This next poem, and most of the poems I'm going to be reading,
are written for the manuscript I just
finished as part of my MFA.
It's my thesis manuscript, and hopefully, my second book.
And then at the end, I'll read two new poems
that are kind of from something I'm beginning
to think about working on.
This next poem is a sestina from the current collection.
It's blood that makes men hard.
The question-- whose blood?--
makes this a threat.
Set the scene.
First act, men cat call me daily even behind a mask.
I'm raw red meat.
Something to soften, beat until the blood
throbs inside of them.
No, I won't let this be the answer.
No man's lust is dangerous enough
to stitch a thread of fear through my blood.
It's comical, the way that these men act.
One messages me, says he wants to beat,
despite his profile which reads: masc 4 masc.
Gay men treat trans girls no better
than any common straggot.
They all beatify us until they don't.
I'm always a saint or a threat.
Always more fetish than attraction.
My body's edges bleed like ink, like skin,
bead work of rubies, dry blood, a necklace of rusty pearls.
The night masks a man who follows me and J for blocks,
shouts slurs we act like we can't hear.
The street is busy, but no one helps.
Every day is another threat.
This violence comes on cue, on beat.
A man beats off to me, tells me to slit my wrists,
to drain my blood in the bathroom sink.
My beauty, a threat to the sugar glass of his masculinity.
Men like him, I know, desire me in the dark.
In public, react as if their hunger doesn't exist.
It's all an act.
They play out beat by beat by beating.
I'd be lying if I said no man ever
battered out my blood to prove himself razor straight.
Tired masquerade that's always threatening collapse.
I won't act my part, won't spill my blood for a poem.
Beat.
Tableau.
Audiences, mascara, streaming.
This is not a poem.
It's a cut thread.
Wow.