after Jeffrey Daniel and Raymond Antrobus

Shakeema Fisher was born a Sagittarius 

In the Year of the Metal Horse 

In a hospital in Harlem. 

Formerly of concrete 

Now of black dirt, clay & flood, 

Her imaginary friends have lost their accents. 

Today, she cracks eggs into holes at each corner
 
Of her yard, two acres of land and a trailer 

Its roof being held up by her wits alone. 

Her doctor provides yearly bills of health. 

Her ass is striped. She is a tiger. 

Collectors have found her new number, 

Clutter her voicemail. Nothing is wrong
 
But her potassium is probably low.
 
Her favorite fruits are not apples. 

She will stop dancing if you perceive her. 

She is often asked if she is happy. She is aspirational. 

She has to wash the dishes, clean the fridge. Wishes 

She were her own man. She would take the trash out. 

She is a devoted homemaker. 

She does not cancel subscriptions on time. She demands 

refunds. She has promised herself a good life.

I don’t know what precisely I expected
to encounter in Salt Lake City, maybe
more of the white youth in white shirts
and ties, marching from a big temple, but 
in between visits to the surprising variety
of craft breweries and hipster coffee shops
we found the 2025 pride parade and I wasn’t ready 
for how huge, how hours long, how chock full 
of furries faithfully masked and tailed 
in the blazing heat, how fully throttled 
the Dykes on Bikes, how crisply flown 
the defiant, newly queered official city flags, 
how jolly and many the bears and the sleek
speedo-d queer swim club, how yellow-brick-road 
endless and rainbow-promising the massive, 
blocks-long trans flag, how Mormon-earnest 
the seething, joy-drunk church of the sidewalk 
extravaganza, and how strikingly transcendent 
this one ethereal fairy, rollerblading like a river 
past the ecstatic crowds, past gender shackles, 
past fear, past our sweaty cheers, trailing 
a thrilling excess of taffeta and glitter
down the most unlikely, most necessary avenue, 
the last place, I confess, I’d ever have hoped 
to receive such a benediction. 

Before the body knows breath, it knows war. 
	The way there was a war inside the hands of Abuelo, 
who plucked tomatoes off vines until his hands were 
	 	left purple & red. Who passed down his hands 
to Apá & how his hands smelled of gasoline & oil, no matter 
	how many times he washed. Who passed down his hands to me.

Outside a bar, a drunk man gives me a fireball kiss, heat goes 
	inside of me. Afterwards, he shoves his fist
		into my face. Calls me faggot. 
This man wants to kill me because 
	we breathe the same air. 

War is like that, silent in movement— like my
	Abuela who collects paper towels everywhere she goes 
		because they were a luxury for her growing up. 
She used to stack them in her purse until her bag slipped off her shoulder, 
	the wind blew out every napkin flying
& she jumped for every white piece as if they were dollar bills. 

	A war has edges, like the man at the gym who wears a “guns out” shirt.
Who later tells me: Come to my house, 
	where he kneels on the floor in front of me, 
		licks my fingers until he gags on them. 
He lays on all fours, begs: Put your fist inside me.
	
	There are truths I’ll never know in this body. 
When immigration called out Amá’s name incorrectly, 
	she corrected them, as if to say the border can take everything away 
		but it can’t take away my name.

	Before Abuelo died, my tíos & Abuela said he fought his own body 
to breathe. They said he made his hands into fists. I imagine him 
	telling himself: Todavía no es mi tiempo.

	A man once sat in my bed, his body buzzing. I told him: 
We don’t have to do anything if you don’t want to. 
	We sat in silence holding hands for an hour. When he turned to kiss me, 
		he said: Do you know God is watching us? 
	
	For more than half of my life, I’ve asked my hands why they wanted to touch 
a man. 		But even a war must have a home
				
				& like this poem before it knew it would even have a line —
					maybe it too clenched its hands & fought for breath.




