three poems

by Isla Mayer

slouching toward huntsville

i wish i could be here for the morning after

when the last curls of smoke from the ovens have dissipated

leaving only pleasantly campfire-scented memories of dissent -

when the last disagreeable allele has been eradicated, scientists say, along with those

nonsense extra genders and pronouns

and the melanin count, they rejoice on fox news, is at historic lows! -

it gets a graphic like the ones we might once have seen for pollen and ragweed

they are drunk in the streets firing off five-fifty-six by the case - america’s caliber

(who needs it anyway? we outlawed you all!)

i wish i could see the on-schedule awakening of that red-eyed beast -

the one who sleeps below the slurs

in that unacknowledged cavern stinking of shame and red bull

tusked visage illuminated by janky overheated screens displaying half-understood memes

fitfully slumbering through a flickering staticky newscast assuring us that words like white and straight and cis are being removed from the dictionary as we speak, citizens!

that beast opens one eye again in the early dark, on that random overcast tuesday

just as hungry as monday night left him

no less ravenous than the morning of april five of ‘68

or the morning after kristallnacht

or the year of our lord sixteen ninety-three

it will insist to be fed again - so somewhere on their idyllic streets

yesterday’s god-fearing common clay in a john deere cap pauses

carhartt glove on ford door handle

in the near distance he hears an unfamiliar word shouted at him

in one voice, then four, then nine

the mob rounds the corner and

he drops his coffee and runs screaming

right through

my witnessing ghost

anne, frankly

i used to think this was a closet

that’s the saying, right? the thing

we’re always being coaxed out of, or

ridiculed for staying within -

four walls and a door and a light on a chain

and a tiny window aggrieved to admit the sun

a daily decision to stay inside, in safety, when

from outside, there were voices and song and light

but over time i noticed that what i thought of as outside

was actually below - and while i looked for a door in the wall

i only ever found it in the floor.

the voices down there grew louder over time

taking on martial overtones, and it was

the work of minimal imagination

to picture them overturning furniture

pulling cupboards away from the walls

so as the sound from below amplified each day

occasionally crystalizing into guttural snippets

of promised violence

i found myself repeating things like

“memories mean more to me than dresses”

that i swore i’d read somewhere

in a half-remembered dream

just as i don’t ever remember a closet with a peaked roof

and with the seasons, the sun grew paler through my window daily

as, in the end, did i - but

i still believe, in spite of everything

that people are truly good at heart

cenotaph

sisters, i will sing your names

as i carry cardboard boxes to the elevator

scrub the floors of your bathroom

gather weeks of mail and collect

the last days of your existence

clean out the lockers and

pull down coveralls

kind enough only to include

your last name.

i will sing each consonant and vowel you chose carefully

as the truest window onto your being -

and you will feel the love of community

in a song growing ever longer nightly.

there will be justice for you, sister, if only in that

they will never know a single moment

of the loving energy we shared in life -

energy returned a hundredfold to us in

a community of souls beautiful

from their birth to their rest

they will never know what it is to be sung back to life nightly

as we gather at the last rays of the sun, summoned by

the tolling of a bell they cannot hear, stepping respectfully around

headstones they do not recognize, bearing

names they never cared to know, to touch

a monument they cannot see - that reads

THEY WERE FAR TOO MANY TO TOLERATE

BUT NOT NEARLY ENOUGH TO NOTICE

Photo of Isla Mayer

BIO: Isla Mayer, 55, crafts lyrical explorations of identity and nature from her Northern California home where she lives with her wife and their Chow Chow, Ember. After transitioning at 42, Sarah found her authentic voice both personally and poetically, publishing works that weave together the joy of transgender experience with heartbreaking truths of our modern age.