It is widely known that sunflowers bend towards the sun

it isn’t true but I wish it were, that when they can’t find it,
they turn towards one another.
As my friend bikes across the entire city so we can trade books
and sit six feet apart,
I’m sure humans do that exact thing.
In a pandemic, there are still poetry readings
and celebrations.
In this poem, I am celebrating
every way I have so far
and in this poem, I am doing it all at the same time.
I am slow dancing to records in my dining room
still in bed on a picnic blanket
in the park, baking
while I facilitate restorative justice work
 I am smelling every rose bush I walk by
and I’m performing right now while playing
video games
in doc martens
 stomping
on the crunchiest leaf pile I can find.
My dad is in the background
crying every time he hears this poem
as I video chat with my therapist in the bubble bath
where I have just realized you can use tupperware containers
to make floating snack trays.
I am hiking in the ocean
I have spent hours driving to
for this simple moment of thinking
 I am so ephemeral
 and timeless
when a small human affirms my gender-fluidity
by saying, “I’m 50% boy and 50% girl,
so I guess… we’re 50 twins.”
and feeling so whole
when someone I love
holds my hand unexpectedly
while I’m opening care packages from my parents
and freshly staining my shower curtain with hair dye
in the middle of a living room photo-shoot
binging Netflix
sipping coffee
in professional clothes
from only the waist up
watching someone’s toddler or younger sibling
run
unabashedly
through the zoom call

the way I aspire to show up in this life

shameless and
knowing
there are so many ways
to be held
to hold
to turn towards
even now.

There is a certain kind of tired that only comes from arguing with your own body continuously

please open the jar

don’t sit down yet

just don’t call off again this week

I am thirty-four and I have the hand strength of a fifty-three year old.

I am thirty-four and age means nothing in the face of chronic illnesses.

When my DNA was coded, my connective tissue was made too loose.
Now my muscles do the work of keeping me together

So when I’m asked, “aren’t you too young to be in so much pain?”

I don’t always have energy to answer

you who can’t handle a paper cut but expect me to live comfortably with no complaints at a continuous 7.5 on the pain scale

you who asks, ‘how bad could it hurt, really?’
as if I don’t have connective tissue everywhere

as if it doesn’t hurt in every language, everywhere

you who thinks, maybe, just maybe I am faking it

stretching the truth like my collagen

I mean how can I have something you’ve never heard of?

Why do we think people fake things we can’t see?

I can’t raise my arm today and no one is here to see

this sort of lost argument

not here to watch my pain holding hands with my anxiety

while I wish mine was being held

by someone

who never undermines my experience as invisibly ill.

who tries to see what can’t be seen but never tries to make it elegant.

Growing up, my father always wore a shirt that said,

“pain is weakness leaving the body”

is it weakness leaving? Are you sure?

Still, dad? I know I’m strong but must pain sculpt my strength?

Must we always name pain beautiful, useful?
Sometimes it isn’t, no?

Sometimes it is invisible and still somehow ugly, like a haunting.

My dad is

is hundreds of miles away from me and my body

and his body is sometimes puking from the cancer drugs

which is its’ own kind of argument and

I am hundreds of miles of right here in this body unfortunately but fortunately

same blood, different pain.

Is it weakness leaving? Are you sure?

Still, dad?

I am somewhere beyond this existence.

the walls are made of flowers
holding hands.

no one gets grief for holding anyone else’s hand

here
you’re allowed to feel whatever you feel
cry in any gender and still be seen as strong

we know nothing of prejudice,
capital,
or constraint

here

save historical examples
archaic relics, reminders
of who we will never become

our systems are built
on compassionate community care
like they always should have been
and everything is art

which it already was
but in this dimension
we never forget to remember
or we have time to remember

so much time won back
from the hungry
jaws
of oppression.

so much time that we sleep, we play, we run, we snack, we sometimes breakdown and
no one here has ever been murdered for sleeping,
playing
running,
buying snacks

or breaking down

or being the gender they are
or the race

meaning no one has ever been erased here
out of fear
or for any reason.

the native language of this place
is consent
and it is the language of everywhere
not just our bedrooms.

no one is the police
and no one polices their loved ones
or themselves.

and there are reparations
and there is justice that means justice
not just eliminating perceived threat
no one exists
as threat

here we deal
with our implicit biases
and our bullshit

and no one has ever called anyone’s truth bullshit
here
or them crazy
or too much
because
here
no one is too much

and my dad is still healthy
and whoever you call family
is
safe tonight
and every night

and my poems always get written
and your poems always get written

even if they aren’t particularly good at first utterance
and

here
I never once wrote
for the validation
only exploration
only revelation
only

for us

for me.

