I live in a body whose name
I never learned, spoken to me
in a strange tongue, its alphabet
of hollow vowels & vaulted roofs
of mouths all echoing as static.
This body is dangerous. That is
to say, it is dangerous to inhabit
this body. To maneuver your way
through this body is to be a specter
in your own house, to sleep in the grain
of its floorboards. I am a haunting
in the shape of a person. How I ache.
I long for a body whose name I know
but cannot say. I hunger for faint lines
of collagen, healed-over gifts of wounds
on my chest, so that I may be both seen
& unseen. O pulse, o vessel, o braided
sinew—be holy. Be true. Be a home.
I never learned, spoken to me
in a strange tongue, its alphabet
of hollow vowels & vaulted roofs
of mouths all echoing as static.
This body is dangerous. That is
to say, it is dangerous to inhabit
this body. To maneuver your way
through this body is to be a specter
in your own house, to sleep in the grain
of its floorboards. I am a haunting
in the shape of a person. How I ache.
I long for a body whose name I know
but cannot say. I hunger for faint lines
of collagen, healed-over gifts of wounds
on my chest, so that I may be both seen
& unseen. O pulse, o vessel, o braided
sinew—be holy. Be true. Be a home.
Lane Fields is a queer, trans poet living in Boston and a student of the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College. Lane’s poetry is forthcoming or has appeared in places such as Hobart, Yemassee, Rust & Moth, and Tupelo Press’s 30/30 Project.