WILL

      the fisherman’s sneakers trouble the water

      he baits his hooks with homophones, cartilage, pheromones

      his hooks : telephones, specula, seraphim

      he lowers his line into the dark

      an adrenal needle plunged into the heart

      feels something bite below the river

      & pulls up boy,

      after boy,

      after boy,

      after boy,

      after boy,

      after boy,

      after boy,

      after boy,

      after boy,

      after boy,

      after boy,

      after boy,

      after boy,

      after boy,

      after boy,

      after boy,

      after boy,

      after boy,

      after boy,

      after boy,

      after boy,

      after boy,

      after boy,

      after boy,

      after boy,

      after boy,

      after boy,

      after boy,

      after boy,

      after boy,

      after boy,

      after boy,

      after boy,

      after boy,

      after boy,

      after boy,

      after boy,

      after boy,

      after boy,

      after boy,

      after boy,

      after boy,

      after boy,

      after boy,

      after boy,

      after boy,

      after boy,

      after boy,

      after boy,

      after boy,

      after boy,

      BILDUNGSROMAN

      i never wanted to grow up to be anything horrible as a man. my biggest fear was the hair they said would snake from my chest, swamp trees breathing as i ran. i prayed for a different kind of puberty: skin transforming into floor boards muscles into cobwebs, growing pains sounding like an attic groaning under the weight of old photo albums. as a kid i knew that there was a car burning above water before this life, i woke here to find fire scorched my hair clean off until i shined like glass—my eyes, two acetylene headlamps. in my family we have a story for this: my brother holding me in his hairless arms. says

      dad it will be a monster we should bury it.

      ULTRASOUND

      it’s not that we’re all born

      genderless, though we are.

      rather, once we were all small

      women inside our mothers.

      something about science

      & sex organs & hormones

      & god. no wonder she wept

      red negligee when she walked in

      on me at ten in her worst dress

      spinning before her dead

      father’s mirror, my eyes made up

      into science fictions. felt me

      again inside her, my pig thirst

      threading her blood & body

      mass into another veil i’d wear

      & not care for. seeing mother

      cry i found myself

      into manlier fabrics. when i am

      a boy again she tells me

      it’s not that she hated me fey

      rather, that day she swore

      she saw the mirror sob. fetal lady,

      little daughter, tiny apology.

      NEW GOD OF AN ANTIQUE WAR

      i only want the world

      to end when i’m done

      with it

      a boy stares into the lake & falls

      in love

      it’s not how you think,

      with his own reflection

      but rather

      the lake

      o to be so fluid you can hold

      another’s shape

      & stay the same thing

      this story is a horse

      beaten into a new name

      a french king builds a palace

      of

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