herpetology

the farther i get away from mammals the better.
i lay eggs with fists inside them. 
wet my skin in the moon's hairy light.
slip into the still water of a family picture.
in our cold-blooded world, there are no gods. there is no
paperwork. instead, we spend our time
crawling inside each other's mouths.
our nesting doll species. i count the scales 
on a lover's back. i am visited my mice who
tell me, "they want you to return." i pretend
i do not understand their language.
wriggle deeper into the damp dark of a rotten stump.
pluck strands of sunlight to keep myself alive.
we look forward to the winter. some of us die.
some of us freeze in the mud. dream in the thickest way
possible. i have seen colors there are no words
to hold. i meet an alligator version of ancestors. 
eat until i am a planet. when i wake up i do not feel
that mammalian dread that i used to. i would wake
& beg the dark for a few more hours. 
a cracked window. crust around my eyes.
the extra chamber of the heart, a little guest room
for all the grief. now, i am hairless. i am electric. i move 
with the water. it rains & all of us go to celebrate.
the snakes & the salamanders & the toads & the frogs. 
breathe deep the sound of rot & moss. 
i am never going back. i am never going back. 

pilot episode 

in the pilot episode of my life
all our voices sounded different.
there was a softer blue texture to the air
& no one refused to eat. 
i was a boy in the pilot. the test audiences 
didn't think i looked believable. gender,
whether we like it or not, is always about
the crowd. what they decide we can
& cannot do with our desires. in the pilot episode 
of my life i did not have parents. instead,
i was raised by my grandfather. 
the executives thought that was too confusing.
they dug a hole in the ground & buried him.
i still hear him talking. i go to the yard
on a full moon. unearth him & feed him
tangelos & ice cream. we lived in a house
at the edge of woods. it made the watchers 
bored & they wanted something to catch
on fire. whenever i see a plot cropping up,
i try to kill it like i would a snake. chopped into
writhing pieces. do not make me a story.
instead, i want to be a stained-glass window. 
the audience says, "there is no such thing
as choice." they buy me a straw hat & tell me
to pick apples until my hands turn blue. 
winter comes. my hands around the fruit. i decide
i am going to stop being a spectacle which is like
a bear at the zoo deciding the same. escape is best done
non-materially. a hole you carve
in your own lung to plunge into. 
in the pilot episode of my life, i was happy. 
or maybe i just believe that now that so much is gone. 
i laughed & i got reborn whenever i wanted.
the credits rolled & we ate them with a fork. 
my gender, glossy & gleaming. my grandfather
like a great kapok tree. the separate lives of 
our shadows as night fell. 

mothership

i get the galactic gender & burn a hole
through all the grief. once, in high school,
my boyfriend & me opened the fire pit 
in his yard & lit all of the calendars we could find.
each day turned into a tiny halo. he burned 
axe spray cans which popped like gun shots
& i burned a stuffed animal my ex had given me.
its fur smelled like fry oil & muddy dark.
up in the clouds the mothership saw us.
it scanned our bodies for usefulness & ultimately
decided to keep hula-hooping the earth. i saw it
just for a moment. a great eye blinking behind
the stars. iris as dark as eggplant skin. 
when everyone else was asleep i tried to catch up.
i walked out of town & to the parking lot
of the walmart where we would sometimes 
go to kiss. a man stood there in the street lamp glow
doing the same as me, looking up with hunger.
there are so many ways to be stolen 
in this country. maybe i dream of this one
because at least i would have some control. 
swallowed into the belly of the first gender. her hum
& her luminous face. i dream of a gender
that feeds me instead of one that takes. i do not
want to be sturdy or perennial. i want to get 
orchid in the moon breath night. i want to see
him again & ask him if what is burned is really gone.
the last time i saw him there was a bone fire 
at the back of his throat. i reached for it
but he pushed me away. i kept growing more eyes
than i could manage. the ship passes over sometimes,
still looking for someone i am not. 
once though i saw it pluck a cow from the dairy farm
behind my parents house. i was visiting for 
the  winter holidays. veiled in blue & emerald
she left the earth. i think she must be 
so happy up there. weightless in a room of singing.

