SOLO

Elevator. I am going down, checking my eyes in the mirrors,
checking my lipstick, giving myself a wink and a grin.
The bell. Full stop. Two men.
I find a thing to do, search the purse for mints.
Surely one is loose below the mace
where my trigger finger dawdles
until the men begin to talk: all satisfaction with their bottom line.

I would love to look, of course, as I know
they are, curling a glance around that cough,
scratching a cheek for cover, squinting at our descent,
the numbers running down
like the old calm gaze of eyes on calves.
My breath comes short: perfume for fear, perfume to cloud
the palpable air of blunted conversation,
a game of tennis where they have both rushed the net,
and I am the net.

The bell. Full stop. My floor.
The doors part in a sigh.
I snap my purse, and go: three strong, tight steps in heels,
and then one man howls,
a soft, melodic moan for me--
and then the other joins, and they are singing,
wolfmen enjoying their pain, my gift,
and I am free, more free than they can know.

OUTCOMING

Like an actress who had practised her lines
until she became them—all nuance, gesture,
the shades of tone to beg some pity and more, forgiveness--
I stood aside on the path and looked at my wife,
then broke to gasping as though the iron lung
of a summer had imploded on my chest.

“What? What?” she asked, and squeezed my wrist.
“Whatever it is, we’ll get through,”
she said, “whatever it is….”
I’d been so vain, so good at cloaking
the secret of my life, satin and silk since adolescence,
she never would have guessed the hours I stole,
an affair for life with a girl within.

I moaned and wailed my sorrow, my fear.
All of this is true, I swear. It’s true.
A huge wind came up and roared in the cottonwoods.
My cap blew off, skittering across the canal
like a leaf until the bill stuck, and it sank.
Grains of sand stung our cheeks as we bent for home.

How long it had taken me to define myself.
I knew my coming out would shake her.
“How blind!” she said in days to come. “How naive!
How could I have missed the signs!”
Then one day little things began to matter differently.
“You’ve always been good at shopping,”
she said, bowing her head.
“That secret must have hurt.”
Again, I cried like a girl.

FORM, TRANSFORM: NEW YEAR'S EVE

“Hast thou entered into the treasures of the snow?” —The Book of Job

The snow comes down like feathers,
a boa tonight for the cold--
more for comfort of mind than warmth.
Beauty is like that.
“Il faut soufrir pour etre belle,” the French say,
one must suffer for beauty, and they should know.
You find a phrase grown out of another phrase,
revision riding down the chill mountain wind,
the lights of town below
like the Milky Way up close, hotter than passion.
You sing to yourself again. It just never gets old.

Art: sometimes it is like some self-administered medicine,
sometimes a friendship with yourself that comes and goes.
Never be desperate again, you say.
Okay, and you nod, okay.
You want to believe, you do; and sometimes
you get beyond belief, yes, and know.
The roar of silence is the universe on a snowy night.
There is nothing like finding oneself.
There is nothing like overcoming fear.

MISSING PERSON

I ask this often
now that I am done denying:
how might I be
if I had been
the girl in the mirror
from the start,
one long red fingernail
at her cheek, demurely?

She is wondering, had things
been different, had “if”
turned “go” in a protein base,
if some chromosome dream
of “go” had turned from Y to X,
who would she be?

No small hips, squared
shoulders, no biceps,
triceps, quadriceps
so massed for strength
with adrenaline to lift a car.
No jutting browbone.
No Adam’s apple,
penis,
testicals--

the inside out
gone outside in,
and breasts and aereolas,
softer skin, softer voice,
that lowered center
of gravity.

I touch my knee and wonder--
when gender is gossamer
as nylon—even, perhaps, that way
a woman cannot say
just yes or no
without exploring first
what others near her feel,
answers oblique and careful.