Appears in How to Kill a Goat & Other Monsters (University of Wisconsin Press, 2024)

I let the mosquitos have their way with me.
Late in the soupy heat of a summer afternoon, I’ve covered myself 
in poison and still, they persist. Pulling blood 
from my thighs, knees, back of my neck, and arms. 
I’ve heard when a teenager cuts themselves they just want 
to feel something, anything. I’m oversimplifying things.
But when the news says once again that the world may not
recover, I’m not sure what else to do. Just to know
we’re both still here, I let them eat me alive.




Originally published in COMP: An Interdisciplinary Journal 

I wanted to write the neat little trans poem that fits in & then folds out like a french 
      tuck

I wanted to write epistles to my eight year old self stuffing socks in my jean crotches

I wanted to write how I kept dreaming of a thousand dead seahorses beached &    
      blanched in sand

about being foreign to my own body & walking down the least traveled road back to 
       myself

I wanted to return to the metaphor of the chrysalis

But what I fear of metaphor

is softening my edges in an empire that requires a jagged fist / 

                     a whale jaw / an ever thickening skin / a serrated blade 

to keep me & my beloved breathing

I tried to write it neat

But I cannot even comprehend having a body 

outside of this tortoise shell I hope has grown hard enough against your knives

I cannot defy a category that I did not invent (& neither did your God)

I tried to write it but a scream came forth

I tried to sing sweet birdsong but coughed up barbed wire in place of melody

I tried to say it but I am afraid

I am afraid.

But y’all – y’all don’t want we transgenders to be

half as dangerous as you imagine

You of, “but what about the children?” : we are the children we are the children we       
       are the children we are!

Each morning I pray my son does not become fodder for a bullet’s hungry mouth 
      inside of some elementary school classroom but what about the children?

You fear you will meet us in the bathroom

I fear there is no long or short walk that ends at home

I fear my child selves will keep jumping from bridges

only for you to say “no no not this – this is not what we meant”

State by godawful state introducing bills to deny trans people access to gender 
      affirming care
in a deepened & wild commitment

to eradicate us from existence

And when we are killed you will say “this is not what we meant, violence is not the 
      answer”

The dictionary antonym to existence

is death

So, what is it you meant?

You just mean

un become un become un

become 

Some of y’all have never been reviled and it shows

Some of y’all have never been the prey of prey and it shows

I woke up three times in the night smelling of future blood spilt

Each day I scheme of ways to weaponize this body of mine

A body that belongs to me and a God that you say I do not know

You know nothing of true fear

—

You fear us 

You really keep fearing us

And I swear to you and your [dead] God

We will give you something to be afraid of




Originally published in Muzzle 

Cutting my own hair saves money 
better put toward a bill. I look presentable enough 
in virtual meetings, a genial blur.

Invoices. Empty correspondence. I’m not clever 
wearing this mask of inflexible competence. I live in bed
where I work and eat poorly while I work and dream. 

If I died now in arrears, and here of all places
(mattress, office, psych ward, coffin),

I’ll never have cared for a house cat of my own—
uppity, mercurial, impish, soft, private, unbothered—

so human-like in his affections and strangeness—
a companion named Sargent 

with twitchy, sensitive ears even at rest
who could mourn a little before biting my dead face to survive.





Appears in This Elegance (Boa Editions, 2026)

Today I let my daughter read a news story 
 
about the people who feel no pain, one
               who walked months on a broken pelvis 

before she noticed it 
crunching inside like dry leaves.  

              & I can hear her now 

practicing in the kitchen, holding her hands 
under water hot as she can stand it, 

singing softly: I don’t care I don’t care I don’t care.


When asked to define happiness, 
half the room will describe a quality of light, 
              the sky required to feel right.  

For a while we tried 

shooting the wolves from helicopters, the removal 
of each possible attack before it happened, 

but soon enough deer forgot what they were, 
              grew fearless & gnawed the aspen sprouts 

clean to the ground.  


Last night a woman paused on the hollow of my hip 
              & lingered there, 

making me ask for her mouth.

The other half of the room recalls learning something 
             about where to build the fire 

so it doesn’t fill the cave with smoke.  


Down in the city park someone has already tagged 
which trees get to stay.

