Eve plucked an apple
from the Tree of Knowledge
of Good and Evil and the
Evil Queen dipped hers in
poison for Snow White.
Think of that red flesh
against white skin,
the ways in which
apples, so wholesome,
so Americana — Johnny Appleseed, cider
like sunshine — become toxic in
women’s hands. A weapon.
Chew an apple a day, and
banish sickness. Chew an apple
from a jealous crone and fall into
deathless sleep. Give applesauce
to a toothless baby; steal apples from
God and be punished with knowing
exactly who you are. Child, I
give to you apples, sliced. Arcs,
sweet and biting. I want to see
your teeth crunching, your lips wet,
your eyes shut. I want to see the peels
raining on the table, seeds spat on the
dirt. I want apple saplings sprouting
at your feet, rising, rising, rising,
crowning you with blossoms, white
on your black hair, your bloody lips.

remember a long time ago / i said i was ready to love someone for real / i knew i was lying just to keep you / in me / i wanted you to think that / under my snake brain / a little rabbit heart was still beating / maybe / numb & bitter / my girl tears / your mirror shards / our cruelty / little pieces of trash / i kept in my underwear drawer / * /

i’ve been thinking about that time in the summer / when you came / over / & i saw god in the sun / crippling in pixels / all over my sheets / in the shower i told you everything / & you thought it was so weird / i’m filling your empty form / but it’s so shallow that it’s spilling out? / the taste of water / the taste of nightsaliva / but i thought god was in you / & you were in me / ** /

when the sun rose last night / all the ferns turned black / & i thought i was in a CR-ROM about the jurassic era / when my mother gave birth to me / she didn’t take painkillers / in case they would hurt / my baby brain / i think that’s why she loved me / cause i lived inside her / **** /

i keep having this drunk dream / about the acne growing on your cheeks / like tiny flower buds oozing with pus / i want to drive around the suburbs in circles / with you / i want you to look at me / the way you look at your computer screen / in my dreams i am / your moonburnt skin / your first day of school / stripping for you over skype / *** /

it’s hard to write this / without vomiting on the train / the last time i saw you / you held onto my bad arm / does it hurt when i fuckyoulikethis? / i could hear frank ocean from across the hall / rain glitter / so i cried & bit down on your finger / i may be younger / but i look after you / tears cum / by now you must know what you are / love of my life so far / ***** /

Today on my walk to the gas station for a swisher and a bottle of water, a group of men call at me from across the street. I look at them and shake my head, and when I come out of the store, I know one of them will drive their big blue truck across the street to find and follow me, and yes they pull up on me: the man with the gold horse teeth stops cuts me off with the big blue truck and they say it’s okay, it’s okay, we not gone hurt you, do nuthin’ and their words echo, and a man in a neon green short sleeve shirt and matching shoes and a blue hat and square sunglasses and big round eyes gets out of the big blue truck and tells the driver with the horse teeth he can park, and he asks me my name and I tell him my name, my real name because I don’t want to appear afraid, and he says something about him working up at the school and he asks me if he can see me sometimes and I want to tell this nigga to get the fuck up out my face but I tell him I have a man so he gets the message, but he still asks for my number and I tell him I’ll take his instead and he asks the other man with the short hair waves and sweaty wrinkled brow to throw him his phone (he does not move his body, he keeps peering over his sunglasses with his big round eyes at me) and then he tells me something that begins with 601 and I save it as Del because he says that’s his name and he asks me for a hug and I tell him no, and he says that’s okay I’ll take one, I’ll take uh hug and I cringe when he stoops down and wraps his arms and bitter cologne around my body, and I see the two men in the truck watching and I want to know what they wonder about men and power or black men and power, about why their man wanted to touch me so badly—

after he uncloaks his body from my breasts and shoulders, he walks away and says sawry bu’ we saw uh beautiful black queen and I jus had tuh say hi, you’uh beautiful black woman he said, and the men in the truck smile with their chins hanging and ask me if I have any cuhzins.

it’s one a.m.
sleepers surround me on the train,
their shadows
shining in the windows.

we are all tinted by night, and i
am glowing in the cell phone backlight, and i
am trying to betray what i am reading on the screen:

you stupid bitch
get home now
or i’ll kill you

but this is just another night.
i can’t make the train
go any faster.

it will take years
for me to realize
this isn’t my fault.

