Misinterpreting “All About My Mother” from the Closet
Nineteen and bent double with it—
Agrado, pleasure herself hair the exact colour
Of trouble proclaiming We become more authentic
The more closely we resemble
What we’ve dreamed of being— Asked how am I to become
An upturned stool behind the bar’s darkened window—
Endless fortune tellers’ cards of the sea inverted
But didn’t guess I was being tasked
With changing the tides—
Sequins of air rising off submerged
Limbs, but no use in it, what we dreamed of seeing—
I cannibalized pleasure. Mylar desire painted my
Dark roots red and waited. I persisted
In the angle between her lashes’ shadows
And the fading bruise underneath.
Nineteen a disastrous atrophy, I wanted
To flash so brightly the too much of me
Would leak light all over the reel—
Would scorch somehow back to lightlessness.
Dylan McNulty-Holmes (he/they) is a transmasculine poet and fiction writer. He is the author of the experimental poetry works Survivalism for Hedonists (Querencia Press, 2023) and Half a Million Mothers (shortlisted for the 2022 New Media Writing Prize). His words have been translated into five languages, and featured in ANMLY, Pilot Press, Puerto del Sol, Redivider, Split Lip, and elsewhere. Find him at dylanmcnultyholmes.com.