Boobs.

this has been buzzing around in my head for a few weeks now,
and i started to think
"maybe it's not prose.
maybe poetry will work"
so let's give it a try, i suppose.

something happened recently that hasn't happened since I was about 15.
I had to buy all new bras because
I gained a cup size.
my modest B turned full-up C.
my 17-year-old self rejoiced,
and my 31-year-old  self lamented.
above what this means about changes in my weight
and the steady downward march of my metabolism,
there is a gendered layer.
sometimes, I don't want any there at all.

I meet only fleeting dysphoria,
and I'm not concerned enough to change my body.
sometimes, it's still only right to go tits-out
(Rocky Horror comes to mind;
we are all called home from time to time).

I know I read woman.
if my chest doesn't give me away,
my voice will soon enough,
and my face probably already has.
I only ever pass as femme.
Part of what I have loved about this body
is that it provides such a supportive
structure for androgyny.
slight female.
there's so much room to build on that.
Did I just become
less androgynous?

I wore my binder to work today
for the first time.
No one bats an eyelash at my requests for "they,"
unless it is in shock that I didn't feel safe sooner.
I like to know where I am first.

on or about the 5th anniversary of my wedding

spending the weekend in my parents' house.
i almost pulled out the computer at 12:30 a.m. when i couldn't sleep,
thinking of you.
i want to pour a work-in-progress, stream-of-consciousness mess
into this text field
and let it simmer,
let it throw steam until it burns to the pan,
that kind of sticky damage that can never be undone,
no matter how you soak, how you scrub.

there is too much i could want to say.
the echo of my younger voice
is screaming against my realization that
more often than not,
my comment does not matter.
my voice is not necessary.

but sometimes it is.

sometimes it is,
and i have been shamed into silence
 by those who should know better.
by "advocates."
by "friends."

i tried to save her.
i am still trying to save her.
but how can you rescue
someone whose mind has been poisoned against you?
i remember that, too.

save roux.

save the one after, and the one after, and the one after me.

all i want
is to make the world a better place.
lock him up,
take the alcohol from his veins
and fix the serotonin in his brain,
and any of the other chemicals
whose pathways have been overgrown.
take the monster out of him.
he is just a human being...
isn't he?

in spite of it all, love.
compassion?

i grapple with a question of "choice."
what does it mean to choose behavior?
when are we capable?
what does it mean when we act without capably choosing our behavior?
how long ago did it stop becoming a choice?
when one no longer knows the truth, one can't help lying.


love is big,
and much bigger than my misled affection.
my love needs to know,

How can I warn every woman, everywhere?
How can I tell them, Don't!
If You See This Man, Run.
Don't let him charm you.
regardless of gender, regardless of age,
he is still the same.

some people do not change.

Zie is Here.

Leslie.
I cannot speak this sadness over the loss of someone I will never meet.
I read your words cross-legged on the floor
Of the first room that ever showed me community--
This community, our Rainbow.
My heart shattered for Jess,
For you,
Knowing that every word of this novel was true.
My hands wrung the paperback cover curled
As your femme worried your shirt collar:
"How am I ever going to get these stains out?"
I waited for the butch who would come home to me bloodied,
And hoped I would never meet hir.
I swooned at the literary purr of your motorcycle
And waited for my broad back to lean into.
In your words, I saw the first version of myself
That I ever wanted to be:
A fearless protector, who knows she is comfortable as a womyn-loving-womyn.

Leslie, you were the first to paint me a picture of the world I was going to live in,
And you did it with your words.
In a sense, you were the first butch I ever fell for.
You revealed to me that
Butches are there for loving.

I caught myself crying in the bathroom mirror after I heard of your passing.
I felt the surge of an enveloping hug move through me, and I know,
Zie is here.
In every one of us who remembers hir,
Who respects hir,
Who values Leslie's work,
Zie is here.
Zie has an impact as far-reaching as zie could have hoped,
And maybe farther. Certainly farther than I know.
Leslie's influence will never stop living.
Zie is here.

