If you’re gonna
Die in the apocalypse
Drop out of school
Dump yourself into that little
Ditch you made that was stemmed from
Decades of anxiety and
Depression
You might as well look good doing it.
If your mascara runs in the eternal
Race to your dripping baby chin
It might as well be mixed with the glitziest
Eyeshadow you can afford
(Mine is hand-me-down from my mom,
Who has been called a drag queen too many times
For her to count but somehow
That makes me, her little genderless clown,
Feel connected in some cosmic way
To her ****** again).
Save your pennies so you can
Splurge at the thrift store on
Sweaters that go down to your knees to hide
Vaginas and ****, bits
That maybe you wanna be coy about today,
So all the people spitting in your eye can at least
Trip on your pronouns and your triumphant
*******
Can scrape the heavens.
You’re allowed to buy that tie, I mean
Easing the pain in your wrists and your heart and your stomach
Is done best in floral print,
In pop culture t-shirts,
In femme/butch/femme/hard/soft
**** culture, *** tantrums,
If you’re gonna get called by the wrong ******* name all day
At least look your best when you resist the urge
To send fists sailing into their face.
And it’s not just us but anyone,
If you’re ******* angry that someone keeps commenting on the size of your
Thighs the lush of your
Lips and some ******* keeps
Trailing you on his bike
Shake your studded gloved fist at him and tell him
THIS IS NOT FOR YOU, LORD OF THE *****,
LORD OF THE NORM, I PICKED THESE
FIVE DOLLAR SHOES FROM THE RACK OF GOOD WILL,
SHONE THEM UP LIKE I SHINE MYSELF
FOR MYSELF
WITH MYSELF
I AM MYSELF.

We shame roses
For their thorns
Despite our knowledge
That their purpose
Is to protect blossoms
From uncaring hands.

I carried you on my back
Like a sack of potatoes.
Back and forth and back and forth
Caught between Daddy Issues and
Words that call forth memories
That call forth pain that call forth
Vomiting Monday nights before therapy.

All of our VHS boxes are packed up neatly
In the attic between old photo albums of
Broken family after broken family after
Generations who don’t know each other’s
Stories. We’re ****** up.
That’s all we’ve ever been as a family.

And she sings jellyfish clouds
While he rhymes puppydog tears
Somewhere between the nature of agender,
One gender, two gender, red gender, blue gender.
They’re the first kid in generations to write.
They’re the first kid in generations to escape.
They’re the first kid in generations with mirtazapine dreams.

And no one lets them forget it.

Your nest in my heart
Is made of teal strands and meds.
We’re newborn fathers.

Two words in Spanish:
Mi madre. And with you, our
Wholesome home begins.

Goldilocks drops in,
Fills us with too much porridge.
West coast warms his core.

Fold away your wings.
We eagerly await your
Flight into our arms.

When I was small we had
faerie chimes
that filtered sadness through my window.
If my fingers,
then small and unskilled,
could catch the specks of dust
that drifted around my
blossoms,
then maybe I could make that sound.
When I walked down hallways,
my sisters would giggle.
In my home among homes,
sitting beneath nimbus and cumulus,
I could hear them chortle at
my mismatched body,
a sylph without a
breeze.
I am grown,
and scents follow me,
ravens peck at my window.
But I know the outside
cannot see the wings that calm
my skirting breath,
they cannot hear the chiming
of my sad, sad soul.

I don’t know how to rob a family
   of their daughter;
A peptobismol princess they bruised and stained.
   How do you erase an entire sister?
Where do sleepovers, makeovers, do-overs go?
   When the pronouns shift,
And the T seeps in, where will I tell them
   I hid their girl?
Blood is thicker than water in peeling families,
   But when the ransom doesn’t come,
How do I introduce a family
   To their son?

Here is my Essence:
God in his malice
Created a snowball,
The size of the New World,
Set it on the crown of the Cosmos,
Let it Roll,
Until Us in our innocence,
Crinkled the waste between our spangled digits.

1.
I flew into LA
At sunrise:
Clipped wings,
Pockets of nickels.

2.
I could have died
With my heart exposed
And lips silent
(It would have been easier).

3.
My repressed homosexual tendencies
Got me into your veins.
I can’t taste coffee any more,
Even if I drink it off your smile.