“Doesn’t it get very exhausting, viewing the world through that angry feminist lens?”

or, alternatively titled,

‘a study on how to dissect my anger and find it villain,’ find it too sharp, too mirror

too reflective

and you didn’t really want to see yourself

as the problem did you

so instead it is me and

I am told to put on something else like maybe it would be more comfortable for you if

I could take this tired off somehow

which is the point you’ve made, right?

that you think my purpose is for you.

To be clear, my anger is condemned

when it is sloppy

or articulate

or weeping

or at a man

but my anger learns as I do that there is no way to deliver it from my mouth without recoil.

I still get the full range of emotions even when you don’t find them appealing.

I eventually unmute myself,
learn to use my voice

only to hear you dislike my tone

too sure of itself

or too always mad about something

too imaginative, perhaps?

as I concoct a world where I don’t have to be quiet

or play nice

or take your shit

or be invited to the table only to have my ideas swallowed and

re-stated in a lower register.

Yes. In fact, it all does get pretty exhausting

but honestly?

so does this conversation.

and honestly?

so do you.

When I laugh it is a holy sound

It is the thing I do in rebellion to the many things that try to trim my joy
and sometimes gouge
and sometimes win
so when I smile,
It is vast like the solar system
stretched like a big top tent,
wide as a tug boat
pulling everything
I’ve ever been
right alongside me
and carrying it in my smile lines.
I don’t care if they’re as big as I am.

I earned them.
I sky scraper big smile
and I don’t always mean it
but I always try to mean it.
‘Cause I am always a god
but sometimes I forget.
I am
a god
but sometimes
it is of broken and worn things maybe
but doesn’t that include smile lines?
Isn’t that erosion the consequence of my joy?
Isn’t it worth it to sometimes lose?

 

“Our tongues have a cadence.”

They move to whatever they move to and I don’t think we’ve taught them how to

roll stack

slide swirl

push p u l l play

so effortlessly

off of and on top of

around but never

at expense of one another.

their synchronicity teaches me to displace my worry

of where things will go

because yes, things will go

but what if things go

in an endless spiral cadence

like our tongues

who know

in a language we know

but are shy to speak

and this language is a balance

latch linger let go

go

live live

hold on

dance drape

flow find

twirl tease try

and learn

I hope to(o).

 My shame is a mold that only grows in the parts of me I refuse to shed light on

refuse to talk about.

I need a better flashlight

a braver mouth

a new dictionary

to find fresh words

to form familiar sounds in new ways.

I write a lot of poems about growth

but have you ever loved something so much you didn’t notice it never loved you back?

sometimes, I’m so focused on where I’m going I forget where I am

This might be the first poem I’ve ever began with a first person pronoun.

I hardly even think like that

survived my life in story so far.

As a kid,

I would walk around my house and speak out loud about myself in third person.

Thirty some years later I fight to not spoken word just like that.

joke just like that.

think just like that

spent a lifetime writing the poems in a way that lets me talk around my bullshit.

when i do not name my trauma

it calls me out of mine,

feeds on my everywhere silence

bends me to its always will,

puts shame where the forgiveness goes and calls it a day

leaves me pretending I’m healing

leaves me crying

like the city water fountain

like everyone wishes in me

and I’m not sure I’ve made any of them come true.

What I do not speak of speaks for me.

What I do not tame shames me

shrinks me

in solitude

says,

‘no one,

not anyone

has ever felt like this

not like this

this dread steady coating this stomach in its likeness

this guilt butterfly knifing this gut

this apathy delaying my feet to touch floorboard.

or this shame in a whole person

now just slightly

less whole.’

But the things i have done do not care about me

Are not actually able to care

if they were they would only care about themselves

not where I am going.

My past thinks itself funny, thinks itself lesson, thinks itself the kind of story I should tell until I do so laughing.

My past knows it is over.

My past sweet-talks my shame

down from the ledge.