Brattle Sq, October 24

last night i walked into a Tibetan Freedom rally in Brattle Square
i heard him singing from a half-mile away,
ten minutes
that voice and that throaty roar in the microphone drew me in

eye contact
woman with bowed head and american flag
young man dancing waving the flag of tibet
this throat-singer chanting words in a language my body had learned,
years before,
lifetimes before.

before life, when words
meant no meaning had been exchanged,
but where the vibrations of the earth and the trees and the human throat
were all expressions of the divine in the universe.

i loved it then and i love it now,
i listen for meaning above words.
i am trapped in the words of my body,
my limited shell attempting to capture the likeness of the invisible divine
so far removed from me that i could not hope to ever achieve it.
i escaped my freedom.

purgatory is life.

we know we have suffered here, in this lifetime
we know we have earned no suffering

i stood there transfixed,
brought in by the call to prayer.
i responded in a language i did not understand.
stop. pray. breathe. stand.

tears of fear and pain and sorrow built behind my eyes.
i could not say why. i heard
the truth of his suffering.

it got bad enough that he was here, instead of there.

i began, after standing for some minutes
feeling on the verge of tears and held in deep respect,
to nod my head in agreement
and laugh.

there is joy, there is hope, there is compassion
and we will still be here, somewhere.

Tibet is not a part of China.

poet's tongue

i want to hear your poet voice again

not your patience
not your acceptance
not your quiet reassurance that the world is beautiful

i want to hear your anger
your frustration
your fear and your shame;

i want to hear the passion you reserve for justice.
i can see it in your writing and i can feel it in your soul
i want to hear that unleashed
i want your spit in the mike and your hair in your face
i want you to forget that others are watching

i feel i may have missed that stage
or at least arrived late;
i want to know that someone, somewhere has heard that voice
that they have taken something of it with them
that that has been released to the world to make change
somewhere.

ripples don't always have to start with pebbles.
sometimes they start with boulders.

(sometimes, when they need to be big enough
they are even begun by earthquakes.)

grief

i keep seeing this girl who wears your leather bomber jacket
it makes me think of the way your hair smelled when it started pouring down rain in the park
i smile, because the memory is beautiful
even if the moment was impermanent--
all beautiful things are.

the bittersweetness arrives in the question:
am i missing someone who isn't anymore?
or am i missing someone who never was?

Pronouns

he-she.
me?
ze.
s/he.
it.

his-and-hers.
mine and yours.
ours?

somebody
anybody
nobody.

us and them.

Bicycle

a woman draped in black,
only her eyes exposed
cutting a gash in her modesty.
we are sitting on your front steps
in the sun, smoking cigarettes;
you drop your eyes.
likewise veiling your femaleness,
but no modesty in your gender.
i watch but try not to stare.
she rides past, every eye a threat.
a rule followed by instinct, not habit.
she stops and
turns, one foot on the ground,
expressionless,
her eyes all for us.

Ablution

the world washed away, refreshed
reborn
amphibious life springs anew
from ancient puddles,
relegated to dirt
and reminded at long last of their nature.

we empty the lint from our pockets,
a whole new life
with no past and no expectations.

8/22/10

walk

oakland summer feet

black-tarred and blistered
flip-flops aren't real

step in, mud puddles on the shower floor
as soon as your feet hit wet

soap stains, all over

clean and worth dirtying again.

correspondence

letters i never meant to send

their pages never torn from spiral-bound notebooks,
protected by cardboard covers
more durable than paper envelopes

never graced by a stamp
self-sticking or otherwise

never read by eyes other than mine

words without direction,
messages without meaning.

cloudy-eyed epistles
waiting for the day someone finally decides
they are fit to burn.

[untitled 6/5/10]

hideous scabs
shaved knees bumping
stubble threatening the image

perilous to keep distance
so close

i tread the line of what i am
and what i want to be with

i explore the depths of the cavern
that no one else seems to probe

i am a sure-footed wanderer
but we all know that bravery
is not admitting when you're scared.

