+

My mother went mad
comets        flutter

    rain      snarls

        the hardest things

                                     to do

                                     to say

                 don’t get        easier
+

I ran away 
           43 degrees      Preston

            strange/r men

  collapse

        on sidewalks
      is it a bad batch of goey? 
awkwardly      beat poets      waltz

       in a Fire Station café 
Ken searches for a missing snow leopard

     we drink glass necks

            of two white rabbits

skinned     pale
Me: I never learnt to waltz in my gender.

Ken: I can’t walk in this body.  
+

For a moment

       I thought

             I belonged                               (hold that thought)
I forgot

        Whatever

I was scribbling

fell from present tense

           to past
      memory     to    madness

      flaunted

      poetry and physics
+

The Son of Sam was arrested the same day they carted her off

It must have been at least two decades

                                before

I told you:

                   it                         (those leaves   . . . that season)

doesn’t get

any             easier