garter snake

i clean out the hay after days of rain
& find a flash of ribbon beneath. 
black & dull yellow flicker. i do not see
his face. just a movement. an escape. 
he buries himself deeper in the stray straw.
all his nights of peace, interrupted. 
i want to put the hay back. tell him,
"this is yours now." how rare it is to 
find a place to curl & hum. inside, 
the upstairs is too hot to haunt anymore.
when i walk up there to my tiny desk
i turn into a cloud. i lean down to talk
to the snake even though i am not even sure
if he is still there. i ask, as politely as i can,
"do you have room for one more? 
i am skilled at making myself small." 
he does not answer. i look in the yard for scales.
consider what else it would take to become
reptilian. i do like to lay out in the sun afterall.
my eyes do sometimes grow wide 
& poisonous. i resist my urge
to search for him. i want to turn the shed over.
i want to run my hands through the tall grass
& find his smooth body there. learn to move
like him on my belly. close to the ground.
away from all the terrors. where no one
can find me. that is until they go out
after the rain, removing the old hay. 
what was i to the garter snake? hands? a voice?
a lemon-flavored bowl of sunlight? 
a great shifting? there are biblically accurate angels 
in the sky at night. i leave the front door
open a crack. i am hoping he'll come meet me
so i can apologize properly. maybe we can
lay down in the hay together. my scales shiny 
in the tired moon's glow. please come back.
please come back. 

hormone deficiency

i tell my doctor that i don't want him
recording any more information about me
being trans. i think of a running bible of 
my body. what kinds of notes has he taken
over the years? did he note
when i first grew a full beard? did he record
the times i came in a dress & the times 
i did not. i look up diy hormones.
one website has a list of rituals.
go out to the forest & perform one & feel
nothing has changed. what level of belief
do you need for a gender ritual to take?
my doctor says he will write that i have a
"hormone deficiency" which i hate because
i am so sick of being described in deficits.
a lack of sturdy joints. a lack of gender.
a lack of neurotypicality. a lack of lungs. a lack
of girlhood. do not describe me in terms of 
that which i have never had. instead,
let's talk about gifts. the fast growth 
of my fingernails. the hairs on the tops of my feet.
my hormones, wild & amber. i picture them
like dinner plates moving in the dark.
i fill them with bones. i walk. pick up 
my one vial of t. draw it up 
in its little rocket ship & live. 

warts

i reached for the amphibial too long. i blame
myself for all the ways i am not a smooth
beautiful animal. instead, i grow warts
on my hands & feet. belly white & toad-like.
i remember a doctor looking at me & saying,
"she still has time." the paper crinkled beneath me.
i wanted to jump out the window & be happily sick
in the star-soaked night. 
he froze away the warts. later, when i stood 
barefoot in the slime creek i decided 
i would do anything i could to grow them back.
i hunger for imperfection. to miss more buses 
& planes. to forget to text back & not apologize.
my reckless body. my reckless tongue.
we eat a pretzel in the rain. salt water on our fingers.
i pray to the patron saint of unruliness. 
they come to be in a vision holding a possum 
in one hand & a snake in the other. they wear
thrift store clothes that smell like basements.
i start bringing them offerings. a parking ticket.
a receipt to a secret shopping trip. 
they love them & tell me, "all you crave is waiting."
temptation is even better than giving in.
i bury the mailbox in the yard. start a fire &
throw in all my fingers like twigs. one at a time.
the truth is though that i haven't had warts
in over a decade. fallow flesh. cracked earth.
i beg them to come back. that home i had 
in my wilderness. give me the creek. the well. 
i go to the toads in the yard & they shun me.
i know i am one of them. or, at least, i am close enough. 
"help me break" i beg. they hide in the rotten
tree stumps. they do not even say hello. 
i go to the bus & do not miss it. rest my forehead
against the cool glass. outside, the toads sing. 

how to fold an envelope 

bite your tongue. eat every penny 
you can find. savor the metal taste of
blood & knees. if you have an address
take all the mail you can. pretend
every junk letter was written just for you. 
most instructions are meant to be left
unfollowed. try to do a secret handshake 
with someone you just met. 
use a sturdy surface to crease the edges.
i memorize addresses better than names.
streets like packer & walnut & raspberry.
once i laid down & became a street. 
a monopoly game ensued. trees & plastic
fences with dog sounds behind them.
before we broke up i wrote you five letters.
i put them in a dead mailbox. i did not know
the post office didn't check that one anymore.
i should have figured it out. it was green & rusty.
not blue like the rest of them. 
in its belly, the envelopes unfolded & turned
into moths. the letters swarmed. each word
an ant. nothing we say is held together
by much. just a few breaths & a hunger
to know each other. i wonder often
in what way you miss me. like comets miss
their mother rock or like a movie night
from a laptop screen? everyone's feet make
a unique sound when they thunk across
hardwood floor. i write so many letters
just to watch them bang their heads against
my porch lamp. i lick a promise shut. 
buy stamps in the hundreds. 
i do not use a single one. 

