TWO POEMS

we have always been

Frenzy deep down, quiet on the out, we were tangle,
caught between woman and man, impossibility and lack,

no gender a tongue knew name, the richness of body
plundered by language, left aching for touch and a place

at the human table. Hysterical, i’d obsess over lip smear,
panic and pull at my hair. But you natured within, lifted

our skin and found the bones holding, gauzy, gossamer,
fanned tender with air, also liver, fascia, spleen, our

heart. Sweet Tangle, i felt you, yet deceived myself
they are nothing, a newborn ghost crawling away where

slur shame and knuckles couldn’t knock. Haunted boy,
some lives come full stop, sputter, jump, dress and go.

We don’t have to tear self apart. Even gender can
change. This isn’t quite a eulogy, you won’t mourn this

body, but lay it down for the other, tap soil, gnaw roots,
swallow jade and shadow your eyes. Intuit our body,

geologic, history pre and post. See them fissure. Watch us
rupture. Understand us, together, if the world allows.

Let me love you the way you loved me, held me when
i sought bourbon erase, against every blade of glass

i could turn back on myself, the flint sparked to burn this
house to cinder, to unintelligible bone. i want us together,

like we’ve always been, mystic and rare as Datura blooming
along Brooklyn sidewalks pocked and cracked, damp earth,

city sweat, bus fumes, rose water, gates ajar, palimpsest.
i want us in sunlight, ready to wash the sky clean.

blue azaleas

Blue azaleas turn skyward all around.
i close my eyes and they could replace me.

So many ways to body and i am human. Watch
me swallow nails, bind my needs to stone, sink

ultramarine. Believe me when i say the world
takes who wishes. Post reading, stroll Washington

Square, spliff the dark paths and wonder
if poetry’s still got space for loneliness.

i’m saying languages are fading, everything
going extinct, but all i can think of is cold

gathering itself on my stoop, how i want to play
the little spoon, would you please hold me, all

honey tender through raven dark? i dream futures,
sometimes a we and we are happy there—a garden,

bed on the floor, moon duvet and occasional
feet in the ocean—but i need portraits to believe.

Someone, screen a film with Trans folk, thriving.
Pardon me, i’m turning azalea, i’ll step out,

count cracks in the walk, adjust for breakage.
You are so brave, my friends say. You are a boy

in a dress, says everyone else. i say i’m afraid all
the time, of alone and being question mark, what

people can do with just their eyes and more. Don’t
mind me, i’ll revert—rib, cobalt, clay, whatever’s

easiest. People want sense but that’s not sensible.
How hard we work at not being so. i’m lapis,

something inevitable. Stay if you want, window
unlatched, bowls of cherries between the sheets.

__

xtian w is a poet, essayist, performer, dog walker, & city dweller whose work appears in No, Dear, Bone Bouquet, & Hematopoiesis Press. they’ve shown up sporadically in movement & noise based work, & will begin their MFA candidacy this fall at NYU. xtian paints their nails in Brooklyn among houseplants & is interested in Trans* everything.