Transitioning
Poetry
~for Isabel Fall
I sexually identify as
an attack helicopter,
carbon fiber cold
and folded steel
molded into blades,
short wings, boron-carbide
and Kevlar, impenetrable
as the human heart
sweeping low across
the creosote-covered plain.
I sexually identify as
this desert baked white
and crawling with heat snakes
obscuring the shadows
of these mechanical birds,
these hawks and buzzards
and Apache Mystics
armed to the teeth
with Death quick, lipless kisses
from machines without mouths.
I sexually identify as
a closet in some dead end dream
of a world where humans
still touch other humans,
a closet filled with artifice,
shoes, coats, dresses,
silk, cotton, plastics,
nylon, and leather that still smells
like leather shrouded in past lives,
a dirty piece of yarn
tied to a hanging bell
that's forgotten how to ring
amid walls dripping
damp with decay.
I sexually identify as
decay, mold on the flesh
of a peach
cut to expose its fruit,
once glistening and ripe
with tender invitation,
dried to an involuntary gag,
a pistol barrel pressed
to the back of the throat,
dark oil on the tongue,
someone barking an order,
conform, conform, conform.
I sexually identify as
conformity, an outline sketch
roughly hewn,
an approximation of flesh
waiting for its color,
for its shape and its value,
a decision never made
by the person believing
they've made it,
even when the selling price
has been agreed,
even when the buyer
has already paid it.