4.
Yes, my mind did go there.
My stomach knots when
I realize I want your hands
Hovering in the darkness.

5.
He doesn’t watch me at night
When your name is fleeting
And my heart throbs too fast.
This could have been ours.

6.
I don’t think women
Look as good in blue, with
LAPD adorning their heaving *******.
The gunshot still rings in my eyes.

7.
I wish it were zombies.
Let’s start over from here,
And you can wade my shallow puddle
To begin our end over again.

8.
They’re like us, but older
And younger, and blonder, and
More human than I could ever
Pretend to be.

9.
Goodnight.
It is empty in the abyss
That is the absence of
Your smile.

They say the apple doesn’t fall from the tree,
And that is why my center is rotted with worms
Instead of being baked into a humble pie.

Thank you for considering me
Part of the human species, someone
Who you might help up if they fell in the
Sidewalk (but only if they weren’t in your way).

You invoke my name like I’m a God but only
In your favor, when you need proof that you
Have the social capacity to stand someone different,
The ability to bestow upon me the honor of being “the queer friend.”

When I bite back I don’t draw blood, not like
You draw blood when you tell me I should try harder to
Look the part of the person that you saw on an hour documentary
That you refuse to admit pales in comparison to a lifetime.

Even when your burn is first degree you nurse
The chemicals in it, and by Monday I am laid out to dry
With all the other “queer friends” that didn’t make the cut,
Didn’t shut the **** up so you could grant your grace on

The gruesome instances that are my existence.

The world ends with a mouth full of cotton,
A misaligned bloodstream.
2:21 AM. The world ends with
Your lips, far away from mine
And mediocre poetry
Dotting the inside of
My eyelids.

Is this how God feels?
People pray to me when I am at my lowest, beg
For the ability to make it through a day that I have not
Yet made it through, and God (like me) can
Fulfill the purpose of a stand-in.

Is this how God feels?
When people call upon his (or her) (or zir)
Name in times of crisis, like when a bullet is pointed
Right between their eyes and they have one name to call out
To save them from an eternity ******.

Is this how God feels?
Fetishized and cried out in the dead of night,
Someone’s always yelling his name in ecstasy,
Or in pain, or in fear, or in joy, and it seems like poets
Drop him like a bomb, like a ritual, stark naked in their stanzas.

We had ***, to the Bell Spelunking
Of Andy Bird, Saturday night,
And when I stuck your ****
Into aghast chasms you said
There was nothing. Tingles
Pinpricks on your spine.
You cannot feel me.

Outside your glass eyes beneath
Dark cool lenses, and I am but
A freshly born babe, clutching
My sexuality in greedy paws,
Bashing the shell upon my chest.
I bit your ****. You cannot feel me.
It bled. You cannot feel me.
I am distraught over years of wasted dental work
And twenty cavities.

You only feel me when I am ***** deep
Brushing the holy grail of slash fanfiction
And in reality it's a messier, uglier
Business, and I don't know, I am a newborn,
I am a newborn, I was just born today
As a sinful lump of flesh, as
A lump on the log of love,
And we can never be married and
You cannot feel me.

No one wrote a book
On how to queer up the world.
I’ve been waiting for Volume One
On how to hate your body effectively,
Because all of the brats who spit in my
Cherry eyes won’t tell me what I’m doing wrong
When I say “it doesn’t fit.
It never fits. Will I ever fit?”

Because we’re one binary and the other, and we don’t
Fit quite between, and we’re doomed to be melting
Snowflakes in schoolyards. We’re doomed to tears,
And standing awkwardly between ‘boy’ and ‘girl’ sections.
They opened up their doors to us, those who fit
Comfortably or not so comfortably in either of the two
Slots (like maybe this is a gameshow, and I didn’t pick
The right door?) but they promptly
Threw us out when we tried. And tried again.
And failed and cried and threw our hands in the air like
Children, misguided, in pain, stubbing our toes on the door
That says “real suffering.”

Because our suffering isn’t real to a world that encapsulates it in
So many words as symptoms for a
Common cold.

