Three Poems

In Good Health

The stripe 
across my neck 
makes me afraid 
of my body. 
I sip Tylenol,
check the pulse 
in my temple 
the color of my tongue. 
You are unmoved 
by the litany 
of afflicting ailments. 
I name the long, 
many-lettered killers 
though some 
are just a syllable. 
A sudden clot 
can drop 
a person dead 
while brushing their teeth. 
Entire Reddit rooms 
are dedicated 
to a boy’s infected vein. 
You stroke my hair in bed. 
I’m sure you’re fine, 
you say. 
But people
disappear.
Or wake up 
wrong.
We lay naked, 
chewing takeout 
greasy, sugar-
coated tempeh strips 
like carriers of cancer. 
Your heart beats
in your wrist 
like a constant 
Kool-Aid drum. 
The only moment 
I’m sure I’m safe 
is when I’m pulling 
my I.V. bag 
through the parking lot 
my arm blooming 
with bruises 
my nose swollen with tube.

***

Driving Through Alabama
 
We stop at a diner on a two-lane road 
just outside the Mississippi border.
I do not wear my baseball cap inside.
Leave it on the floorboard. Smooth down 
my bangs. I hope I look foreign, as in 
European, where I’ve been living. 
Not like a dyke, what I am, 
from Alabama, where I grew up. 
 
My friend’s mom said we couldn’t play
anymore. She’s a lesbian, she said. But I
was nine. How to explain how I knew
what it meant. Felt the etymology inside of me
rooting down through my history and opening. 
I knew to deny. To study the Band-Aid
on my scuffed knee.
 
I pass men at the counter.
Push toward the door marked 
with a stick skirt lady.
The men’s meaty swarming heads
turn on their necks to watch me
walk over the checkered linoleum.
They grip forks in their huge hands.
They build new rules with their expressions.
Own the room. Own the road.
Own the world. Every space.
 
When I’m with you— 
in the quiet meadow we’ve created,
in the dew-bright blue shimmer,
our endless fields of soaring sun—
no one can find us.
My palm in yours.
 
And they’re trying to take that too.

***

Lost Nights in the Courtyard Marriott
		For Morgan, Megan, and Tomas
 
Morgan is in the lobby eating supper.
I go down with tea and we talk
about astrology on the big couch.
Her five planets in Sagittarius mean something. 
We wonder what a trine is.
My moon in failure makes us laugh
big twinning, clicked-in place happiness.
We’re having a highball with Megan.
She’s humming Tegan and Sara. 
She wants to go dancing, two-step like in Austin.
We wake up with the same song in our heads and
play it in my rented Volvo driving down Venice
talking about poems, how I want to write one.
 
Tomas brings glasses of chilled red
promises there is enough for everyone.
His voice carries across the carpet. 
He’s going to read Maggie Nelson in the hot tub.
Everywhere he is, we want to go, too.
 
Stepping up to the 8th floor window
I look out over the pavement 
lined with cars and exhaustion.
Billboards tower with faces of famous people.
More than anything, I want to be somebody, too.
I want to have an interesting, unordinary life.
Better than the sum of all my sad experiences.
Sweeter than the lost love letter.
 
I have written about each of you.
Filled up notebooks with your wonder.
Falling all evening long
I’ve tried to catch the night and keep it.
On the last day, over four bowls of tomato soup 
I promise myself it’s beautiful.
Lasting in this moment.
Dreams flitting in my chest.
Kicking so hard I could try.
Mouths eager to catch a laugh.