hips, heel, shoulder blades, and crown
for the tree bark
Safe
I regress through feelings of my girlhood, like a
woman healing. My shame hadn’t felt dirty
in so long, but my new dance moves mimic
clawing at my face, and I’m finally saving for the
teddy bear the house fire took away. Old raging
Force of Nature
As the wind whittles my bark,
carves my trunk,
19
Carefree, seeking pleasure, full of hormones,
bent on banter. Crashing towards, orbiting,
or straddling our fuel—no center. What
is gravity? Can’t hold us down, or back. Just
Take Your Time (cowriter: Benjamin Bush)
How clear is your mind’s eye?
Does yours zero in on your trove of wisdom?
My turf is confusion.
Facing chaos, while threatens despair
and narratives unravel.
How comfortable am I,
in labyrinth—
all I’ve known,
Variety Assigned
The schoolmaster shoved a smorgasbord
of poems down our throats, so that we would know
that poems can be anything so poems can be good,
even possible. But I’ve swallowed too many
Dance (Trans Day of Remembrance 2022)
I’m not sure if I want to understand hatred—
murders on the eve of a day for remembering the dead.
Closing the Circle
The first time they fired the gun that lives inside my chest,
you stopped the bleeding—
almost like you loved me
or had ulterior motive.
Signatures at the Potluck
There’s nothing better than the best holiday dish,
and nothing worse than the best dish prepared badly.
Our matriarch was never much for traditions,
more one for meeting everybody’s shifting needs.
sketch phase
you are everything i’ve never known
and i’ve never been
one for asking questions
Alphabet Ravine 