baby robins

they hatched this week. 
shells still at their feet. a nest of
trash & twigs & a strand of hair. 
their mouths open up 
as if to ask, "can i have the sun?"
i tell them, "will you take me with you?"
their eyes are still closed 
& i see the three little nestlings
as portals into the egg world.
maybe they could swallow me
& i could sleep there in the muffled yolk. 
i am so tired of trying to find nectar.
a place to sleep with fireflies. 
we don't stare at the moon anymore.
i don't know where my life went
& if i am the one who took it. 
i wake up with the dread of a future
in which i do not learn how to feed myself.
when i pass the birds i want to become
the nest. hold them in my hands.
walk towards the road & hitch
a ride to the oldest place. there i can lay down
& wait to grow feathers. the birds' down 
comes in patches. their mother waits
in the driveway while i pass by. i crouch down.
i say, "look, i can be small too." i used to be 
seventeen touring colleges in the snow.
i used to live in a big city with lots of guns.
if we lose the house
i do not know where will hold my sorrow
like this land has. who will talk
to the well spirits & who will come
& harvest the nest when it is done?
i collect them in a dark cool drawer.
only two. i lay down inside them.
sometimes the ghost nestlings will join me. 
they'll beg, "please never leave." i am a collection of 
of leaving. the breadcrumbs eaten behind me.
there is no going back. soon the birds will fly.
the nest will fall like a discarded sunday hat. 
i won't grow feathers. i'll open the window
& the air will smell different & i will
start over again with trying to find 
a place to hold me. 

cross-dresser manifesto

i strive to make the ultimate
illegal gender. my favorite part
about being not dead yet is
that i can still get weirder. i learn the craft
of hair lace. i teach myself
to embroider. buy a pair of overalls
& get as dirty as i can (all meaning of the word).
i want to confuse
even the normie gays. i want
to be the catalyst for someone’s gender
awakening (all meanings of the word).
i do not think of myself as a prophet
but instead as a rupture or a hemorrhage
just like someone else was for me,
she was smoking on the porch
outside an arcade in a leopard print mini-skirt
with stubble across her face. smokey-eyed
& laughing. legs crossed. pleasers on her feet.
the cornfields around us bowed to her.
i was too in awe to tell her she made me feel real.
my pronouns have millipede legs. my pronouns
are little flags stolen from a golf course.
just like cats, i have secret names
that only i get to chew on. when i say
i want to make my gender illegal
i mean i want to live in a way that
breaks a milk carton or two. that makes a horror man
wake up in the middle of the night
& weep. walk himself down to the forest
& make a garland. the cult does have one thing right.
this kind of gender is contagious.
i have pinwheels for lungs. i wait for a breeze
to breathe. i go to an atm dressed as a business monster.
trick it into believing i am rich
& make it pour money into the street.
people come to harvest. i take only enough
to buy a cup of frozen yogurt
& a leopard mini-skirt & a pair of black pleasers.

glowworm wedding

it's time to be happy now.
i get a 100 pack of party hats
& start christening the raccoons.
i dig a cave for us
to sleep in. when i was small
i used to glow in the dark. i would
hold my hand up & the room
would light. i have not figured out
how to be bioluminescent since. 
sometimes i bathe in star water.
other times i try watching
dating shows & shouting at the tv
like it's a football game. 
if i had a mascot, it would be
a glowworm. 
let's get glowworm married.
i am embarrassed that there are
still things i cannot admit in poems.
what is the point then? 
alright, i'll say it. i don't know if 
it is going to work out.
if we are going to wake up & find a way
to crawl towards each other 
like gnats towards a phone screen
in the summer dark. i love air conditioners
& i love ice cube trays. who would
we even invite? maybe just a bunch
of glowworms? do you know 
a group of them is called, "a party."
a party of glowworms. that's not
actually what they're called. 
i've just decided it's the only reasonable
lable. i think i will be the one 
to feed the dress to the snake. you can
be the one who hunts the 
cave fish. i want to be more than 
i am. i don't know if you feel the same.
sometimes in your sleep you'll
illuminate. the cave, damp & cool.
i'll dance with you, both of us, sleepless.
the cave deepening. the worms, hungry. 
tell me, am i enough for you?