By Adam Meisner
There is little left of me
I feel worthwhile to lock up—
still some things go down
easier with the encryption
of French. J’étais une garçonne,
for example. Et je m’imaginais
dans une jupe qui parachutait
autour de mes jambes
en tombant vers l’enfer—
ou comme une cage qui entourait
mon coq comme espèce zoologique
dans une chaîne darwinienne
mal comprise durant les siècles
qui m’ont précédée.
There is little left of me
I feel worthwhile to lock up—
in any language, really,
and I’ll tell you now:
when I was 17, I kissed
her blonde hair and her breasts,
but found they tasted too
strongly of pomegranate seeds,
so I swam away from
the blue whirl of their current
toward a new Galapagos.
There is little left of me
I feel worthwhile to lock up—
so what does that leave me
to confess? That none of my
words will ever be my own?
That I only write for him
to think of me as his equal?
That is the point at which
I imagine we might trick
biology to make a new
generation out of our same
horse-lip parts. No, as equals
we could freely tell one another,
“There is little left of me
I feel worthwhile to lock up.
So little left of me, at all.”