The font, not the nation, nor the southern state where lawmakers are folding the idea of the monster of my body into votes from folks whose homes they know are marked for flooding. I suppose I mean typeface—I’m supposed to remember the difference— like all exquisite things, we’ve got this etymology that feels apocryphal anyway. Anyway, let’s suppose I am a transitional shape. Which is to say: romantic. Which is to say I’ve arrived at asking my students to write animal manifestos, to embody feral cats, opossum cousins, put on their racoon masks and scream. Which is to say it’s summer, and I’m teaching somewhere sunny and in the wilderness, and zoomed in, one can see it’s a sleepover camp, and I am a wilderness, and we’re sitting near a lakeshore that hums homesick despite bright blue, green, grass, tree, picnic benches and matching costumes. For so long, I’ve been the sort of girl who uses that phrase (which is to say), but now it’s the end of the week and all of us queer-poet-type adults are just celebrating the occasion of a boring lunch, and talking earnestly like: I want to be unbroke, but it costs too much, so I’m settling for a poetics of shrieking until my voice rasps like a stoner girl. I’ve already become the sort of person who nods along when a friend describes the sky like it’s almost pink in its blueness. I tell a colleague, a boss really, a poet really, a friend, or idk—like, a crush in the sense of the sort of woman I wanna be (I can’t tell anymore & maybe I never could & the hormones make it hard not to be corny rn) I wanna be a puzzle with multiple outcomes. Her cool persuades me that softness remains in season, even when it’s obvious. Like, Life is so long, someone says, criticizing the quixotic flirtations that one of us floats on the boyish shoulders of another, but the summer is so romantic.
A feral summer
almost pink in its blueness
hormones make it float
NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: The burning haibun is a poetic form created by poet torrin a. greathouse. It begins with a haibun that documents an interior journey, then undergoes two rounds of erasure until what remains is a haiku.
Image Description of this Poem:
The second stanza of this poem is presented in an erasure form. Some text appears with a dark grey background while the rest appears with a white background. The text with a white background provides a second version of the poem. It reads:
my body is apocryphal
Which is to say: romantic.
Which is to say a feral summer shore
For too long, I’ve been the sort of person who a friend describes like almost pink in its blueness.
the hormones make it hard not to be obvious.
Like, Life floats on the shoulders of summer
Added: Wednesday, May 8, 2024 / Used with permission.
Dr. Tonee Mae Moll is a queer & trans poet & essayist. She is the author of Out of Step: A Memoir, which won the Lambda Literary Award in bisexual nonfiction and the Non/Fiction Collection Prize. Their latest book, You Cannot Save Here, won the Jean Feldman Poetry Prize from WWPH. Her poetry has also received the Adele V. Holden award for creative excellence and the Bill Knott Poetry Prize, along with nominations for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. Tonee holds an MFA in Creative Writing & Publishing Arts from University of Baltimore and a Ph.D. in English from Morgan State University. She is a Gemini.
Image Description:Tonee Mae Moll, a feminine person with a yellow hat and yellow glasses, looks at the camera. She wears a grey sweater with a denim jacket over it and a brass necklace shaped like a tree.
