TIME, IN NAMES AND FOUND THINGS
We don’t name our girls with things that can die:
flowers are too oft subjugated to murder and decay.
But what happens when I am not girl
and not boy? Do I inhabit the name of
ghosted things, undead things? Even seeds stomped
into the ground are capable of returning—
like part-chimera of magic and honey, a body
painted in holy white and lightning. Come autumn,
there will be another birthday for the not girl and not boy,
with name that of a black bird’s ribcage. We talk about
building a house of cedar, we don’t build the
wigwams anymore, but at least we can hold ceremony in
a familiar skeleton. My uncle tells me how
to find the things we lose:
throw a match in every corner of the house, and your
lost thing will return to you. I still have not asked him
what happens when I am the thing that is lost. I am still
waiting for the resurrection of my body, ladled in the hot breath
of an animal who has ripped their leg from a bear
trap and sang with joy. We pray to the great creature
who lingers on the edge of the river, unbleached from the
words of white men and their faults. Yes, here the beast is
found purposeful and good, it does not matter if it is the
not girl and not boy—you do not look past the jaw that will
swallow you whole. And yes, here is a place that exists only
with song and tradition to take in loving things,
even if the name of it holds death.
GLEAMING LOVERS ON DEATH ROW
Mouth acts as a light snare
and I finger the sun right out of you
your secret becomes oral floss of
the meat that I suck
from your fingers where you have
hidden old receipts and the only
letter from your mother where
she says she is proud
of you—
we say we can fill each other up
even when we just are marrow and
hair I trust that we mean
something
even if our bodies speak to
the nothingness that they
dare to occupy.
YOUNG AND GAUNT WOLVES
Remember these of summer-set eves:
grain silos as thrones, a sky turned
inked and toiled—sky space as fresh
earth, an obsidian lake.
Fireballs sit steady on
Albertan farmland; this is
a quip about German
Mennonites and scorched
wheat fields.
Breath is hummed with cicada wings
beating, fog rolling into
lungs with smoke stack pillars,
each new hand occupying the other or
a shared cigarillo.
Your girl tastes like limes
and cornflakes, cheeks
shivering a thousand
shades of pink with
a tongue just as greedy. Our eyes act
as anchors to keep the blue
collar town alive,
until we have the means to raze it
to the ground.
Moira J. is an agender poet from Dził Łigai Sian N’dee (White Mountain Apache Nation) and currently lives in Boston. Their work is published/forthcoming in Phoebe Journal, The Shallow Ends, Blue Fifth Review, Salt Hill Journal, and more. They are a Best of the Net and Pushcart Prize nominee. You can find them on Twitter @moira__j, or read their work at www.moiraj.com.