Rivka Clifton

Daedalus and the Overlook

If a corridor in a labyrinth 
collapses, it makes a dead
end. The howling synths
burrow into my head

like a surgeon—his tiny chisel,
his titanium plates. The sinus
is an air cavity, he tells
me. I plan to crush

it. There are days I am dead,
my dug up skull a clock
in my mind, held by a Hamlet
or doctor or egg. Once I said

trust to a man who shot
me full of sedatives.

Surgery

Briefly, in the parking lot,
		         a man humped

his car door. It opened, and what dawned—

the broken handle, the pliers,
and wire—was he knew 
the consequences of his body.

		           Briefly, in one 
parking lot, and briefly

in another, I spent my last
nights alive as a boy 


*

would. I sat on a car’s hood.
I emptied a liquid from its bottle.

I was sure somewhere a town was glowing

                               under fireworks 
lit for a holiday no one remembers.

The night above me 
rippled with radio waves
like a body part inside

another body part. It stretched wide its sound


* 
 
while I stretched my mouth 
                                open for John 

and for anyone who wasn’t 
John. These nights I felt 
                                 the city squirm. 

And in the morning my body turned
inside out. And in the morning I felt

                                 what I had done
or allowed to be done—my body’s

swelling to accommodate. I couldn’t 
remember how I became dressed again..

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From the author: I started writing a book of poems from a transfemme speaker about 5 years before I started medically transitioning. I’ve returned to this project after 2 years into medical transitioning. They are largely autobiographical.

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