One night my daughter will want nothing more 
than another’s teeth in her back; 

              in that far city, in the torn booth, 

long after last call she is saying I really like your politics, 

meaning I want to lick your face.  

Little girl, little wolf.  

The blade of the earthmover, how it 
             scrapes & shudders, scrapes & scrapes.   




Originally published in Ilanot Review, appears in the forthcoming collection, I Am Trying to Love the Whole World (Boa Editions, 2026) 

Listen, kid. I’m gonna let you in on a secret
I want you to put in your pocket and carry with you
all your life. 

You are loved.

Before you are even here, you are loved.
This family loves you before we know anything
about you, before we know the color of your hair,
the sound of your voice, or what the weight of you
feels like in our arms. This family loves you.

And this family will love you as much tomorrow
as it does today, in whatever future you arrive in
and exist in. No matter who you become or how
you grow. This family loves you. 

This family loves you no matter the choices you’ll make,
the clothes you put on your body or what that body
can or cannot do. We’ll love you through
wins and losses, good days and bad, mistakes
and disappointments, through every decision
you make, whoever you love or don’t, whatever
you make of this life that is wholly and completely
yours. This family loves you. 

Put this certainty in your pocket, kid,
or bury it like treasure. The map to it is in
your heart, in your memory, in the face you’ll see
in the mirror none of us have seen yet. Return to it
when you need it. Look yourself in the eyes, 
whatever color they are and say it like a magic spell
to summon us around you even when we are not there.
Say these words. Say,

I am loved just as I am.  

In fifth grade, I carried a grape
Scratch ‘n Sniff Sticker in my pants pocket 
wherever I went.

I also carried a copy of a heavy, 
faded book the school librarian
reserved especially for me.

Mrs. Woodward reminded me 
of a mouse being chased
by an owl. 

Someone said something
about her living
with another woman.

We weren’t supposed
to speak of it,
although no one ever told me that directly.

My sticker 
became my bookmark.
By winter, my book smelled like an old vineyard. 

Even now, if I close my eyes, 
the curtained room 
velvets and purples.





From FERSACE (ELJ Editions, 2023) by Nicole Tallman. Originally published in Cultural Daily (August 2023), and forthcoming in The Velvet Room (Unsolicited Press, 2027) by Nicole Tallman.

So, here the story goes: I was eight, right? 
Picture this: three boys, real cool, wet 
heat, grandma’s concrete yard, the bruised 
flesh of June. We did not call it summer 
because we had not yet learned to flatten 
our tongues to hold the weight of an empire. Mother 
lined us up and asked what we wanted to become 
when we grew up. Doctor, said Kazim. Banker, 
said Faizal. Lawyer, said I. But the truth 
was that I wanted to grow up to become 
a love song. I wanted to become Ayinde Barista 
serenading his lover in a jewelry shop in Medina. 
I wanted to become a lock of my mother’s hair 
in my father’s hands. I wanted to trade my flesh 
& bones for a fantasy so small there’s no language 
for it. Two decades later, I am no fantasy. 
I’m a Manhattan suit & overpriced Dr. Martens 
telling the bartender to keep ‘em coming. If this 
is a love song, then it is one in which the lover 
realizes that love was a bedtime story 
that went too far. Who wants to dream of blood 
tests & graveyards? I have walked the length of this 
borrowed country in search of the ultra-magic balm. 
In the meantime I’ve turned this wound into art 
& art into artifice. By this, I mean I’ve tricked 
myself into believing that these poems are worth 
living for, that there’s some value in stringing 
words together in efforts to translate 
the Wolf’s incessant howls through my tortured skull. 
The story goes that I moved continents in search of love 
& shelter & a long breath of uncontaminated air. Instead, 
in six months, it gave me an allergy to water. 
I haven’t felt clean ever since. 




Appears in Ará'lúèbó: The Immigrant Monologues (Acre Books, 2026)

a “figure of man and woman all together” 
                      —Vocabulario de la lengua tagala, 1613 


mornings, I braid wet black hair quick & taut after bathing. 

                                                             the health of flock & herds depends on the rain. 

