by Stephen Ira
In this manicured room built by working class boyfriends, if I keep my clothes on, I look just like James Merrill. Right hand on my father’s checkbook and the left on my planchette. Left hand on a letter from Elizabeth. It describes animals she saw have gender, not money, not unmoney. Right hand in my cunt, pulling on wires, refining, affirming the form. Voices of dead people under my hand. It’s a scam, and they move when I move.
Stephen Ira is a writer and performer. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in FENCE, Poetry, and other venues. He is a co-founder and co-editor of Vetch: A Magazine of Trans Poetry and Poetics. In 2013, he was a Lambda Literary Fellow. He studied poetry at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop.
“Creaky Staircase” by awuzyk is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.
