Gion Davis
I know what I’m doing and why
It’s one of those nights
I think I want a beer
but I actually want
an entirely different life.
The guy at the liquor store
looks like my dad.
He tells me to drink
cold water for my hiccups
and I’m birthed out
into traffic. Cicadas
like hurricane wind. Airplanes
constellating. The moon
red and rising. Birds
in the bedroom
and new blacktop
steaming in the street.
Laugh like a sob. Drinking
like punctuation in a paper bag.
It’s bad. On the bus
a woman asks
if I’m reading psalms.
I laugh like a laugh
and say no it’s poetry
and she says you look
like the daughter
of a woman
at Christ the King.
I say no I’m a saint
of my poet church
where everyone’s a saint.
I get off the bus alone
walking the darkness like a man.
Body like a pegboard
to hang anger on
beside the hammers
in the garage.
Body like a bathtub
a wall socket
an earring
kicked under the radiator.
Three titted mannequins
undressed in a storefront.
Skin like a peeled apple.
Somewhere I heard
the children of people
who didn’t want kids
become lonely adults
and I’m so fucking lonely Mom
late summer goes on forever
like your late 20s
and the little hairs
on peaches are God’s pubes.
Monarch wings fluttering
where they’re stuck
to the windshield. A guy
on the highway 6 overpass
unleashing a Coca Cola
colored fountain
of puke over the guard rail.
Pines unknitting
along the road
in Humboldt County.
Your nephew eating
the fried off his chicken.
The thing about not belonging
anywhere is you don’t have
anything to miss
so you miss everything
without knowing
what you’re missing.
Redwoods grow
straight out
of the stumps
of their parent trees.
The oysters we ate
on the coast tasted
like the sunset
off the water. There
was toilet paper
stringing the flowers
and you cried
when we saw the ocean
through the trees.
I need a way to say
I was raised as a body
and had to become a person
or I want to want to live.
Mushrooms and baby corn
picked out of lo mein
in the biggest parking lot
for the biggest military
in the world.
I will be the
designated stranger
standing out here
and looking in.
How to be a good man (if conditions are better to be a wildfire)
Buy your friend a beer
with money you don’t have.
Make the most beautiful omelet
in the world and hold
his head in your hand.
Wear a corduroy jacket
under the covers. Do meth
at the roller rink. Be a child
forever if you’re wealthy.
Buy an old pickup truck
on Craigslist. Lose everybody
you’ve ever loved one
at a time. Feel like the world
is going to kill you
and drink two Miller High Lifes.
Remind yourself that love
is something you remind
yourself of. Have appendicitis
and react to death in an embarrassing
way for your friends
to walk in on. Be wronged
egregiously in Durango, Colorado.
Ask yourself if your nipples
are a need or an aesthetic.
Dream about the black worms
all over you in the bathtub.
Eat someone’s tongue
with mustard seeds
and pickled carrots
on marrow spread as thin as
the golden white bellies of
the upturned boats and
ring-necked doves.
Be somebody’s boy. Buoy.
His little emotional
bank account. Get splashed
with gutter water. Get hailed
on. Dye your hair blonde
even though you are already
blonde. Let your female friends
dress you up like a Ken doll
and don’t kiss any of them.
Become a purse dog of a person.
Wear a shirt that is non-threatening.
Try on that pair of Wranglers
again. Maybe they’ll fit you
this time if you surprise them.
Come home to one person
in your bed every night
and stay who you are
for the rest of your life.
onion sugar
The smallest bird in North America visits me in my sleep Landing on the clock over the
doorway in the house I grew up in August is the season of dreams Recycling the
years and Waking up with a hornet in my hand Black cat with the rotting neck
vanishing into air What I saw before the heat broke Caterpillars on tomato vines
working to become hummingbird moths How much poison did you eat to become
beautiful Little girls in sisterly bathing suits lying on their backs in puddles of water
beside park bathrooms reflecting Clean sky like a mirror To a moth every light is the
moon hanging on the horizon Red like a veined sliver of peach in a black bowl
Tomato color of the Perseids in the kitchen like a sink of shattered dishes Dream drunk
punks in the rain walking on horses in the summer grass of the plain isn’t it erotic
doesn’t it turn you on Girl kissing the motorcycle driver from the jump seat
Boy lifting the girl off of the street Nicotine lozenge falling out of your friend’s mouth
into his father’s hot tub Sunflowers nodding their gone by heads East Onion sugar
and half a beer Most of life is killing time between orgasms This summer it rains
with the sun out I’ll always think of it Getting cold on the beach in
Massachusetts jumping off the pier in a life jacket The only really good
memory I have with my mother who for once encouraged me and Who did it
herself to prove something the brine in my mouth and how strong I was How inside my
body I could be My white legs about to turn ten Copper bracelet rusting green
I’ll think of it when it rains in Ireland And in Oregon and Georgia And
California and Maine and in the street in Reno when the air is cool as water
wrapping around us the Sun flushing the desert every color of salt
Can I call you from Waffle House?
You don’t have to be the American dream.
You can still walk around drinking a Coke
sort of fucked up and lazy
and right next to the freeway.
I wanted you to come home so bad
I ran to the back door with apple petals in my hair.
I got down on my knees and scrubbed the floor.
The house finches sang from the Christmas lights
and even the real flowers looked plastic.
A blue heron flew through the legs of tower cranes.
The drought made the trees brittle
and the wind snapped them off.
Do you see the rolling walls of dust
shrouding the horizon, the tractor trailer trucks
tipped on their sides like sleeping
colts one after another? Did you say
your goodbyes inside that bell jar of a forest
to the mylar balloon fading in the grass,
its vacant face smiling yellow like ancient
history or someone who remembers the person
you used to be a little too well reminding you
that the past doesn’t change and the future
is erasing itself the way a fire is erasing
the blazes you watched your father hack
into the trunks of aspens and the sharp
animal smell of cut poplar like a tanning vat
or the raw side of a cinch strap on an unworn saddle
the color of the scalloped edges
of a polyphemus moth’s wing as it dies
in daylight on wet ash, the same
color as the pale bark of a raghorn elk’s
underbelly and ass lurking in the all day
dusk of smoke and rain mixing on some twisting
road as familiar as a touch on the back
of your neck across the truck while Bruce
Springsteen sings it wasn’t the bitterness
of the dream that didn’t come true,
baby, it was me and it was you
and it was everybody and it
was nothing but time and a phone
call while you were trying to sleep
and you might call it a motivation
of queer effervescence to answer
but it’s not. I make posole when I want
to think about the past but I make
a poem to think about the future
and it’s an elegy to whatever
this would have looked like
if we had been told sooner
that most of living is here
drinking a beer
and listening to basketball
from the other room. It used
to be the tiger lilies and frog
eggs at the lips of sandstone
pools and the bare legs
of girls climbing down
waterfalls in rolled up
jeans and secrets hidden
under fallen logs like old
cast iron pans and burnt bread.
But even tomorrow,
the house will look
the same and your coffee
will taste weaker. If you
want to be reborn, you
have to do it yourself.
Gion Davis is a trans poet from Española, New Mexico where he grew up on a sheep ranch. His poetry has been featured in HAD, MAYDAY Magazine, Sprung Formal, and others. His debut collection Too Much (2022) was selected by Chen Chen for the 2021 Ghost Peach Press Prize. Gion can be found on Instagram @starkstateofmind & on Twitter @gheeontoast.