Rayn Valleau | Trust Me, You’re Nothing Like Your Mother & Others

Trust Me, You’re Nothing Like Your Mother

eleven

I came out as bisexual to my mothers sister in her kitchen

she said to pick one

which sorta pelvis I’d rather have my head held against,

gnashing gums & thighs that slap how robins eggs do on cement

told me

– nothing good comes to greedy girls

only whores tryna be a boys wet dream lie like that

sixteen

I tell her I choose girls & that the feeling of a man’s mouth gives me blisters

how I really did try my best to like em but I just kept shaking

she said that I have a sickness

reminds me how my mom; wet & wild & perpetually empty

used to kiss girls at the titty joint where she would bartend,

would do so in the parking lot in front of rows of Harley Davidsons,

their leather clad riders whistling

how she’d go doe eyed inna red brassiere, sayin “it’s my birthday”

it don’t matter none if it was or not, the boys still hollered

even though she wouldn’t use tongue

– just cause you like to kiss ‘em doesn’t mean you have to lick ‘em,

remember that, ya mother knew it too

twenty
I whittled myself into Kohl’s young men’s mannequin,

complete with baseball cap & rugby stripes & white gold chain

flashy basketball sneakers like her sons

cut my hair spring lawn short, quit waxing

stopped letting her watch me bathe

she begged

– I don’t care that you’re a rug muncher but can’t ya be one in

a sundress? you have a vagina- dress like it

twenty-four

I stopped going to the north shore for Christmas

stopped flinching, stopped half confessing

let them write ‘crossdressing behavior’ on my medical chart

tried to build a wall on a fault line

the first time we hugged after my mastectomy I knew

someone ratted, rancid grapevine

her French tips clutching me like a foreigners flag

feeling nothing & staying silent

looking like she might cry

you can tell she loves her niece by the way she told my twin

she knew I was taking testosterone

spoke through her white rabbit veneers at another uncles funeral

with something you might call worry if you didn’t know better

it is easier to stop getting refills than it is to keep boundaries.
be a borderless nation. buy shaving cream.

quit eating cheesesteak. sleep in layers.

I have this dream where

I’m showering in her bathroom

smiling into the steam, peppermint shampoo engulfed

she opens the sliding glass doors & tears through my incisions

screeching

– look what you’ve done to her

mutilated my sisters daughter

how could you how dare you

last Saturday she told me I’ve never looked better

– oh – look at you

you’re my beautiful girl aren’t you?

my girl? yes

yes you are

The Incarnate

& I don’t lay flat at the junction of 25A & Reeves Road ‘cause there’s a house
I wanna see / down where the meadow drowned— a house which / my mother
& I / without the others knowledge / on separate occasions / & timelines / her
moment being before I was a whisper & mine being after she had burst / said

“ I would like to live there— in the cupola
with a round bed & rounder-even-still windows”

It’s another thing we will always never have / a sort of heaven tucked behind
the mini-mall with the shell shop & those mannequins wearing tiny plastic
lingerie / & I feel like her when I listen to Blind Melon & purge behind the
lobster house / ‘cause that’s exactly what they expect / & so when her sister
recognizes I’ve salted the earth of this body / I revel & beam / like your daughter

Triborough Principle

It is 1984 & Jackie Onassis is slackin’ during
jogging club- standing there watching some
carpenter piss into her reservoir, shriekin’
“that’s my drinking water!”

he don’t look like no Jesus, but he could be
should she ask nicely, should he shake dry
& gift her that Casanova glimmer

one year prior you coulda caught him washin’
Hells Angels feet at Camp Gabriel Correctional Facility
inna instant ramen noodle cup turned basin,
confessional mumbled one Marlboro Man to another

The next year he held the Holy Spirit in one hand
at Saint Charles Maternity Wing & a gram
baggie in the other, two blessings slippin’
through calloused stigmata palms

we’re only half as holy as our children believe us to be
i’ll paint ‘ya a halo in every picture I come across,
no matter the sacrilege stainin’ your corners
who am I to covet forgiveness
who are you but my burning man?

Where I am Both Buffalo Bill & The Lamb

This tongue is a piss ant – or homunculus,
some small god yelping from the nervous comfort of the third rail

this heart is a rainbow trout – or big mouth bass,
all corroded batteries gurgling “I will survive” from the back of the closet

this chest is false prophet – or fake Chanel from Canal Street,
nothin’ but nickel & plastic & feigning

this body is last years calendar – or the Climate Clock at Union Square,
four years, two hundred forty-five days, fifteen hours, twenty-nine minutes,
forty-one seconds. forty seconds. thirty-nine.

Rayn Valleau is a poet based in New York City with an MFA in Creative Writing from the City College of New York. His work appears in Global City Review, Promethean Literary Journal, Santulan Magazine, Cosmic Double, and elsewhere. A Stark Poetry Prize winner, he performs with The Poetry Brothel as Cash Casanova, a cowboy poet on the run—to your hearts.