Aubade with Fake Blowjob
after Sam Rush
Perhaps fake is the wrong word, but there it is: Imitation.
Copy. Counterfeit. My dick is counterfeit. Sometimes silicone,
fingernail, or exhale. But in morning light, anything missing
is erased by sunbeam, maybe, or half-sleep stupor, eyesight
dizzied with lovelorn dreams. My eyes close & my whole body
might be misremembered. Put the covers where I don’t want
to believe. The only un-lies in this room: you
& the light, and what, tell me, is the difference?
Your mouth & the sun? Illumination & creation?
Some people want us to change, & some people
show us what we want to be & how we have already
become it. Dick of halogen. Fluorescent silence.
The sheets, humility. The curtains, liars. The moan,
distortion. This town, sepulchre. Your spine, a vision.
The sun, marble. Your mouth, a sculptor. Your mouth,
a tool. Your mouth, a blade. Your mouth, white-hot
heat welding my and self together. Melt my two bodies
into one blinding shudder. Give shape to what I’ve named.
My body museum of empty frames. My body taxidermy
of the still-alive. My body, admittedly, small, but still all mine,
and you don’t mind. Your hair, my gravity. You, gravity.
You, everything the light tumbles towards. You tell me
afterwards that it was ethereal. As if the light
wasn’t all yours. The brightness stains in quiet.
Shadows stripe the little-known. You glow. You always
glow. You lightbulb a vision of myself, where your eyes
are everyone’s eyes. Where the heat comes with the light.
SHIT MY BRAIN SAYS
a car speeds the street all motor
& douchebag while I shuffle along
on the snowslip sidewalk hood
over my eyes & my brain says shit like
what if they were 5 seconds later &
3 inches to the left and now my brain
is fabricating a dramatic movie scene
and an obituary no one reads
because they put my birth name in it
so nobody can find it until a long series
of frozen grapevines erupt & now
everyone knows I must be a death wish
& wonders if I did it on purpose & what
a tragedy another trans death & my partner
is sitting statue-still on their big bed
& my mother is weeping in new jersey
by the time I get to my shitty-landlord
driveway I have found 5 more ways
to die & by the time I descend
the steps I have chosen my favorite
but by the time I am pulling the key
out of the doorknob I have decided
that I don’t want to die
& what a blessing,
to want to survive myself. To be trans
& still cautious. To take no time
staring at a road & asking it to kill me
so I don’t have to. What a blessing
to take each iced step lightly. To affix
my seatbelt. To overcook the eggs.
To walk this winding way for groceries
to nourish a self I want no part of
some days, but some days, I only stop
in the cold for one moment, and only
to look at the moon out early in the dusk,
and only because it looks good tonight.
Because I, amazingly, out in weather
fraught with small dangers, enjoy being alive.
Because my apartment is warm,
the futon welcoming, the moon out
of sight, but still outside.
Myles Em Taylor is a Writing, Literature & Publishing major at Emerson College. They are the Editor-in-Chief of the newly minted Corridors Magazine. They represented Emerson College at CUPSI in 2016 and 2017, and represented the Boston Poetry Slam at NPS 2017. You can find their work in voicemail poems, Freezeray Poetry, Beech Street Review, and at shows around the Northeast. They knit to stay zen and drink way too much espresso.
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