I’ve met those wooden figures, both male & female sleepy in granaries. 
                                                                       
                                                        say, water—say loving words like fish, fruit, fowl.
 
my body is not a museum—rather, a site of excavation. 

                                                         fields at planting time: the balance of everything. 

artifacts abound: wordless songs while washing rice. 

                                                        Lakapati, feed your servants—let them not starve. 

& the origins of my hair? my gender? my praise & jargon? 

                                                                            (s)he was a goddess, s(he) was a king. 

see my grandfather’s Spanish-blue eyes—slick marbles spinning. 

                                                                   deities tend to disappear upon first contact. 

I still ask for permission, walking over grass & roots. 

                                                      on full moons, offerings of herbs to stave off hunger.
 
I am hungry, even when I eat. will I ever be full 

                                       such binaries—rife with oppression, thievery, forgetfulness— 

neither male nor female; both masculine & feminine. 

                                        smallest unhusked grain of rice—masculine, feminine whole.




Originally published in Bellingham Review 

We land in the aisles of British fiction 
to soak in the air conditioning. Your fingers play
the spines of the Brontës. 
I’ve seen you around. 
At the farmers market with a lick 
of bicycle grease on your calf, 
your canvas bag flush 
with beets. Or bundled, blocks ahead, urging 
your little dog through the snow. 
Today, you’ve scissored your clothes 
to the season: cutoff jeans 
and a sleeveless concert tee 
slit to the hem. The compass 
inked on your side points north. 
Nipples hard-bitten by the cold. 
You shelve Villette and music pours 
from the dark curls under your arm. 
Odd little bits of information, 
writes Lawrence, stir unfathomable passion.
In three lifetimes, I could never read enough.




Originally published in POETRY Magazine

At the same. Time: I wanted to deadhead. & deathbed. 
Flashlight in the ever-after. Dreamt of me guffawing on an ordinary
 
Tuesday. Remembered the light on my face was a whale 
song. Wanted to listen for the haptics of our beholding. 

Forever. Wanted you to tattoo my name on your jugular. Memorialize 
me in vinyl on your rear windshield. Bask in loss like summer. Heat 

dissipating. Rewind my momwound. O moonsound: I wanted, I wanted. 
To die. No, for real. I wanted to end my crimson rivering. 

I wanted to de-part. To hear what my name sounded like when I was no longer. 
To croon at my funeral. In the most lugubrious key. Eulogize my own vanishing.
 
I wanted to be future, past, & present. Perfect tenses. I wanted to fall 
into the field of spring phemmes. Be topped by a coalition of rootlets. 

Summon the cripistemologies of the (un)dead: rot, invisibility, storage units, 
copper statues greening. I wanted to inanimalize. To vampire a leaky foxheart. 

To grok the holy architecture of beehives. Casually slip into the centralized heterochromia of a wolf’s eye. At the same time. I craved my body on a spit. 

My makeup done. Forever. I sought the knot-body hyphally thrumming. 
I wanted to be thrust out of the self like a vapor. Locate a moss-fungi
 
alliance to sublet. To be dispossession. Chimeralish. For just a moment. 
The feeling of night silvering into day. I wanted to. Refuse living.
 
(Regretful.) Hone a pewter seraph to stir me into flame. I wanted to stay 
in the womb another ever. To wake into a fuller emptiness. I hungered

to be absence & presence. Technosignature of a prayer. I wanted to be 
lain, to be a body laying. To be pellets in fertile loam. The iridescence
 
on a swallowtail’s wing, under a new moon’s sclera. To glimmer. 
& surrender. To be thirst & the river. & the syllables to sing it. 




Previously published in the chapbook Togethering (Ledge Mule Press, 2024)

There was the knife and the broken syringe
then the needle in my hand, the Tru-Cut
followed by the night-blue suture.

The wall behind registration listed a man 
with his face open.  Through the glass doors, 
I saw the sky going blue to black as it had 

24 hours earlier when I last stood there gazing off 
into space, into the nothingness of that town.
Bat to the head.  Knife to the face.  They tore

down the boy in an alleyway, the broken syringe 
skittering across the sidewalk.  No concussion.  
But the face torn open, the blood congealed 

and crusted along his cheek.  Stitch up the faggot
 in bed 6 is all the ER doctor had said.  
Queasy from the lack of sleep, I steadied 

my hands as best as I could after cleaning up
the dried blood.  There was the needle 
and the night-blue suture trailing behind it.