Finds my grief up there too writing its own poem

My shame will not read the poem

will not speak its’ own poem

so it grows bigger and bitter.

& my grief keeps telling a story no one is reading

writes a poem that is long and knowing and probably better than this one but i wouldn’t know that.

I never read it either

(not because it doesn’t speak my language but because it speaks at all and that confuses me).

How can it know so much about itself and expect me to do the work to understand it?

But then again, how can we do that to each other?

I think the things we carry the longest and the heaviest are the moments we were misunderstood. I’d love to introduce myself but my arms are heavy with all this carry.

I am on the roof I am with the shame

I am at the ledge.

I cannot jump

I cannot let my past put me in its’ place cannot let my shame shape my speech

let my trauma twist me tortured

marionette me through this life.

I have to tell my story

even when the trauma says

My story isn’t really worth much.

I say my story is worth exactly as much as it keeps me here telling it.

‘Cause it got me here and on some days

I know that by the sound of my laughter.

My laughter is a holy sound.

It is a thing I do in rebellion to the many things that try to trim my joy and sometimes gouge and sometimes win

on other days I wear my smile like an obligation

but never too big

‘lest someone read it like a dinner party invite

and try to feast on all that goodness

try to chomp my joy

digest my essence

I tell em go ahead and try to snake my story- I dare you

say this is mine now,

even if sometimes I don’t know how to talk about it

even if sometimes I fake it until I feel it

even if sometimes I barely feel it at all.

I don’t have every word for everything that has happened to me

But what I have is here

but what I have is mine

but what I have is enough for now until more words until more joy until

I write the wrong poem and it scores well

every season I compete with it.

a few seasons in I write the one I finally mean on a subject

previously too scared to touch

Ironically about a time I was too scared to touch

(and in both cases I didn’t speak up

until)

I touch stage, kill the poem

the audience exactly the right kind of uncomfortable looking inward at themselves

I walk off stage proud of looking inward at myself.

I hear my scores and they are scoring my trauma

I get 7.4 7.6 7.8, 8.2

I get a healthy dose of retraumitization, and the sickening sense that I should’ve held that poem longer in my notebook than my mouth.

A man up next out scores my poem with a lyrical one

content elusive but sounded cool

masculine voice

filling the space in ways mine can’t

holding judges until they’re comfortable

holding judges the same way he holds his emotions

so tightly

they forget their insecurities.

the judges forget to judge themselves.

every season I see men win slam

after slam with performative restraint

with poems that are sometimes striking

sometimes just loud

I watch them score higher when a woman’s story sops sloppy from their teeth.

And me?

I’m the white poet

who is also fucking up-

talking about race like I have it all figured out

and I outscore poets of

color like this with poems about equity and call it a Friday.

The audacity of me doesn’t hit me for years

‘Cause the 9.8 9.7 9.9 and a 10

reinforce the whole thing weekly

and the audience members leave happy

and the poets leave septa

leave tokens

wonder why they feel so spent-

isn’t poetry supposed to be healing?

Not always.

these lessons are

always

reiterating,

that when I cry in a voice

that isn’t quite mine

I get more points

so I do that

(a lot)

but employ different metaphors every time I do it

reference war though I’ve never seen it

talk about race rehearsed & sloppy

And this is how I get the high 9s

this is is how I place 2nd in the slam

stomp on a gentle craft in someone else’s shoes

stumble away from attempts to talk authentically about myself and instead can my cadence

fit a form

Instead play jack o’ lantern and carve out

the pulp

some else’s voice I hijacked

to make space for my candle

of a perspective.

I go to nationals this year and it is the same shit.

A famous team of straight poets

references gay culture for points in a joke poem and everyone’s laughing but the gay poets

‘cause the joke was made at our expense

and I’m suddenly mad at myself for never writing anything about being queer as a queer

and even madder I can’t seem to lend myself the grace I give others to question my own gender off stage let alone on it

Why this,

oh right.

Probably because

homophobia and transphobia are as American as apple pie and

slam poetry might as well be too.

two slams in I start writing my poems to please the audience and not myself

to please the judges

Who are just people knowing most people deal with toxic levels of implicit bias (present company not excluded)

i mean snap judgement stereotypes and i know a human brain makes so many snap judgments all day long

It seeks threat

judges for understanding via safety

And you could argue that snap judgements keep us surviving but at the poetry slam these just throw the scores sideways instead of pushing the culture forward.

