It Sometimes Ends in Cannibalism

Whenever you see a train, you point to me
and mouth night sounds. Because of this,
my life is a reminder of the people
I love, how much I hate time zones,
and what leftover threads we’re left holding,
those mismatched fibers getting stuck
to a sock in the dryer or to a throw blanket
you don’t even want anymore. Today
my socks are stretched thin and patterned
with feminine-colored octopi. I can’t
wear them without remembering
getting my IUD for what was really
the second time and Susan stopping
with her hands nearly inside me
to tell me some scary octopus facts
she knew. Death is inevitable after sex
for those cephalopods. I wish every invasive
and gender dysphoric procedure
could be done by Susan
or really by anyone
with the urge to tell me about
habits of life thousands of miles
below the ocean. Whenever I pass
a stray cat in this neighborhood I think
of you and the Dalmatian, think
of who watches from these homeowner’s
windows in my partner’s parents’
neighborhood. Some spots look too soft
to risk slipping from our grasp.
Some spots keep reappearing
on the bathroom tile. No home
has belonged to us, so maybe
the spots don’t either. When I got home,
IUD firmly inside me, I wanted to know
if what Susan said was true. It is, but Males Will Pretend
to be Females and It Doesn’t Look Like Sex At All
are the headlines I remember most.
I want researchers to struggle to write
about me. I want to keep pretending
even less than I want to gnaw off
my own arm to survive.

Invasive Species

The spotted lanternfly
opens its wings, a red wound
blooming on the busway. Lately
I can only think about the hull-breach

of my gender while my body
is in motion, bag pressed close
on my lap. I follow signage
on public transit. I give a man

directions when I wish
he would stop talking so close. Closed-
system bus air leaks through my mask.
It doesn’t matter to the state of Pennsylvania

what shoes I am wearing, only
that the lanternflies are gotten rid of.
When a ship starts letting in water,
what’s the first thing to go overboard?

I want to stop laughing when my love
kisses my chest. I want to stop wanting
my body to be a body of water.
The busway is only a seven-minute walk
from where I’m sleeping now, where I flip

over river tiles onto a dining room table
I could never afford. The busway is covered
with gray-winged mistakes. I used
to cross a river every morning

on my way to work in this city. I rattled
across it with impeccable eyeliner
and tiny feminine clothes. When
a seafaring vessel gets beached,

there are only a few things
you can do with its skeleton.
Set up a hotel for ghosts. Pull
the boards apart and toss them

back into the sea. I am so impermanent
sometimes that I want to open
like a wound. Breached gender
and all spilling across the busway.

Rebecca Martin (she/they) is a queer poet and educator. They are the author of High-Tech Invasions of the Flesh (Bottlecap Press) and a graduate of Oregon State University's MFA program. Her work can be found in Nimrod International Journal, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Muzzle Magazine, Peach Magazine, and elsewhere, and earned an Honorable Mention in the 2022 Gulf Coast Poetry Prize. She lives and works in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

Published July 15 2023