[untitled 6/4/10] - excerpts

in the blink of an eye
before i even realized you were looking
wink
and you're gone

butch-femme
dyke-lesbian
pants-dress
it's all a set of continua
and i want to be the ends of the middle

you my polar endocentric opposite

within a system
within a system

like attracts like but
like and unlike like each other
quantum physics is always
contradictory

too small particles
miss the bigger picture
swirling in an electron cloud
the sea drowns you
as it speaks to the sky.

living in the underground
a system within a system
we travel downstairs
through solid doors
with nondescript signs
before finding the people we know

i love the way
ladies come first
and you took my hand
even if you should have already met

we're trapped in this stupid powerplay
where we live out roles scripted for us
there is comfort in the rhythm
but also dissonance
i wait for the resolution
i crave synchrony
denouement
means only the next movement

a pause to recoup
but the conductor never lowers his hands
white-gloved and hesitant
Maestro
we call you many names.

morning

mother is
the sound of a spoon in a teacup
when you don't want to admit being awake
but are glad to know someone else is.

in like a lion

february's over

this was always supposed to mean
that things get better

the surest quick fix
was changing the calendar

but now i find
that time is a myth
time is arbitrary
march is just another word

every lesson i've learned for the last year is still true

but then why
does it
all
end
the same?

i still find the smell of you on my clothes
and pause

i still know that when i can write every day
i'm okay

i still wonder if the boy whose birthday is tomorrow
is alive
and if he ever thought of me again

even when i live in an apartment that has windows
i still need to see the sun

not remotely interested in my textbooks.

Real Life has this way of catching up with you
at the most inconvenient moments
and when you least expect it.
all at once,
midterms
and relationships
and chest colds.

relief
means
(not being content
but)
knowing that everyone else
is also weighing the benefits of dropping out of school.

at least i have my independence.
at least i have my life.

i am still so spoiled
that these are the worst things
i can complain about.

Snow day

everything here is lovely. i want to post pictures, but they're all on someone else's camera.

i'm not sure how many inches we got, but it doesn't seem important--everything is blanketed with snow; the world is monochrome.

people walking in the streets
where cars could not tread,
bags full of groceries
(you know you're in a college town
when last-minute means
afterwards).
buses cease to run,
the gods of transportation call
Stay Home,

Go Out and Play!

sleds and skis and snowboards
make their way out of closets and into the streets,
relay races up and down a hill,
come back soaking wet
and change into pajama bottoms and a sweatshirt;

this
is what we've forgotten how to do.

it doesn't matter that there were no classes anyway;
this
is the true meaning of a snow day.

and sometimes
the most beautiful and important thing to do
is watch someone push snow off a roof.

Midnight adventures

"Someday, we're going to go on a normal date, and it's going to be the weirdest thing ever."
"What, you mean like, dinner and a movie?"

leaving at 11:00 because we just had to go somewhere
"my carbon footprint hates me"
getting in the car and choosing our own background music
getting lost, or not lost,
because it doesn't matter where you are
driving and driving and not knowing what was on fire
ending up in West Virginia
just to eat waffles
"i feel like i'm driving guitar hero"
on Rte 79
missing Pittsburgh entirely
because we ran out of gas
(almost)
ending up in the middle of the woods in Beaver county
on the opposite side of lost
"you can't call me from the middle of the woods and ask me to google-maps you"
the dude in the bitchin car who caught up
after i opened up
and played a game or had a conversation
depending on your point-of-view
if i had a car like that, i would too
but what if i was just being a dick
and he was just trying to change lanes
and we were really just in each other's way?
either way,
we were there,
and we shared it,
and it woke me up
and opened my eyes
and let me know
that even in the middle of nowhere,
even when you have no reason to think you are,
you are not alone.

"What's the name of this one?"
"I don't know, the jewel case is in the glove compartment"
"Which one is it?"
"Track 12"
"...Home."

jottings

i want
you,
whatever that means.
there is no third person.

[untitled poem 7/14/2009]

i want to make things explode
learn to breathe in the staggering smoke
let them free and imagine what
breaks out

your lungs are the vessel
for precious words i long to capture
my ears the home of your freed creations

my mind the g(r)asping, comprehending,
mmm-uttering resting place
for a thought that began with you
its travels long and perilous
its bridge crafted out of thin air

its journey succeeds
when we are both understood.