the star
a question brought to mineral lips with a change of light
or movement how a ghost shifts in the flesh
comes to shimmer over skin you can feel this but
it can’t be spoken when your body does something
recognized in another body you are in the tender fissure
dreaming that body around yours from the inside if
inside is a word you use maybe condensing it on your
flesh the way water beads on a glass on a
hot day
the star is in the stone & the ghosts that come with
experience always teach you to hold them close or to
let them hold you
i don’t believe anything is off-limits
while the life shakes off its body
the old leaf the shredded jacket crumpled in the fist
a bandage torn from the night
peering within your lantern that cluster of moths you call your
self
you don’t give up the ghost exactly you just visit someone
else invited for tea & cakes
the tenderness of your hand always stroking my hair
kind
notes to whom i am the one who isn’t there unfathomably
until my kindness is a bell that rings somewhere inside them & i
change shape like a lycanthrope in the dawn all paw & maw
of dirt
i’m uncalled-for but i’m what came & that’s a story they
won’t know the full mouth of because the blood in them
hopes for a different statement & won’t accept the kiss that illegibility
brings to a life & a body
what happens to a one become another unrecognized by the
screen inside the mind made into a deeper cut than was known
before if love was in their hands at all it is not there now
whether i am kind or terrible like the killing ice
hinge
rain moves over the body with the wind’s unrolling spindle
observe the grass slowly standing released from snow
the hinge in its thin body opens
love says the grass bends us & we are new
& who could argue otherwise
in fragile life
or a window happens to place a body around itself how
we wake into being not knowing why
& walk to the rushing creek to be in wonder at the force
of change lay a hand on broken wood heart of a
dying tree & is change god whisper the tree
gives no words
two mergansers
& the ghost you bring inside beside you looking at one
another strange flesh mirror united in your love
oddness & the mud
fingers sticking with pine sap his lips
the narcissus is sprouting & it is silent but it shakes the
sternum so much power in fragile life
how to rescue a sapling
small girth curved crown trapped the
near body fallen dying pins it to the ground
tug & press lean like a mariner leans into his taut
line back against the slim trunk arms stretched out
along it throw your body back to show your
trust say here we go the trunk bends & branches
hiss in leaves dance against the wood body again
crown emerges break a rotted branch push
on the yes leap back & let go
—free tree—
waiting
& the light dreamed in slices over the sky in cut-
outs of trapezius shadow on the ground in steps
beneath a gauze of frost steps of secret dances
spy at the window greenhouse-shed growing more
sky asks questions in clock-math wondering
who nests in the laden tree & why night hurts more
hurts like a drum making horses on the soles of the feet
are we together in this room watching
are we together with our faces so close my beard
tickles your evanescent chin death is something
different not a bird to tell you i am waiting
Jay Besemer is the author of numerous books and chapbooks, most recently The Ways of the Monster (forthcoming, KIN(D)/The Operating System 2018). He was a finalist for the 2017 Publishing Triangle Award for Trans and Gender-Variant Literature. Jay tweets frequently @divinetailor and sometimes does things on Tumblr: jaybesemer.tumblr.com. He lives in Chicago.