The Marbled Sigh

Wisconsin River, Scene 3

After Daniel Borzutzky’s “Lake Michigan, Scene 3”

The people are at home

And the people are gashed

And the mills have closed

And Dave on the radio tells them repeatedly     The economy will rise

The economy will rise to replenish the jobs that have been slashed

The gashed people stay silent

They sit in silence at their dinner tables

At dinner tables made from neighboring woods

At dinner tables surrounded by deer

Deer on the plates   on the walls   on the side of the road

Deer mark the neighboring woods

I know who built my neighbor’s home

I know the neighbor of the person who built my neighbor’s home

I know the wife of the man who built his little empire of locals’ gashes

We are told that our life is simpler

We are told that we could build our own little empire

We are told to deny the smell by Fern Island’s stone bridge   mossy logs    green spanse

Dave tells us to remember birthdays   school calendars      chili cookoffs

Dave asks if we got out to see the deer     the fallen leaves       the serenity

We are told   bliss is in simplicity   bonds are grounded in community

Find your passion and never work another day

I walk the stone bridge and I smell the river spills

I smell the carcasses in the shards of grass and clods of dirt

I smell the fatigue and regret through Deer Season

I have small gashes and others are more scar than skin

I have broken fingers and others have missing limbs

I smell the fathers open their garage doors  We welcome death into our homes

The Consequences of Not Knowing the Word Transgender

(CW: s*idal ideation, mentions of s*icide att*mpt, suggestions of violence)

After Daniel Borzutzky

Downstairs the unfinished basement has no door on the room I
stay in as I think of climbing the ladder

That’s the corner where I cry and wear the sweaters I steal

This is the bathroom where the silverfish crawl up from the
depths of the drains in droves and my towels lay in heaps on the
cold linoleum to shelter spiders before their bodies morph to
carcass

Around the corner the laundry room has an exposed ceiling full
of insulation where my hand tingles in pain as I touch the fluffy
stuff and I wrestle with the nature of cognitive dissonance

The room I stay in has brown carpet and the bathroom has
linoleum and the rest of the basement has a concrete floor

In the winter condensation forms on the windows

I lick the condensation

My shoes have the traction of a construction worker’s boot when
I climb the ladder

I climb the ladder to the top of the washing machine and I stand
on top of that washing machine with this orange extension cable
wrapped around my neck securly and I think about my hips’ slow
spread and how red drips from my legs and how that makes me
want red to instead drip from every other orifice and I want to
jump that short distance but I haven’t written a suicide note

I don’t want to write that note, write this poem, climb that ladder

I wear the sweater(s) and think of all the ways I could destroy
myself with what parts are left presentable and how I can look
stoic or what stolen sweater I could wear or where I will have
parts of me ooze with homemade piercings or slashes and
yellow and purple bruises or gnaw marks and whether my face
should be covered or my eyes popped out for someone to find
my eyes splayed like my limbs

As I cry in the corner I can taste the brown lipstick smear on the
bathroom mirror and it tastes like exposed insulation

A real woman has a pretty corpse

A real woman dabs the perfume sprayed on her wrists and
wipes the excess on the side of her neck

A real woman feels a breeze between her thighs splayed out

I go to steal another sweater and I take Spanx instead and
transfix them to my body and I dance around the room and I look
to see if I could look like a real woman yet and see if my curves
are fixed or just in the mirror

As I write the note I think about being told that I can’t be
concerned with every person I see and how I can’t liken those
experiences/existences to some larger connection in narrative
where we all belong together and none of us are the main
character and there is some way I have to trust that people will
help other people even if it is not me

Mothers are not mothers but something else

Mothers are a homunculus of these stolen sweaters and
mothers are a source of pain and mothers need a new definition
and mothers are fiberglass fluff that cause my hands to tingle

Death is the forgotten memories

Death is social death

Death is the ooze and bruise in yellow fleshy purple wounds

Death is the orange perfume dripping down your neck

Death is not a real woman

Spanx won’t make me a real woman hating the thought of how
people will look at my body in my death makes me a real woman
or when I tell myself that someday I will feel like a real woman
makes me a real woman or to feel like a real woman makes me
a real woman or to climb the ladder makes me a real woman or
to have a pretty corpse makes me a real woman or to steal
enough sweaters makes me a real woman or to real jump off the
real washing machine to see real darkness real fluff in my orifice
with real silverfish coming out of my real drain carcass mouth
real Spanx covering my real asshole makes me a real woman

Step on air above concrete the washing machine fades as my
mind replays the thoughts that hang in purgatory

Or I reverse my step onto the ladder and hope that this human
body will morph to carcass under stolen sweaters

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Zelig Komula (they/them) is a trans neurodivergent reader/writer based in San Francisco, CA. Their work has been featured in Stone of Madness Press.