Chorus Read Online Free PDF

or words, water or my touch . i eat meat
    with every meal, he says,
    & i say, i’m vegetarian. he laughs.
    he understands the need to move, the way i spit
    on anxiety by walking until 3 in the morning,
    when the full sky & my heartbeat are finally calm,
    even if he doesn’t understand my gender
    or the tiny hairs on my chin & between my eyebrows.
    the moon is bright the way my sister looked
    after she started taking meds, glowing ,
    her eyes don’t jitter anymore, & they don’t cry either. he takes off
    all his clothes, trips on the ankles of his pants,
    & i almost laugh at his cock , not because the last time i touched one
    my hair was down to my waist & my name belonged to a girl,
    but because of how smooth it is compared to the wet sand
    clumping between my toes. i say
    i hope you know this makes you a fag. he says nothing
    & keeps kissing my neck.
    there are bubbles of hard cider in our stomachs.
    flat chests confuse me. i am looking
    for something to cup & hold on to with my hands but his body
    is like the river & it is slipping away
    through my fingers.
    i didn’t sleep very well last night.
    he is drunk on my cum & in the morning
    he will forget that i am a boi.
    tomorrow i will sigh & my friend will ask,
    why are you having trouble sleeping?
    & i will shrug a s if my shoulders are mountains
    & say i don’t know & start talking about the weather.
    it feels so strange to fuck someone but never hold their hand.
    i can hold his hand with my breasts or my cunt
    but not with my fingers.
    fingers woven together are too fragile & intimate.
    fucking is easy. fucking is easy?
    i pick at my skin when i am anxious.

31
    You call me a fruit,
    and I agree,
    say
    a fruit is ripe,
    promising seeds,
    bursting with juice.
    You call me a fruit,
    as though a vegetable
    and I recite a litany
    of fresh attributes:
    a fruit is rich,
    remembers its roots,
    nourishes, quenches,
    makes a display of any table.
    I say,
    I am the apple
    that announces the gravity
    of a given situation ;
    I am the pomegranate
    whose gemstones teach
    of the burden of possession;
    I am the fig
    our ancestors couldn’t resist.
    You call me a fruit
    and I agree:
    soft, round and sweet.
    I dare you to peel back my layers,
    take a look at my pips.
    Full as a melon,
    sharp as a lime,
    come over here
    and bite me.

32
    My mother always asks if I’m eating well.
    I don’t worry her. I say
    work late, soup for dinner, normal.
    I tell her you’re visiting and she asks
    about the soup.
    Sex is the unsaid thing, lone animal against the wall.
    A silence passed down like heirlooms and knotted-up gold chains.
    Valuable, I wasn’t made from lust, but from necessity.
    A secret: the place between my mother’s legs
    where absence bred and clung
    to the hairs on me as I descended.
    What do you tell a woman who defines passion by security?
    How do I dare measure against her life, fingers full of water,
    flour-creased, a child on her hip when she stood before
    the man she loved and said choose,
    and he chose.
    Can I show her the bowl of fruit on my floor where you sit
    naked and hungry, pear juice dripping down your chin
    and puddling in my own mouth?
    Or ask if she has ever followed salt sweet lines
    down her back with a lover’s tongue?
    Can I give her the handful of cherries, thick-fleshed,
    like the first moment I tasted my own sex?
    Imagine the smell of that kitchen; my mother
    sucking pits like small wet songs on her dry tongue.
    Leek rounds, rainbow chard, coriander, broth
    slow-cooked, I don’t mention the room
    in the house of me where you live,
    desire and devastation sleeping curled
    together like dogs at the doorway.
    We came from each other, and then we began to eat
    from separate plates, elbows off
    the table. She gives me her borsht recipe
    without measurements,
    says: do it to taste,
    and I do

33
    i am not beautiful
    i am an elegant beast
    a well-mannered monster
    a charming barbarian
    that will pillage your