once, a girl sent me a photo of herself.
in it, she is twisted half away from the frame,
a lamp opposite the mirror throwing her silhouette
back onto the lens. she is naked, and stretched
full length: tip toes, taut calves, hands up, arms extended.
the knobs of her elbows make flat whirls
in her golden skin. the round of her hip
breaks the linear tableau.
i do not know her well; perhaps
there is some exhibitionism in her, perhaps she seeks
the intimacy of being viewed this way.
it is a photo clearly meant to catch
the eyes on her curves, on the slick rounds
of her breasts and her thighs. but if you look
at her face, where the dark eyes i grew to love are
narrowed in concentration, you will see
the conscious ire of it: is this what it takes? she asks.
is this what will make you see me?

To the gay community:
how many women do I have to fuck till I get in?
Or really, how many
noncisgendered heteronormative men?
(If academic language is your gatekeeper's test,
tell your angel that I have studied.)
Closeness to you has been my version of heaven:
attained after great personal struggle,
growth through destruction. I have shrugged off
the inquests and insults
of so many people I thought I was loved by.
My karma is strained but smooth, perfect in its imperfections:
I have seen how many mistakes I can make,
and I have paid the cost.
I have told my whole heart to the sky
and its stellar dieties: the firmament in its many domes
holds the sum total of my ability, my honesty, my blood.
Still the garden does not open for me:
still Eden finds me at fault.
What would you have me do? Whose daughter
would you have me raise?
I am not asking for the seventh house
on the seventh hill; I would make my peace
with being allowed to visit your home, on your hill,
to bring you tea and to listen to your stories.
How many hearts must find me open?
How many times must I break?

I have written of you so many times:

I a gull and you the wave,

the dance where the horizon splits us.

I have eulogized you as you live

for all the selves that split off behind you:

I witness your journey.

I stand in your shade.

I have read you, too. I have read

the stories of your stepfather, and read

the bloodlines of your escape.

I have read the lines you wrote

of snow on someone’s plate, of nosebleeds,

of the aching silence that remains.

Is it secret-sharing if neither of us

acknowledges the tracts that bind us?

For everything we have read and written

and reread and revised, there is not a single line

of poetry or prose

or late night emails or drunken texts

that could wrest you

from your corner

of my heart.

Psalms

I am privileged in my love for you.

To see you stirring a pot at the stove,

to watch you greet someone, to see your shoulders

and spine and arms curve down to stroke

the uplifted face of your cat is a blessing.

Your stories are my blood. Your tears 

and your smiles and your easy laugh are

my wine. The skills of your hands:

I watch you braid hair, chop parsley,

adjust the needle above the record, press

the front of your dress down taut against your belly.

I knew you from the tomes of my childhood,

knew immediately your grace and beauty

and cunning and strength. I see you now,

battered princess, as the benediction of us all:

your quiet ways and brilliant thoughts 

will keep us all from the lurking edge. 

You wanted me to be sweet but you let me walk home alone
and I had to learn to give catcallers a death glare
You wanted me to be smart but when I spoke
you scolded my ideas and my tone
You wanted me to be virtuous but you gave me a dating culture
where men expect to swipe left for a one night stand
You wanted me to be kind but when you taught me to give
you didn't tell me to preserve anything of myself
You wanted me to be safe but the mace and baggy clothes
and buddy system didn't save me from him

The politics of who gets forgotten

Anyone who is incarcerated
Anyone who was incarcerated
Those with chronic illnesses
The children of someone with an addiction
Anyone with an addiction
The homeless
Those in public housing
Veterans with medical issues that we can't easily see
People who live in food deserts
Pretty women, unless they die young
Ugly women

How soft do I have to be
to file into place and not stick out
to sink myself willingly
in the mire of your needs
to find the quicksand ready,
and be willing

How soft do I have to be to earn
those minute praises that are
all I will ever be due
those hissed whispers in the bell
of my ear that is all the affection
that I might attain

How soft to slip a mouthful of mud
down below the tongue, a tablespoon
of mold and algae and matter
into the recesses of my throat

Join there my voice, what is
left of all that was primal: now coat, coat,
dense with murk and carbon,
that the voice can stay hidden
and not be found out

How soft do I have to be

Pliable, pliant, no hard edges because

What's hard will be broken and me

And my soul are no exception.

How soft, how sweet, how 

Well tempered? Temperate, charming,

Taut and tired: keep calm, keep bright 

But be mindful of the light, show

Only what you are allowed to present.

Be present, but not impactful. 

Be helpful, but give no direction.

Pliable, pliant, because the softer you are

The more the world and its grubby nails

Gloss your skin instead of tearing it. 

The face a man makes when he uses the word "vagina"

It is universal.
A not-smirk sidles around the corner of the mouth;
the ones who are more practiced at it
(but even, once, a male ob-gyn I went to)
squash it more successfully than others.
It comes out like a foreign word,
(I can hear them trying out "ennui" in a
tenth grade book report) or
like a first run at an expletive,
fuck, you know, just, fuck?
Even in written language the most jaded
or misogynistic fuck of a male author
can't fail to not-quite-smirk
when he writes it (Burroughs is the worst).
The smirk is integral for feigned gravitas, or
to lend a medical air, to insert a space
between a woman and her body
when a woman's body is the subject of scrutiny
which, let's be honest, is always
and is why the expression is universal.

She kissed me in the cave in the putt putt course because
a guy was watching, a guy she liked to flirt with.
I guess the logic at that age is that all attention has potential.
Her hair was brown and her eyelashes were long.

Three years later I visit her on her college campus.
I fuck a friend of hers, a devout catholic boy who
was told by his momma to marry a devout catholic girl
and to keep it in his pants. He was a bad lay anyway.

We were close for years, we shared every passing event
until time and distance got the best of us, or at least
that is what I tell myself. I do not ask her what she tells herself
when I visit her and her husband in the suburbs.

Why can't you give me back to me? Like the necklace
or the house key
or the book for when I couldn't fall asleep
or the slippers for your cold wood floors
or the mug
and the box of mint tea and

(you did forget the tea. I imagine you
finding it
some months from now. A memory
that smells like longing and discomfort)

somewhere in your dresser drawers is my mouth
and the webbing between my fingers.

I inhabited every corner of your house, thinking
if you would find me anywhere, it would be
there

among the art that we bought and the
protest signs we made and the letters
and the postcards and the photos.

Face to face across my kitchen table
and I with tears in my eyes am being forced to explain
why having a new sexual partner makes me nervous
because you cannot understand
what would make me nervous
about you
and I in my worry have made you sad.

I stood in full sunlight for you and was not visible.

I feel ungrounded. I used to say fallow but

now I think only barren.
The diagnosis is that I am flawed, deeply flawed, and
Mary Baker Eddy says the fault is in my soul.

The fault is in my soul, the rows
have been poorly plowed, the weeds
spring up in verdant abandon.

If a soul can be pruned, I missed that Sunday school class.
If my soul needs to be pruned, I have planted my feet
in the wrong garden.

What it takes for you to notice the hunger:
Repeated rumblings, storm clouds, the beat
Of an army's march. The high descant
Comes from gulls, dumb and startled out of
The waves as they rise. When finally
You glance up out of your evening paper,
Your stock ticker, your cup of earl grey,
The mass is at your door, taking shape.