For National Poetry Month

Last year I was such a yapper in April. This year I've been laying low. I wrote this one for those gals who don't get to dress as much as they want/should do. Also to those who delayed transition for whatever reason.

Ciao.



Days when I'm too Spent to Pretend

It's holding
yr breath
for
a week,

the restriction keeping your frame in line
with what frames should look like:
boxy, perfect, regulated, plumb.

It's what the bitch
in the carpool mutters,
what the teens say in the halls,
the sun discoballing off glittered flower pots.

Why can't people love?

It's holding yr breath

for a week
before you can relax
into yr skin,
before you can calibrate your voice,
adjust gears

that move yr winged feet
through the halls of town.
It's new skin,

itching and itching
under Thursday's blistering noon.

And the body rejects,
the body
rejects,
the body reacts.
So tired,

so long,
so far away.
It's a day
you can ride with the top down,
in the snow,
without jacket,
all that muscle holding tension so still you smoke
with heat, even in the cold,
even with the ice packing into yr sockets
like glitter lashes.

Tension of other shape,
new mind.

Sleep cures not,
stress is too much,
transition, transmission, transgriot,
transtouch.

Cigarettes, Diet Coke,
bubble pop magazines and crush.

These are spells against death,
are spells
against sleep,
are spells,
hell's bells.

It is like holding yr breath for six days
without so much of a squeak
of breath,

this boxed heart, this boxed life.