"Old Adage" by Nam Das
Blanket Behind the Church by Benny Sisson
Yes, let’s go back to the field where we lay down the blanket.
Where the water and only the water pools at the bottom of the lungs, where I get on my
hands and knees, and wait for that immense pressure to fill me up.
You always tease me for how loudly I yelp, how badly I need to feel something inside the body,
without me. My body was built while yours hollowed out.
Mine more patient, and I learn how to ignore the pebbles in my knees and yes
Yes, remind me of the day the body was visible in stained glass.
Show me how much better it is to be the man you want, rather than the longest step needed
to reach someplace never fully actual. How the blanket feels thick and has a dark crust. How sleep
becomes elegy. How form becomes control.
How dry was the sex? What is your sex, and can you prove it to me now?
Can I stop being a good boy? Can a daughter be both good boy and bad woman?
Did you laugh when you found out my bones were all gray and gravel?
That I like to wear that red dress without you there to gawk?
No,
But that’s when our fathers come to the field and see us on that blanket behind
the church—tavern and the boys we are, shooting back at them like the careening of my careful
body into you,
and we ignore the questions.
Where the water and only the water pools at the bottom of the lungs, where I get on my
hands and knees, and wait for that immense pressure to fill me up.
You always tease me for how loudly I yelp, how badly I need to feel something inside the body,
without me. My body was built while yours hollowed out.
Mine more patient, and I learn how to ignore the pebbles in my knees and yes
Yes, remind me of the day the body was visible in stained glass.
Show me how much better it is to be the man you want, rather than the longest step needed
to reach someplace never fully actual. How the blanket feels thick and has a dark crust. How sleep
becomes elegy. How form becomes control.
How dry was the sex? What is your sex, and can you prove it to me now?
Can I stop being a good boy? Can a daughter be both good boy and bad woman?
Did you laugh when you found out my bones were all gray and gravel?
That I like to wear that red dress without you there to gawk?
No,
But that’s when our fathers come to the field and see us on that blanket behind
the church—tavern and the boys we are, shooting back at them like the careening of my careful
body into you,
and we ignore the questions.
Benny Sisson is a trans poet. Her poems are forthcoming with Lunch Ticket, Rinky Dink Press, and elsewhere. She is a library assistant, adjunct instructor, and MFA candidate at Adelphi University. She currently lives in Mineola, NY.
Nam Das (Filipino, b. 1989) creates open-ended visual stories by arranging figurative elements into an assemblage forming a central idea, an idea that plays around Jungian archetypes of the collective unconscious or mythologems observed throughout history. He uses a limited palette of four colors in his oil paintings. Also called the Zorn palette, it's composed of: Titanium White, Cadmium Red, Yellow Ochre and Ivory Black. Nam began working as a full-time painter in 2019.