*

it’s one a.m.
i’ve made some sort of joke
about our sex life
and they lead me away
past the rows of people.

we are moving to the back of the train
but always moving forward anyway.

they leave me, that final
sort of leaving,
and i get off three stops early.

somehow, we end up
at the same destination.

but not together.
not anymore.

*

it’s one a.m.
i spend most nights alone in the dark,
our cat meowing at the patio door’s glass
until morning. my lover works the night shift,
one of the mechanics
for the train.

i remember how
she had to clean the blood
when that boy stood in the tunnel
one fall day, and waited.

i don’t know
if she could remove all of him
from the undercarriage.
does a part of him still live beneath
all those people
trying to get somewhere, usually
home.

*

it’s one a.m.
they are waiting with me
at the train stop by their house.

i am leaving this city
and there is nothing left for us
to say, except
i love you

like it is a prayer. like it is
the easiest thing
in the whole world.

I know
the fanciest car at my funeral
will be the one I’m in

Coffin
scavenged plank/plywood
bonus for graffiti just, please
no Ikea

My second line:
rummaged oil drums
coffee can guitars
solar powered samplers
the most joyous broken beats
praise shouts/metal/punk/funk
gutbucket blues/goth/klezmer
one last glorious dissonance

Stop the procession
before me/the hearse
go over the cliff
Cadillac pyre/nothing
for the carrions/you
can’t be thrown to the wolves
when you’ve always run
with them

No reception
Skip Shiva
Miss the Kaddish
Smash cut/gasoline cremation
no headstone for too long
an epitaph:

I always wanted to be the credible lie
my parents told the world, rather
than the reliable disappointment
they always came home to

which means i am here
which means i am where it happened
which means something
not unlike a scar.
i am here and i am awake and i think okay:
this is unbelievable.
this is almost disappointing / a bruise fading
and maybe today is made of noncolors
and maybe i am made of copper or water or
sugar bluing over time
maybe i am made of a wild, quiet thing
maybe
it wants me or my bones but i am gathering
up the dust
the blue sugar dust of all of me and calling it glass soon
this now,
but in some soft time just a moment
i can be it, i think
the blue window,
something loud in the way that the world is loud,
unobvious and still
all the noise that is always and mostly
gentle with us
i know it is okay to be sometimes, learning my oftens
filling myself with light and
glow and letting it be
precisely what it is to be
(here and awake and okay)
enough today.

If I could be any toy in the world
I’d be Potato Head
The original Potato Head was just plastic body parts to shove into an actual vegetable
There have been some changes since the original 1952 release
I too, have undergone some changes since my 1992 release
I can’t think of a better toy for a Transgender Irish kid to be than this
Fisher-Price introduces Mx. Potatohead

Changing clothes to express my identity that day would be so much easier
No more worrying about packers or binders
No push up bras or Spanx
Just blue shoes, black shoes, or orange feet
Just the bowler hat with or without the flower

I could trade out Venus hips for an Adonis belt on a whim
Try on a strong jawline
Then go back to heart shaped
Switch out doll eyes for sharp ones whenever I feel like it

Unfortunately my dick would still be plastic
But it would still be hot pink
And still bigger than yours
I’d have breasts that I can wear for sex or when I want to feel wanted
Then when I need to feel safe
To stop being read as woman, as object, as target
I could put them in a drawer and not have this reminder shoved up under my chin

Every time I’d detach a piece of myself
Like wearing a skirt the first time I have dinner with his family
Like picking and choosing which professors I tell my pronouns to
Every time I make myself digestible
I collapse inward

When I make myself into what I want to be
When I say fuck your gender expectations
When I realize I’m still boi in short shorts and eyeshadow
I become whole

But that’s not what toys do
Toys don’t get to control this
I don’t get to control this

I can push my chest flat
Hold my body boy
But people don’t get past doll eyes
Don’t get past this hardened ideal of gender

My parents still call me by my birth name
I’m still afraid that his mother will never accept me since I will never be her daughter in-law
I am seen as predator if I just want to take a piss in a public restroom

I’m just plastic play thing
People take out the pieces they don’t like
And don’t see the holes left behind

But see, I didn’t choose this gender
This body
But I would choose to be a Potato Head
Because I choose joy
I enjoy making people question their sexuality because I look hot as hell in a tie
I love that my partner offered to buy me a new binder
My favorite joke will always be that I don’t have to pay attention when someone starts a speech with “Ladies and gentlemen!”

