I just spent half an hour wrapping the motion sensors
On my studio lightswitch with electrical tape
So the fluorescents wouldn’t turn on unless I asked. There’s two huge windows in the wall
That face the sunlight and I really don’t see
Why the lights need to know where I am
When I have the two hands that god gave me
To flip a damn lightswitch.

There’s this TV show I’ve watched a dozen times, 
About a lesbian who keeps another girl’s photo in her locket
But can’t say her name out loud. Men 
Taunt her about it but she refuses

To answer them or be perceived–
But we, the audience, obviously know
Because we’re watching her through our panopticon screens,
And she’s the one who’s paying the price.
Anyway, the moral of the story is that queerness lives in silence
So it can’t be refuted. There’s something to that:
Does love have a choice when it’s stuck inside a love story?

I should write about my art now. At some point I have to admit
I’ll never draw anything as good as my preschool drawings again
(2004, marker and crayon on construction paper)
I drew houses and people. I didn’t know
What linear perspective was back then
And I’ve been mourning that innocence ever since.
Years ago my thesis advisor told me
(As she x-ed out another “very” with her red pen)
I remind her of Jesus: transfiguring the suffering
Of the maker, the audience, the watcher and watched

But I don’t want to die for everyone else’s sins!
I want to die for my own!

Once there was a girl who fell out of a boat
And a boy jumped into the water to save her
But was swept away instead.
And when the girl tried to remember his name
She realized it hadn’t been her in the boat after all—
He’d died for something else, and she’s been 
Screaming for help from the shore all along.

Or, once there was a kid who really liked stories
At the edge of an absence she couldn’t name. She haunted her own life, transparent, bodiless
Not recognizing themselves in a face or a mirror
Till the poem ended. Diagnostic criteria:
A. B. C. D. Persistent difficulties in the social use of verbal and nonverbal communication as manifested by all of the following:
1. Deficits in using communication for social purposes, such as greeting and sharing
information, in a manner that is appropriate for the social context.

I’ve been looking at my own damn art for
So many hours, sewing and stitching and
Sawing and stapling like I’m some Frankenstein
But the monster I’m making isn’t a downtrodden philosopher,
It’s a wall. Or maybe a Jacob’s ladder
Or a mourning locket.
The point is, you’re sewing a seam / you’re plastering a wall / you’re drawing a line / you’re sanding a 2×4,
You’re the maker and made and everything spirals back into itself.

If you lie down flat on your back in a fireplace,
Sometimes you see a sliver of sky.

Well. That’s the idea anyway.
The Venetian blinds in my bedroom let in just enough sunlight
That it wakes me up, but not enough
That my room becomes a panopticon cell at night.
My landlord wants me to use the “back stairs”
Until the paint on our front stairs dries,
But bitch. The back stairs?
You mean the fire escape?
As it turns out the door to the fire escape
Doesn’t unlock for any of my keys–
Even though I asked it very nicely–
So the door has remained unlocked all day so I can get back in.
And all I can do is hope
That some stranger on the street doesn’t realize
My home is wide open for the taking

But it’s fine.