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TO THE PURPLE DYE INSERTED INTO MY UTERUS

Oh loveliness, tell me what you see—
which horizon hues open to you. What

I didn’t know I didn’t need to know
until now. Are my fallopian tubes

roller-coaster looped or sidewalk-slick?
Do you detect dangers there? I only

know what I’ve been told. Here
on my crackling paper bed, I am soothed

by our meeting through a screen. Like you,
I looked for home somewhere. Let’s see

each other eye to dye. Find the caves,
the linings. Seek that uncharted I never

explored in person. How lucky are you
to have a place to go. Send forth, tinsel-light

the highways, the potential paths. Announce,
This way, this way. We are all so blind.

The hollows swallow you. You thread through
like cracks in wood grain. Spiraling my lining alive.

I envy your mobility. Bloom my insides.
What doesn’t yet grow needs rich soil.

Uncloak what has yet to seed.

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Level IV: Secret Level

Editors’ Note: Given the formatting of these poems, they are best viewed as below in an uploaded PDF format.

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are you a boy or a girl, her niece asks,
        and I turn to smoke,

watch the wilted / sun

                                                                  gallop / from the trees

planted / on my chin

                                                                  my body / a vortex



my body / an echo

                                                                 my body / set out

in the lake / a tomb

                                                                 of chest / hair and broken



teeth / her voice / a shower

                                                                of pebbles / before the wind

puts on / a dress

                                                                and carries my breasts / out         to sea

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etymology of flight: a venn diagram

Editors’ Note: Given the formatting of these poems, they are best viewed as below in an uploaded PDF format.

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short film beneath a cloak of stars

Mrs.  Potato  Head  visits the  planetarium  alone  once her  husband  finally  goes on
vacation, grateful  for the  opportunity to  take her time  learning the  composition of
the  celestial  universe.  On  their last  trip, he  strolled  through  each exhibit  quickly
and pouted in the  cafeteria until she could stand it no longer. All she can  remember
is  the  big bang  theory and  pools of  dust and  ice  and  how  much her feet ached  in
those  emerald  heels  he  insisted  she  wear, but  not  this  time.  Today  Mrs.  Potato
Head tours  the  planets in  a mellow  ochre suit  and penny loafers bought for a  solo
vacation  that  never materialized.  A child  wails with  their hands  on the  surface of
Titan,  and she  gives a polite  smile to  the parent  reaching  out  with  yogurt  before
gazing upon Saturn’s rings. She considers her own body born out among those rings,
bits  of  asteroid and  mountain  swirling,  barely held together:  a body  not so  easily
identified.  But  Titan is  too close to  human life.  Humans are  obsessed with  seeing
their reflections in the glow of Saturn’s rotating eye.

Mrs. Potato Head slips into the gender neutral bathroom and removes the moustache
from her breast pocket. Presses it into place before she meets her own reflection
worlds away: her body a knot of wires, trailing electricity across the abyss above the
clouds. Mrs. Potato Head studies Luna and her scars, how the oceans mirror each
ragged breath, watches ten people stare into a telescope that spans the length of a
body twice her height. When she finally reads about dark matter, she can see herself
reunited with the stars, split among new constellations, fading in and out of opacity.
A blip of astral euphoria. In another world, her name would be Neptune and she
would dance with women on swathes of ice. Mrs. Potato Head isn’t sure how she
married a man who doesn’t appreciate museums, but she now knows she is a dwarf
planet on course to collide with the Sun. She rides the subway home with ancient
flight charts transposed on her wrists.

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Instructions for My Funeral

Don’t bury me in no tree, and don’t touch
My chin hair. Burn me with gold leaves
In my crown so they know who I am [a bad
Bitch]. Take some ashes to meld my body
In glass: go ahead, ash blunts on my rose-gold
Rim. Have two funerals: a traditional one
For my mother and a kickback
With my wife. Send anyone who wears black
Home. Cry only if you’re laughing at me
[& how funny I used to be]. Play Doechii
And Solange all night, and don’t stop
Dancing until you sweat out your hair.
Find my wife and present her gifts of gold
Butter cake, fried chicken with lemon pepper,
Trashy american tacos, and hunks of sweet corn. No
Fighting, no preaching, no pain. Plant the rest
Of me to bloom [into an overgrown
Magnolia tree]. Let me sustain the bees
Long after I’ve gone to the fluffiest place
Reserved for dead Black poets, where
There’s an endless supply
Of any kind of potatoes you can imagine.

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Asteroidea

You’re mine, she says, stringy arms
trapping my head to her chest.

Mine, with the certainty only a child
can summon, body stretched

over sand-colored sheets like a starfish.
When her father says No, she belongs

to herself, she strikes with sudden
strength, limbs curled and clinging,

and it’s then that I recognize her
claim: the one that, each morning,

I don’t let myself make. Prying
her arms away gently, I steady

her water-blue eyes with mine,
see the depths of us surface,

know it’s true when I say
yes and yes.

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After Quarantine, We Go Out into Marigold Light

in search of zinnias, faded to pink,
the last bouquet of emerald peppers.

Summer squash rotted and frozen,
pale skin crusted with ice. You say:

Let’s see what we see, leading me
on thin paths crowded by dried dill,

your wonder gracing everything––
especially the pumpkins that will

never grow, green as summer,
palm-sized and already dying.

Your cough is muffled by the open
world. I can smell the air again.

I try to exhale the fears that have
flourished alongside you since

before you touched the earth.
I say it like a prayer that won’t

sink in, like frost on the surface
of things: One breath, another.

These fruits don’t need to be harvested.

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Another Ocean

As the waves recede,
you hold on to my knee,
strands of seaweed

hugging your heel,
your hair full of wind,
sand shimmering on skin.

Then you flee from me,
chasing gulls and other things
that elude my grasp.

You are water, wild
as weather––you have become
another ocean.

Soon you will sleep
in my arms under a thin towel
and seem small again.

Awash in relief, I will
watch the water turn from
aqua to navy to grey.

I will watch as a seal,
dark and elegant,
skirts the shore

with an eye toward us,
then wish you awake again
to see it.

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Ultrasound

I was seven when the sea turned
on me, tossed me sideways, stole

          my footing, sloshed me to shore
          like a weed. I stood in saltwater,

sandy hair stuck to my shoulders,
stunned. When I saw the pearly spine

          in the ocean of my body, heard
          the static flutter, it was like that:

a grief unleashed. I said her name,
and the waves overtook me.

          What could I do but surrender
          to their swell? I shed years

of longing like an old skin,
stood reborn, then waded in.

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