Some forms of silence
A cicada husk jawed between outdoor stairs
My dad’s age-72 face looking at the ’39 Chevy he was just finally able to purchase
My dad’s face after the car show when we couldn’t get back into the house because
of the 4 or 6 killed in the gang shooting in the park across the way
A small wrist bone: the lunate
Pink braletted footsteps down a transphobic street
A stomach filled with honeycrisp slices & store-brand extra creamy peanut butter
The way she holds eye contact when she can tell I’m about to come
Googling the toxicity of over-the-counter strychnine
The sidewalk after someone walking by mutters “faggot”
The sidewalk after someone in a passing car throws a handful of fries & laughs
The sidewalk after four men in a charcoal sedan slow down to bark at me, then
speed away
The act I’ve thought about most days since I was 13
Eye contact I make with my chin in the mirror while shaving
Eye contact I made with the boy’s chin while swinging a right jab
Tapping my heels together three times: John Cage John Cage John Cage
[ . . . . ]
Scraping what used to be a sparrow from between the rungs of an SUV grill
A chill pencils itself between the buttons of my blue denim dress
A few September leaves mushy & susceptible to poems
The pained grin of my mother when I FaceTime her for the first time in a long time
Depictions of Mary in every Madonna & Child, no matter the hand, pigment, or stone
In the middle of a middle-America highway, an ampersanded fawn
Standard-length, white fiberglass bathtub full or entirely dry
A 30-year-old insomniac tailspinning beneath sweated bedsheets
My mother looking at my face & seeing nothing but her father’s face
My face looking away from her & toward the park to see if I could see the 4 or the 6 bodies
but I don’t remember seeing anything except yellow caution tape & a
wall of backs belonging to adults who I already knew had failed me
The fruitfly-sized silence perched between : “bodies” “people”
Dining alone in an otherwise empty duplex
Super-8 footage of blood dabbed by a passerby’s umbrella before she lifts
the barrel-end to her face to examine
Don’t say it if you get it
The calculations of enemies
The not-quite-open mouths of friends
Chins cocked before the prayer