I’d choose to be a Potato Head
Just like I choose to love myself
And honestly, if you don’t like it
I hope you’re a Potato Head too
So I can take my giant plastic shoes
And shove them up your ass

i.
give me a knife, so that i may know
how the plastic surgeon works.
maybe trade a few secrets with that guy from 127 Hours,
so i can rearrange the part of my brain that mistakes blade for handle.
look at my hands. dont
worry—ive got two.

i once had a teacher
who taught me Johnnie Walker has two uses:
1) cut it with cola
or 2) be honest. help me burn these closeted bodies,
because id lie to say my skeletons didnt have curves:
one less rib, support from some thigh bones,
parts of the shin, the ones strung like a bow.

i know youve known,
the way Adam knew Eve and she lost a few teeth—
only to glue them back together.
check below
your left breastbone. because ive seen
how often you lose your keys, and some days
you find yourself sleeping with Satan,
and it takes that teacher from a few lines back to beat you over
the head with a zen garden for you to realize
its some mustached man-child named Stan.
doesnt help we cant walk barefoot anymore.
doesnt help a rain drop smashed the sidewalk.
doesnt help somebody broke bottles
filled with more glass.

ii.
consider the cat
that happens to be allergic to itself.
says, it wants to trade tables with the
cannibal owl, you
know, the cute kind that smiles
as it eats its friends.
and forgets it never liked the taste of feathers.

or, what of monogamy?
you mightve heard it, another word.
seen it dropped like litter
or a mothers two cents.
mah-
nog-
a-
mee

taste it. like coffee and morning
breath. hear it claim to be
a limp noodle with a few working organs.
the same claim that, through the mush and kerosene, kicks
down your door and punches you in the gut—
all while you smile, saying,
please, please, please buy my mix tape.

that goes something like this:

you ask why i always look like im about to cry.
i say, no, dear, im fine. ive just made this face for too long.
you ask why i moved my bed.
i say, the butterflies in my stomach are doing cocaine.
you ask what im thinking.
i say, i don’t write love poems.

there are treasures at the bottom of the Atlantic
that no explorer will unsubmerge.

my friends who speak so casually of their heritage do not
understand this how i understand this.

they point to pictures and paperwork and tales
from grandmothers’ tongue that shout Ireland!

shout Italy! shout conquistador!
shout viking! now,

i don’t need to spring from vikings,
but i’d like to trace the map of my veins

farther than the miles between here and Alabama;
i’d like to know my people before their bracelets were iron

and their markings were brands, and i want these stories
from the mouth of my mother’s mother’s

mother, and back
even farther than that, and

i can only imagine what evaporated
into the air or sank like stone between coasts –

names, gods, language, children –
can only imagine as there is no mouth, no record

but those kept by birds and clouds and fish,
and i am left here, no country

for my mouth to hold, African somehow, American i’m told,
and black in a land my veins never chose.

Okay you caught me I like when boys smell like cigarettes

Tell me the story of your favorite city after midnight

There can be rain in the story if you want

Light orchestral accompaniment if you want

I mean I know you don’t but who’s talking

Where would you live if money wasn’t money

Would you rather buy wine or lotto tickets

How would you hurt if you decided to hurt

Would you wrap me in blue curtains and pin me against the window

There is a shadow for every drop of light

There is pressure against all the skin in the world

One day we’ll know if it exists anywhere else

One day we won’t direct our emotions at circumstance

Displacement is displacement is displacement

Did you think I’d say something different

Did you think there was time to talk about it

In the morning I’ll make tea in your yellow kettle

I’ll need you to decide