There was the flesh torn and the skin open.
I sat there and threw stitch after stitch
trying to put him back together again.

When the tears ran down his face,
I prayed it was a result of my work
and not the work of the men in the alley.

Even though I knew there were others to be seen, 
I sat there and slowly threw each stitch.
There were always others to be seen.  There was 

always the bat and the knife.  I said nothing,
and the tears kept welling in his eyes.
And even though I was told to be “quick and dirty,”

told to spend less than 20 minutes, I sat there
for over an hour closing the wound so that each edge
met its opposing match.  I wanted him 

to be beautiful again.  Stitch up the faggot in bed 6.  
Each suture thrown reminded me I would never be safe 
in that town.  There would always be the bat

and the knife, always a fool willing to tear me open 
to see the dirty faggot inside.  And when they 
came in drunk or high with their own wounds, 

when they bragged about their scuffles with the knife 
and that other world of men, I sat there and sutured.  
I sat there like an old woman and sewed them up.  

Stitch after stitch, the slender exactness of my fingers 
attempted perfection.  I sat there and sewed them up.





Appears in Building the Perfect Animal: New and Selected Poems (Four Way Books 2025). It originally appeared in Torn (Four Way Books 2011).

Last night, stumbling after dinner, we decided   
       the only way worth telling time is by the senses, 
so we measured stretches of cloudless skies, 
      dandelion spores punctuating air like snow, 

except it was summer, and the last time we’d come
      it was cold so we couldn’t recall the radiant
eaves of the buildings, the ornate staircases 
      that wound around an old-world wind...

This is all to say the city changed with the seasons,   
      as if there’d been two of us in two different times 
or two versions deciding whether or not to move there; 
      regardless, we never would. Some places
 
are better when returned to, others worth growing  
      alongside and then others you never see again. 
We step onto the train and all the riders are silent,  
      or when they speak we don’t recognize a word, 

and we agree, we’re in love with the bliss  
      of anonymity, watching this foreign theater play out 
where it’s like there is no other language but ours:   
      talking in the ways we twist our faces, in looks  

we trade as polite, handsome Canadians whizz by
      on their bicycles: the humming when they speed,  
the clicking when they stop. Are you listening?   
      This is the city I want to be in with you: 

the early summer haze of light already vanishing,   
      not the smears of ice that make the pain go sharp,  
numb, but let’s not go there. Open the window—  
      Those colors running down the mountain are people.




Originally published in Cherry Tree

                after m. mick powell

According to my Pastor, who I, like a fool, 
mistook for the voice of God, calling me by name.

Of course, “strapping” was too vulgar a term for her holy 
mouth, though she called Aaliyah everything but her name,

and me, funny, for watching a woman dancing with women.
Their bodies whisper close. Not a man in sight. I want to name

that I’m embarrassed to tell you this: I let the knife
of her stare stop my hips from rocking. Nodded as she named

my litany of sins. Unnatural. Ungodly. 
In my own home, I changed the channel. There is a name

for the type of lie I told with my mouth closed. For what I pretended 
to not know as clearly as my own name.



Appears in Good Dress (Tinhouse, 2024)

Who among us hasn’t been asked for their number—
when someone asks, how many people have you slept with,
what counts? How does one count the ways
their lives have intertwined with yours? One man
told me he would’ve told Gore Vidal about me. One man
read me an Olga Broumas poem when we were done.
One man invited me to his bathtub, view of the Pacific—
brought me champagne. One man bought me two drinks.
One man bought me a desk. One novelist called me
a perfect angel. One man wouldn’t stop calling
until I blocked him. One man cried when we were finished.
One man told me he visited the AIDS wards in San Francisco,
how visitors were required to dip their hands
in bowls of lemon juice to find the cuts.



Previously published in fourteen poems