived cloaked in ambiguity for me
but I just knew I was happy
   O, how the score was settled for me
That summer day
   at Ken- Ray.

sprints on the university track,
January chill causes steam to
rise from my head and arms.
my leggings feel too small now and
the Gatorade tastes like chaser,
I'm getting the hang of it
finally.
you push me, telling me "Durham's got the hills"
you've got the calves, you get the girls,
and I'm the one who runs with you
I'm the one who tries keeping up.

1/5/2015
Carolina, Puerto Rico
"Llegó la adolescencia. Me sorprendió la vida
prendida en lo más ancho de tu viajar eterno;
y fui tuya mil veces, y en un bello romance
me despertaste el alma y me besaste el cuerpo.

¿A dónde te llevaste las aguas que bañaron
mis formas, en espiga de sol recién abierto?" - Julia De Burgos

so i sit here sickly inspecting
the light's gone dim
in a room where the sun shines through all of the slats
in the nestled crook nape of the Canovanas hills.

at the cape
of my head i'm trying to come to
terms with the fact.
the fact of what?

just the
fact.
I think of all the days I

spent sitting in this too sunny
room the too soft bed
my too hard body making prints
all over the caramel sheets.

It is my last day ever in this house
I touch the tiles and hear a Lomas rooster
crow and for what
does it crow?

A cloud moves away from the sun
the light is all over me now
and the only creeks

i've ever felt are the Bedford creek
and the Burnt Hill River of my town
I think of Loiza

and it is with a slight poignancy
and a bit of relief
i remember my plane
leaves in three hours.

I live with all the women I've broken
in a cottage in the country
and in the evening we drink tea.
We talk sometimes of love
but mostly we speak
of how much we hate me.

If you’re losing your soul and you know it, then you’ve still got a soul left to lose."*
Charles Bukowski

I miss you
holy ****, I miss you
I'm not saying it out loud

because i can't even say it in my head.
I am
going to hell.

He tells me he likes
his girls selling drugs
just like him

I smile a bit.
I am hated despite my
despises my

and i stretch out a bit
hey, how about
that eighth you promised me?

hold up, girl
we're almost to my house.
and i think maybe it's your fault

then i remember my morals threw themselves
out of the car
and at what highway?

"Because wherever I sat—on the deck of a ship or at a street café in Paris or Bangkok—I would be sitting under the same glass bell jar, stewing in my own sour air."*
Sylvia Plath

And we sat dumbly on his too big mattress
a cigarette stain here, there
his pants still on the floor

we stared at eachother through the mirror
oh God, what a recurring theme
in my life
and maybe his.

**** water,**** water
******* nosebleeds and
cracked knuckles

our little litany
but please, he'd beg
don't do any of those til

college.
Walked back to the theatre
where i would tell my parents

we were.
"Honey baby,
i'm 21, not 16"

and for a
second i almost believed it
and then he smiled.

"Oh honey
baby, you know the
expression."

Honey baby
Honey baby
He'd

grab my hair like
a ragdoll then
remember to stroke it

in the four thirty pm
sunsets of december
I was reminded of a

sort of sentimental tenderness
and he asked me in the
cigarette perfumed room

"Honey baby,
why're your eyes
misty for?"

I wanted to say
the way he held me
unabashedly

reminded me
of
oh, nevermind.

we sat in his room
staring dumbly at eachother
twice maybe

me trying to squeeze in
just a little debauched
moment

last of the year.
He put on his glasses
then his pants.

I told him i felt sometimes
as if i was living with a vitriolic
air round me.

The wool spread slept dumbly
at my stolid crossed
underwear legs and he just said

"Are you kidding?
do you even know what
just happened?"