The terrace opened wide.
Ze was no longer just a bird
behind the clouds. Mid-afternoon
ze landed in this shape.
**
No time for flying. Zir wings glinted
then dulled. Feathers filled the air.
Zir whistling song, molt.
Zir talons and fangs.
**
More than just black feathers
zir bones began to shift,
but when ze landed in this shape
ze did not become a man.
**
Glinting, then dull feathers. The air
is more a body than any shape
talons fangs
legs face.
**
Bones shift and melt
skin scales.
Ze did not become a man.
A coiled snake.
**
More a body any shape,
the smoggy morning and the dead of night.
Legs and face could never hold.
Ze folded as ze fell, transmogrify.
**
Melt zir skin, scaled.
They glinted dulled
became
the many balconies below the sun.
This poem was included in my book "I want you to feel ugly, too," which can be read on issuu.
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About the Creator
Joe Nasta
Hi! I'm a queer multimodal artist writing love poems in Seattle, one half of the art and poetry collective Eat Yr Manhood, and head curator of Stone Pacific Zine. Work in The Rumpus, Occulum, Peach Mag, dream boy book club, and others. :P
Dog Number 13
May 15, 2023 Strange things are happening. Good-strange, bad-strange, and strange-strange. For starters, me and all my litter mates are able to stand. Some of us can even wiggle around in a clumsy manner. I say wiggle because it isn’t quite walking but it isn’t quite crawling. We just sort of stand and wiggle and fall and take a few steps and then crawl and then get up again. It is in this manner we are able to move around to some degree and explore our surroundings. Naturally we cannot go far. Which is ok, I suppose, because I am very small and I need my mother for food and my siblings to keep me warm and I feel very loved and comforted by them in some way, so I don’t know why I would need to go very far. Having four legs, I must admit, is very strange. It is not a surprise to me that it is challenging to coordinate them to move in the order they need to move. But I can get around a little bit, my eyes can stay open for much longer periods of time now, and it is easier to understand what is happening. So this is new.
By Morgan Longford2 days ago in Chapters
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