In this poem the boy
is just a boy. The hands are just hands. The blood is just blood. Let the body keep its red meditation, the cells sky at the center of the self, pulsing, breathing, wanting. If only it was that easy to write a poem without bleeding into it. Open the unmouth and let the unlungs bear the unbearable. Listen to the heart thumping out the unimaginable question of how to live a life unsolved, dissolved, absolved.
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Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle
Nathan L. There are two wolves inside you. One of them is made up and the other is a mirror. One of them is dead and the other is grieving. Neither of them are liars. Neither will let you cross the bridge. Guess which one is which? There are two wolves inside you-- What’s your name? The wolves demand to know. You demand to know, too. So you choke to death and the wolves choke with you. There are two wolves inside you or you are inside two wolves and all of you are fighting. Are you the wolves or are the wolves you? Nobody knows. Can it be both? This is a poem, everyone’s always confused. Just leave it alone. Just leave it! The wolves say: you can only ever know where you’ve been or where you’re going. Make the choice. dear body
by nathan l. i. dear body: here are your hands & here is your throat & here is the skin you live in & here are all the ways you’ll come undone. ii. dear body: I’m sorry. iii. dear body: your heart is the size of a fist which is to say the smallest things are keeping us alive which is to say do you remember a spring evening and a sunset? do you remember a woman playing fetch with her dog? do you remember? iv. dear body: what a miracle it is! to make yourself anew every second of every day. what a miracle it is to say the world is a place I see myself living in and mean it. Transcript:
A Poem for Testosterone by nathan l. Let me start over. Sculpt myself from a vial, boy bursting with becoming. Change is a slow slide from dark to dawn. In this poem, I’ll never be impossible. Say a prayer to my body: Forgive me. Let me start over. transcript:
epiphany by nathan l. How does it feel to be known? Say thunder. Say pine. Say streetlamp. Say my name. Say it again & again & again. Boy before a boy. Boy before a mirror. Boy before the tides spit you out, didn’t your father ever tell you not to turn your back on the ocean? Who were you before you coaxed yourself from starlight & seafoam? You, footprints in the shifting sand. You, sea glass tangled smooth. Somewhere, it is raining. A boy cradles his name to his chest, reborn. on her
by nathan l. she is my silhouette: a piercing almost i drowned in whitewater. it didn’t work-- we came back river-clean and yearning for something greater than us. this shadow-boy and ghost-girl trying to fill up the aching space between wanting and becoming. (crossposted to instagram on august 10, 2019)
alchemy by nathan l. i. lead turns to gold the same way girl turns to boy turns to something sharp, something you choke on. ii. one day i looked in the mirror and she snarled at me. that’s when i knew. i’ve always been straining against these fractured bones. iii. a body aching a body monstrous not a body but a five-alarm fire. yeah, boys like us won’t go down easy. transcript:
this, in itself, is a miracle: / coaxing ourselves out of hollow, bloody bones. // us, born out of waiting and wanting, we know / the push and pull between the dark hair in the mirror / and the dark scars of our dreams / just as well as the tides know the haunting of the moon. // and so it is that our holiness lies in the breath between blinks / in the tremble before a confession / in the wine-dark sea. // after all / we are not what the poets sing of / we are more. // ––resurrection by nathan l. (crossposted to instagram on august 11, 2019)
my body and i are not on speaking terms. last night i dreamt of the sharp pinch of a needle and woke up gasping, hand to my heart—as if this becoming could be crushed, as if my name wasn’t already a prayer. every morning i force my skin on but someday i’ll have two pink scars on my chest and i won’t have to catch my breath. don’t call me boy. call me holy. call me divine. call me the constant churn of something yet to come. --my guardian angel’s on testosterone by nathan l. (crossposted to instagram august 16, 2019)
by nathan l. dear god, tonight i am blood-soaked, half-boy, half-bird, all rose petals, red wine, never holy. i come to you breathless, draped in moonlight and mourning. the things i have seen, god. tell me, when will this bloodshed end? it is hard to believe anyone is watching over us in these wrenching times. lord, tell me it gets better. tell me the sun will rise and the stars will come out of the blackness. tell me we’ll learn to love again. tell me. are you still here? —amen |
AuthorNathan Lee's poetry and prose. More of my work can be found on my Instagram. Archives
March 2020
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