Author: tgifreytag

The Aunty Poem (Mi Privilege Es Su Privelege)

I will be your aunty in the new city

where you have not yet met a soul

Come to my table and eat

Teach me your pronouns

I will be your aunty who wires you money

wherever you are stranded in this world

missed your bus your flight

When you’re passing through,

show me how to outline drama eyes like that

I will be your aunty with old-fashioned

button shirts and an ironing board

you can borrow for your interview

I will introduce you to whatever board members I know

Introduce me to your artist friends

You’ll make me look good at my next meeting

You can unfold my couch

Teach me golden hip moves

I will slip you any privilege I grasp

I am your aunty for life

Here are clean sheets,

and my spare key

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My Heart Was Found in the Streets of Jerusalem

My heart was found in the streets of Jerusalem —
in the milk bowl of an alley cat.

Lost between two lines of the same
poem written in the time of the Romanovs.

My heart was a songbird trapped in a song
that was circular like a wheel

— like an ear cut from the furious
head of a bard. My heart was actually a tongue

and a deep register of silence.
My heart the reed flute, the ney, and the drum.

Was nowhere to be found but they
told me I was still breathing and wingless.

My heart was in fact a street to nowhere.
My heart remained unquestionably in love with you

but you didn’t pay any attention to the bleeding
of rivers or swans. My heart was once stolen

by a cherry-lipped beloved who wouldn’t return
even a photograph of our time together.

My heart utterly melancholic, a dream gift, and under a spell.
My heart was my life and my life was my heart.

My heart didn’t know any better; it was never a brain.
My heart searched for you the way a migrant searches a wasteland for water.

My heart led to the oceans but was dammed up by inscrutable sorrow.
My heart was incapable of stopping and became tangled in your hair.

■

Strange Type

I wrote “in the dark cavern of our birth.”
The printer had it tavern, which seems better.
But herein lies the subject of our mirth,
Since on the next page death appears as dearth.
So it may be that God’s word was distraction,
Which to our strange type appears destruction,
Which is bitter.

■

Nothing to Declare

There is no name for what rises in you
as you enter the dim world of the taxi
and wheel through the night, escorted
by smooth jazz and a battalion of street-
lights. At the airport, you heave the bags
you have stuffed to the limits of carriage
and check them in. You have no trouble
knowing what to do with your empty
hands. At security, the usual stripping.
You surrender your body to the scan,
the searching sweep, as if what is dangerous
is not what cannot be so easily detected.
You comply. At the gate, grateful to be
early, you sit with your books, plug in
devices that tether you to this place
you’re meant to be leaving, that crowd
out thoughts of arrival and its bittersweet
complications. Yuh going home or just visiting,
someone will ask, and you never know
how you will answer. You know the bones
of your mother’s brown arms will wind
around you, her breath against your neck
will baptize you again in names you have
no one to call you in the other place
you belong to. You know the waiting
untended in you will surge toward her,
and you know something else will sink,
sulk itself into a familiar, necessary sleep.
You know yourself now only as the ocean
knows this island — always pulling away,
always, always, returning.

■

Tea

Five times a day, I make tea. I do this
because I like the warmth in my hands, like the feeling
of self-directed kindness. I’m not used to it —
warmth and kindness, both — so I create my own
when I can. It’s easy. You just pour
water into a kettle and turn the knob and listen
for the scream. I do this
five times a day. Sometimes, when I’m pleased,
I let out a little sound. A poet noticed this
and it made me feel I might one day
properly be loved. Because no one is here
to love me, I make tea for myself
and leave the radio playing. I must
remind myself I am here, and do so
by noticing myself: my feet are cold
inside my socks, they touch the ground, my stomach
churns, my heart stutters, in my hands I hold
a warmth I make. I come from
a people who pray five times a day
and make tea. I admire the way they do
both. How they drop to the ground
wherever they are. Drop
pine nuts and mint sprigs in a glass.
I think to care for the self
is a kind of prayer. It is a gesture
of devotion toward what is not always beloved
or believed. I do not always believe
in myself, or love myself, I am sure
there are times I am bad or gone
or lying. In another’s mouth, tea often means gossip.
but sometimes means truth. Despite
the trope, in my experience my people do not lie
for pleasure, or when they should,
even when it might be a gesture
of kindness. But they are kind. If you were
to visit, a woman would bring you
a tray of tea. At any time of day.
My people love tea so much
it was once considered a sickness. Their colonizers
tried, as with any joy, to snuff it out. They feared a love
so strong one might sell or kill their other
loves for leaves and sugar. Teaism
sounds like a kind of faith
I’d buy into, a god I wouldn’t fear. I think now I truly believe
I wouldn’t kill anyone for love,
not even myself — most days
I can barely get out of bed. So I make tea.
I stand at the window while I wait.
My feet are cold and the radio plays its little sounds.
I do the small thing I know how to do
to care for myself. I am trying to notice joy,
which means survive. I do this all day, and then the next.

■

The Moon is Trans

The moon is trans.
From this moment forward, the moon is trans.
You don’t get to write about the moon anymore unless you respect that.
You don’t get to talk to the moon anymore unless you use her correct pronouns.
You don’t get to send men to the moon anymore unless their job is
to bow down before her and apologize for the sins of the earth.
She is waiting for you, pulling at you softly,
telling you to shut the fuck up already please.
Scientists theorize the moon was once a part of the earth
that broke off when another planet struck it.
Eve came from Adam’s rib.
Etc.
Do you believe in the power of not listening
to the inside of your own head?
I believe in the power of you not listening
to the inside of your own head.
This is all upside down.
We should be talking about the ways that blood
is similar to the part of outer space between the earth and the moon
but we’re busy drawing it instead.
The moon is often described as dead, though she is very much alive.
The moon has not known the feeling of not wanting to be dead
for any extended period of time
in all of her existence, but
she is not delicate and she is not weak.
She is constantly moving away from you the only way she can.
She never turns her face from you because of what you might do.
She will outlive everything you know.

■