If You Think Bodies Are Static You Have Clearly Never Had Queer Sex
We all have Google, I know: If a tree falls in a forest, it does not make a sound
because sound is made in each of our ears from vibrations. Feeling, similarly,
requires the nerves to happen. So if half of my body dissociates
every time. If I imagine our legs otherwise. If my eyes stay open
but I feel something other than what I see. What is that?
Facts and reality are two different things. Reality is just a lot of people
agreeing. Months of injections from now, a group of people might see me
and the reality of me will be a whole lot different than the fact of it.
In between & all kinds of whole and unembarrassed tonight, gin-dazed
and asking to be both the hips and the knees, for submission to submission.
If two people at night decide there is a dick between them
and no one else is there to see it, are they wrong?
And can you prove it? If the only people in the room know
what they feel, if our nerves go rogue against the night,
I am not the kind of guy who likes to ask for directions.
Soften me. I am a muscle used too often to know how to stretch.
if I look in their eyes and see it, is my dick a mass hallucination?
A conspiracy theory? Every ghost story involves somebody
who’ll go to their grave believing what they saw, whether or not
there’s a rational voice they’re ignoring, or maybe listening to,
but that can’t shake it, this tendency to doubt. I’m not doubting the ways
my pleasure comes to me. I want to believe. Queering reality is deciding
the options we get aren’t good enough, and doing something about it.
I am feeling the kind of too much I am supposed to want but often get too scared
to look in the eye but today I think, I trust them, I trust them, and the world
can shatter without glass getting anywhere near my skin, your skin, our skin.
So yeah, sex with me might haunt you. Why be born right when you
can manipulate consciousness, shimmer like a fact in an age
without image, age like a document pressed between two books,
the millimeter of possibility you feel in the back of your chest
when a shape passes the corner of your eye in the middle of the night.
Trying to explain why all my loved ones are trans is hard
when you just weren’t there. There, in the room of your brain you might not have gone into yet.
an explanation I do not owe
I wake up with the sun glittering onto me my shower glitters so hard
you can hear it I pour coffee over giant chunks of glitter
and taste the cool of it I buy the sparkly toothpaste
so if I bleed the sink still shines foamy prom dress mudslide
and then the morning ritual of choosing between discomfort
or discomfort passing and passing and not passing
a mirror for a clean breath I am thinking about the whole
futurity thing when my favorite professor shes me
and it is almost like it does not happen
but I still wonder all class if skipping dinner
will make my jaw more angular or my body more throwable
but I survive it and do this revolutionary thing where I keep talking
talking with this voice these bundles of string lights
caught in my throat see I am told that glitter is a feminine thing
and if it is to you, that is so valid! but honestly
I am already so clockable I feel like the closest I can get to passing
for a thing no one has a word for is to look as DIY as my name
I cover myself in glitter because I am effectively already covered in glitter
I wear men’s everything and might as well be in a ball gown my eyes are two giant chunks of reflective confetti I speak and glitter pours out of my mouth I eat and taste shards of glass I bind and feel grating specks of plastic everywhere I walk down the street I must be covered because no one can look away but I must be so bright they can’t actually see me
If I try to be visible I get buried in the numbers of it
it’s that collection of moments that bury us in the end I’m so tired
of looking like an emergency siren there is no surgery
for a sometimes and if there was I would need centuries of sleep
to take back all the deep breaths I’ve lost my body
uses up energy buzzing in self awareness my body congratulated itself
every day it went without a cigarette before I even started smoking it’s like an inheritance
every trans person I know
knows a trans person who has died
and here I stand
in a room with no ghosts
waiting for a knock at the door
Myles Taylor (they/he) is a transmasculine poet, organizer, award-winning poetry slam competitor, barista, Emerson College alum, Capricorn-Aquarius cusp, and glitter enthusiast. They run Moonlighting: A Queer Open Mic and host at the Boston Poetry Slam. Their work can be found in The Shallow Ends, Academy of American Poets, Washington Square Review, Underblong, Crab Fat Magazine, Slamfind, and others. Follow them @mylesdoespoems. Photo by Clark Hartman.