Slam culture seeks to exist outside toxicity but exists within it and this is product of our society,

a failed process,

another toxic thing claiming to cleanse

there were seasons where I claimed

to heal myself here in all this chaos

And at all costs and in any voice

that won me near thirties

but not anymore.

I am not the handcuffs on my bed post,

nor what you assume they say about me.

I am the steady voice that asks them to be used.

not just IN control

I am control even when I consensually give it away.

I am a sovereign entity, allocating all this power exactly as I see fit,

boundless even when bound

I am safe.

I am my safe word

NOT your lack of understanding of why I would like to use one.

I wrote this because you say you care about my safety but simultaneously put me in emotionally unsafe spaces

you live double standard

and wonder why I don’t understand you.

you have never been tested for STDS but insist that I’m risky.

you have ‘pure’ hands that don’t spank

because they ‘don’t condone violence against women’.

buddy when me-woman

literally asks you for it…..it is preference not a violence

but your silencing and shaming are definitely violences.

You say I only like being thrown around in bed because I think I deserve it.

you’re right- I do deserve it

not because I’m unworthy of feeling good but because that shit does feel good.

If, as you suggest, my masochism is a manifestation of my self-worth

fine.

My self worth is empowered is sexy

is damn sure of who it is.

It’s not low, it’s actually high

like so high it’s just over your head.

My self worth isn’t determined by your rating scale,

the number of sex partners I’ve had

or the kind of sex I choose to have because my self worth can’t be contained like that.

It is not as one dimensional as your thought process.

You are so off base my therapist cursed you out

even when I didn’t

and she actually gets paid not to do that. (Unlike me who has never been compensated for the immense amount of emotional labor I have poured into you)

She called your attempts to

contort me into my place

‘sexist bullshit’.

She snarked, ”oh I didn’t know you were dating a sexologist!”

I wasn’t.

I was dating a dish of butter pecan who just discovered he wasn’t vanilla.

When he bit into me, he didn’t realize he’d drool so much.

Oops,

I did it again

made a “woke” boy wake angry

rub the sleep from his eyes

mad my pussy knows all its favorite hobbies

mad my pussy has been places

…like on me

this whole time

even before you showed up

mad my pussy travelled all these miles:

Just kidding.

Pussys can’t travel

but it does like to sightsee

to explore

to absorb men

and then spit them back out

in shock of themselves

So good morning,

I didn’t mean to shake you

just kinda funny I’m the one who likes restraints

but you seem more than a little tied up.

I.        In my family it is an heirloom to stand in doorways with men and watch their going

to freeze in gridlock and wonder,

“Should I revolt against this?
Should I play this game of tug of warring elements?
Is that form of protest worth the tsunami?”
I am the one in the family who usually decides it is.

As I watch my tight rope walker fall
or jump
or dive from the air
I send a lifeline,
hope it is strong enough to pull them up
with all their baggage in tow
(and mine)
I cross my heart and know I’ll cry.
I p u l l and p u l l  until I can’t.

[See, I have a connective tissue disorder
and that’s only relevant because my ligaments are so spaghetti that they make my muscles strain fast
and my mental is kind of like that too,
sort of unsecured and tired.]

When you have chronic pain and co-existing mental illnesses
you live pulled taffy nerve

and you walk your life
high———————————————-wire
on candy floss relationships
so sweet until you witness your partner in carnival get stuck
in the caramelizing sugar
and they are simultaneously right here with you
and so far gone.

II.

I didn’t know the confluence of us was so sticky.
I am in the doorway again
I wonder why the going
wonder who told you to turn on the radiator
don’t you know sugar melts so fast?
wonder what exactly we expected would happen.
wonder if we speak in different scales of temperature
try and remember if you asked my thermostat settings
and if I ever could articulate them.

III.

Another layer of ending
in which the show ends not by the performers doing:
a rainstorm washes away the whole damn sugar circus act,
and turns it to a disappearing.
I guess you can’t always plan for the rain,
let alone the monsoon
but can you appreciate how clean everything is afterwards?

Then again do you get lost in that appreciation?
Just because you respect the tsunami,
(just because you moon tide p u l l too)
doesn’t mean you have to mimic it.