SUFFERING was a word invented by a man
with a silver spoon and fork,
with a nice brain that matched their junk
a brain that didn’t whisper i love yous in the middle of the night
when you’re trying just to get some sleep
but your mind
echoes self-love where you can’t get it.

and that word is whispered to the back of my head
to the front of my chest
inbetween my thighs like maybe you’ll make a difference
if you express sympathy for a body,
just a body that oozes what you would call
misfortune.

but i am not your headline;
people like me are not your story,
you put me down with black ink on white paper
and your dichotomy echoes the insincerity
in your sincerity
the way you cannot understand that when you put
transgender or gay you expect it to mean tragedy.

i am not your tragedy
**** do not chain me to a stereotype
i am not “your trans* friend,”
a unicorn that has been trapped and ****** of silver blood,
my ****** chains me to a history of hostility and scars
that i have risen ABOVE.

i see your face fall when i say my body is beautiful,
and hear your hitching breath when i tell you i am just like you
a being with a body who is trying to see
the glory in mismatched parts
imperfect scars
and i am not SUFFERING
i grabbed the word from the dictionary
and shoved it down your throat.

in the Elbow of Acceptance
the Crux of Anxiety
they bore me like a rat child,
tail and all,
Squirming in the emptiness that is
Where?

in the Gashes of Deceit
and the Gouged out eyes of Dimness
i was raised, a satyr,
a nymph,
Shrieking in the vast expanse of
Who?

it is a question
Never Answered.

You act like you
Expect a cue:
Like we’re supporting actors
And your existence relies on mine
Or even worse MY existence relies on YOURS,
But I don’t need players who can’t hold their weight on a stage
With more than two spotlights.
You act like you need clues
When it’s up to you to get a ******* clue,
When it isn’t pink or blue you’re stuttering between
Green and yellow and I want to ***** all those colors that make you
“Uncomfortable” or “worried” for a future that I doubt you belong in,
Because let’s be real: It wasn’t a *******
Baby bib color that made me dread
My genitalia.

And we make grand gestures like it matters,
Like we are more than matter and if I tell you the same
Cockneyed stories over and over this time in the morning you will
Stay. Or the distance will become a nonexistent blimp on the surface of our
Own existence, I will exist within you, if I make grand gestures:
This will matter.
The overbearing distance between our physical bodies but our celestial minds.
I want to be real. I want to be real with you, be real with me,
Tell me the truth but tell me lies too,
Make me regret telling everyone who asks that the key is communication.
Is it communication or looking at someone
Someone bleeding on the ground, and still finding them fuckable,
As if Fuckability matters, as if Fuckability for fools is more than a need to
Touch base and touch **** like the world depends on it,
Like it is December Twenty First and the world is ending,
And we are millions of miles apart, and millions of words apart,
And nothing I have said yet can convince you or me that we are people who matter.
We matter to each other and it is scary to not know the confines of someone’s mind, wherein I float, wherein I remain stagnant as an F word,
Wherein I play charades to convince myself I am more than the men in my life.
I am Goodnight and Good Morning and please send me one more shred of light to hang on to, please give me the time of day, please let our states become one mass of existence, please make me Matter.

You were in the shower when the phone call came.
Your breakfast was in the toilet by the time it rang again.
You don’t answer. For days, weeks, and then it is
The three month mark, and she isn’t back, and you aren’t awake.

When you leave the house, and pick up the phone,
Someone says “I’m sorry for your loss.”
You say, “I’m sorry it wasn’t me.”
The words don’t come out right. The words don’t come out at all.

Every time you see a hummingbird,
You wonder if reincarnation is real,
And if she’d feel better as a bird, or a bug,
Rather than a bedridden set of destroyed lungs.

You’re not yet twenty-one and
Alcohol doesn’t sit well on your smooch-swollen lips.

When you hold his hand too tight
Your fingers gets sweaty from palm-to-palm contact.

It makes you think of the fact you are 75% water,
Or maybe 60%, and how your eyes burn in front of the computer screen.

You’re not yet twenty-one and
The doctor says you’re anorexic (you had fast food for breakfast).

White sage burns your fingers black.
The full moon pulls salt water from turquoise and home towns.

Maybe you’ll never see the beach again,
Or run in the water with childhood, clothes sticking to your thighs.

