Diptych
In two hours, at some point
in the past, I will be pulled
from an incision made
to my mother's abdomen
and nurses will clean her up,
clean me up, do what they have to do.
Later, the six o’clock news
will show the President Reagan
making his first major speech on AIDS.
That’s the history lesson for the day,
an introduction to queer theory
and throes. Thirty-three years later
I sit in a room of my house
I never know how to name
and write this poem from that name-
less nook. I think of Jennifer Tonge’s
birthday poem: she writes,
My spring is gone.
My spring, too, is gone—
that is, until a teal-tufted bird
breezes by the window and quivers
midair. I watch it flicker like a glitch
and I am lifted from the room
and from my mother and from the sky.
The day is blue again, like birthdays,
like bachelor's button flowers: every feather
and every whisp weightless in flight,
every wish and wonder—
And then I see the blue bird blink.
Both eyes, both wings,
and so, too, the wall clock.
