Under Glass

Under Glass

I keep the postcards under glass,

safe from dust and spills. Sheets of paper

with half-written poems often hide

them. You wouldn’t know anyway–they’re all

I’ve got that you’ve ever touched with your fingers.

It took the one card almost two weeks

to come the distance, the maze of roads,

bags, boxes, and post offices jammed with

other messages. When I clean up,

toss the unneeded drafts to the trash, or tuck

something good into a folder, I also take

out a card. Touch it. Maybe you’ve left

a little more than the ink upon its surface, a wisp

of perfume I can’t smell, a smudged fingerprint

I can’t see. It’s a wish, as thin as it gets,

one which I keep on the desk safe under glass.

And where you have to stay.

 

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This is another poem I wrote back in the late 90s and again I can see where how I’m very much dealing with my transgender nature. I actually did have a desk with a thick glass pane on top of it and under which I had put some postcards I had received from people. To me, those postcards represented both disconnection and connection, how symbols both connect ideas but also serve as reminders of distance.

Her Orchard’s Song

Her Orchard’s Song

 

The wind came through the apple tree rows,

in early fall to raise the scent of mowed grass,

Winesaps and McIntosh. I opened eyes like I never

had before and watched how the leaves trembled

like her hands once did. An apple fell, and rolled

to a stop, a bruise facing up.

Beneath the boughs like arms I could smell

the hollow of her neck, and the fold behind her ears

cloaked by hair. I looked out to what

was a glad hill, without trees of gnarled tops,

but grass swells that fell along the curves.

I could see it at the end of two rows where I stood still.

The wind came and another apple fell.

 

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This another old piece, written back in the late 90s probably. Again now I can see how my mind was trying to wrap itself around my deeply buried identity, a sense of feminine self that I tried to suppress, to the world around me, to my own self. But here I can see it striving to find a way out, to give me ideas to pull me out, to become who I now accept and work towards the day of making public.