You’re not yet twenty-one and
Every day you consider giving up the race to it.

we’re hatred
in this warm, unhappy way
that seeps down our thighs like a child
******* his pants but we can’t see what they say:
when they say “look up at the moon” our eyes dance among stars.

we pretend
that the moon stands for
the somethings that are wrong in our lives,
like how bald babies don’t look our ways because we will
never ever ever be pretty, white daisies arching under the sun.

our cheeks
rustle among grass in this
calm way that says take my hand, and
spare yourself the indecency of imagining a love life
where they peel you apart like a ripe banana, discover diamonds

in your rind.

don’t tell flowers

you love them.

wilting daffodils will cry,

sunbaked tulips turn their gaze,

and beneath the pinkened sky chrysanthemums

hide shame in yellowing beds of weeds.

in the new age your bursting fingers fiddle helplessly with a broken plug.

you’re all swollen tongue and swollen heart and swollen organs in a big bag of bones.

no one has loved you since, and repeatedly in three years of foreign language,

we remind ourselves of our broken mind, broken body, broken roots,

an oak tree that has been standing for too many years and is rotting at its core,

all its rings eaten up by termites.

loathe love, hold onto your bitterness, you’re starbucks hot chocolate.

1
I’m faltering at the edge of a shaky trigger finger.
When I die, please burn me to a crisp
(If I haven’t done so already, and if my brain is still intact)
And bury the remnants of a sad little boy
Under every house that ever hurt my fingers
With its splinters and creaky floors;
Its fathers with big boots, and scratchy stubble.

#2
Now I am stardust, and you are foam.
On the other side, you kiss me,
Pretend it would have meant
Something, sometime.

#3**
P.S. I am never owning up to
Owing you up to a hundred bucks
Because you didn’t believe in me hard enough
And I lost my wings. My only regret in dying is not
Yelling “*******” loud enough to melt your doubts off.

Soak up your tears
With glitter glue
And craft yourself together
A brand new, well-patched heart.
Use lots of layers, so
The sword of society
Cannot pierce your
Mismatched organs.

Look, all I’m saying is
I’m the cracks in the sidewalk
That they warn you not to step on
Or you’ll cause chain reactions that
Cause you to question whether or not
Blood is thicker than water. Because maybe,
You want her dead. Not in the long run
But in an instant where she drags you
Across the room by your hair, and
You break the ******* mirror
Because it shows you who
You’re not. All I’m saying
Is stand up and seep up the
Remnants of how much your daddy
Loved you, once upon a time, crumble
His cards and flowers made of prison cigarette
Packs and he said “I always thought of you,”
Meaning you’re a jailbird tattoo artist’s
Well-meaning card that he swapped
Cafeteria lunch cards for. And yes,
You were hurt, but the teacher
Tells you hold your tongue
And your bladder, even
Your first ever girlfriend says
That it’s not as bad as you make it,
When you realize you can’t love her,
You can’t love anyone you run so fast
Your legs squeak, you never want to run
Back to a house where they killed your dog
And your dreams and strung them up like laundry
On hot days. Eventually someone uses the “A”
Word, the “V” word, “victim” of “abuse” and it
Only hurts because deep in your swollen,
****** up core you know that it is true.

For sale: One body. Used. Glitters in the sunlight but only when wearing illfitting, ugly, boring clothes.

Hair, though not much of it, but too much for the company of wolves. Fuzzy. Generic. Drips a lot after hot showers. Not black. Not brown. Not red. Maybe blonde.

Lots of freckles in shapes that may or may not be cult objects.

Lips bitten, but not as much as nails. We regret to inform you that this model has the ugliest hands you’ve ever seen. Skin breaking up, peeling like sunburn at fingertips. Red. Cramp in the cold and every other climate. Small. Fit into spaces they can’t get out of. Inky. Spew words.

Scrawny, disproportionate legs and arms. Knobby knees. Stuck-in toes. Crooked from hips-down. Bowlegged. Beastlike.

Woman hips. ******* that used to be perfect until nineteen. Now they’re just a bit useless. We apologize for the inconvenience.

******. Not a ******. Clawed. Friction burn. Too much hair. Too little hair. More hair down there than there is on one side of the head. Razor marks. Blisters, sometimes. Lots and lots of blisters.

Thighs are good for holding, not much else.

Weak. Scrawny. The ******* meal you’ll ever have.

Gateway eyes that tell you she’d rather be anything but a body with a ****** and **** and lips and all of the above.