Metamagical

Just doing a quick archive, cause a lot of this stuff is from my cohost, which will shut down soon. Stuff with semi-durable links will be linked, stuff with transient links (e.g. the bird site) is transcribed so that it doesn't disappear into the ether.

If you're on this list and you have a more canonical location, i'm happy to link there instead.

"Dear White Girls in My Spanish Class" by Ariana Brown
"Like Totally Whatever" by Melissa Lozada-Olivia, transcribed

unnamed by @angelrightsnow (originally posted on the bird site)

a broken clock is right twice a day
and if a clock can muster that...
then you'd be shocked by
what a broken person can do

from "On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous" by Ocean Vuong

"You're not a monster," I said. But I lied.
What I really wanted to say was that a
monster is not such a terrible thing to
be. From the Latin root monstrum, a
divine messenger of catastrophe, then
adapted by the Old French to mean
an animal of myriad origin: centaur,
griffin, stayr. To be a monster is to be
a hybrid signal, a lighthouse: both
shelter and warning at once.

"T4T Awareness Week" (posted by @oauthboundFamiliar, afaict the original source is a lex poster from The Bay)

sometimes
I wish to pass
wish for invisibility
dodge their awareness

sometimes
I love being a monster
love how they stare in horror/arousal
shine so bright they can't look away

and sometimes (most times)
I just want the touch, claw, bite
of a creature like me
someone who gets it

⚧️💖

"Qahr" by Amal El-Mohtar

"Explaining Time to My Dog" by Kat Giordano (afaict this one was never posted anywhere but the bird site, briefly, and the picture/story site)

a work day is sixteen walks long—eight of those big ones,
where we don't make that left turn off 14th and pass the
house with the year-round inflatables. a year is the time
between when the other houses take their inflatables
down and when they put them back out, the time between
fireworks finales, but also the time it takes me to walk to
the mailbox and back with you staring out the window. but
also the time it takes for me to run a 5k in the morning. in
other words, a year is also 30 minutes. 30 minutes is the
length of a walk, but also the refractory period after a walk
before i have to start spelling it again instead. i'm sorry, but
it is what it is. we all have words the people we love can't
say to us, not because they'll hurt us but because itll feel
too good too fast and your feelings are scary, that look on
your face when you're running full-tilt at someone who's
not ready yet, who's still putting their shoes on. it's the not-
readiness they're afraid of, the way it makes them feel to
see you feeling. the way they wish they had something to
say other than "wait" and the way they can't define that
word. it hurts, but you figure it out eventually, the sounds
of the letters, the shapes of them in their mouths, the
certain way they breathe, like their hand is already on the
leash across the room.

"The Most Holy Day of the Transsexual Calendar" / "Greed" by Nora Hikari

"Happy Birthday" by Nora Hikari (afaict this was only posted on the bird site)

Happy Birthday

I think you could be born young,
doing something you shouldn’t be,
bathed in peach light and seeing
everything that could ever happen to you
splayed out like body on canvas.
Tiresias robed in greentext
asking you a question
you know the answer to.

I know a boy who was born at 17,
trembling at Warped Tour, carved open
by the angle of Gerard Way’s hips.
I heard he dropped right there,
like an angel, his friends crowding
him and cooing like new mothers,
which, of course, they were,
and he stood up, exactly the same
but put together the right way.

I was born in a crowd, caught
cross-legged by a song about
caskets cracking open for daughters.
I heard her voice break and I cried,
because I too knew how to break,
and so I did. I broke apart like
the bright crust of a melon bun
and went home for the first time.

Happy birthday. Come home.

"The God of Broken Things" by Andrea (@CERESUltra) (originally posted on cohost), my recording

I saw the god of broken things
Watched it patch tires
Reunite families
Debug code
Set bones

And cradle crying what was beyond fixing
Mourning stuff perhaps never even missed

Somewhere it became
The god of neurodivergents
The mental health strugglers
The disabled
The queer
Not because any were broken
Not by default
But because
so many prayers
That came to it
And it could not stand
To watch from a distance
And do nothing

I saw the god of broken things and did not realize how well it knew my secret voice

extracts from PvP poetry time on the bird site: some person posted that erasure poetry was heresy. poetry ensued.

a lot of small poems

Original:

IMO, "erasure poetry" is not poetry in any way. And to destroy someone else's writing&emdash;or, God forbid, poem&emdash;and then call the leftover words a new "poem" is pure philistinism.
Fight me.

@mlifonos
```
reposession, theft or new life
```

@ImLaurenTheresa

O,
to destroy someone else’s God
or, poem—and then
Fight.

@carma_t

"Poetry is poetry in any way
and to God
—the leftover words"

@poetryalpastor

agree
poetry is not in
any
writing or God or poem—
the poem is in
me

@misterdullboy

poetry is in
God—and the leftover words
are me

@boyleafie

I'M
someone else's God
call the words
pure sin

@xenofem

poetry is poetry in any way to
destroy me
and
delight me.

Talia Ringer

Erasure is
poetry
To destroy 
god
Call the
words a new
Pure 
Me

@poetryalpostor

No
Poetry is
to destroy
God,
call the leftover words
pure

unnamed by @spiders (originally posted on cohost, in tiny text)

sorry
i was tired
and so moody.
i got little sleep,
and i regret that you,
one of my dearest friends,
were forced to put up with
entirely suboptimal performance.
i understand that i have likely inflicted
irrepairable harm, having demonstrated
without doubt that i am completely unfit for service
as a companion, and you now see that i'm no person
but a brood-parasite, yes- an insidious, hungry imposter
and, i am quite afraid to say it but i find it horribly likely that
by mere exposure to me in my most toxic and wretched state
you have come under a curse that has haunted me since childhood
(if not across multiple lives) which dooms me to fail in every endeavor
and severs my ability to impact the flow of events surrounding my life
in all but the most quotidian of ways, leaving me untethered from causality;
i have long known this day would come, when my silence on this grave matter
would injure a loved one, but i feared it'd scare you off, so i kept quiet. sorry.

(i will try to do better next time.)

"Second Date Deadname Swap" by Nora Hikari (posted on cohost by the author originally, which is why I feel comfortable transcribing it here)

Second-Date Deadname Swap

So it’s trading Magic the Gathering cards.
So it's swapping old drawings
of hard-secret girlsonas
It’s the sending of the buried photos
of your high school self; a library forbidden to everyone
except the woman you’re currently
trying to sleep with. It’s clear to everyone
that you never expected to make it this far.
All these escape fantasies are about teenagers.

Maybe that’s what these rituals are for.
There’s nothing sexier than being alive.
I give you my soft parts for your hands;
all of my names, all of my bodies,
all of the people I want to no longer be.
Your tears taste so hot, babe.
You stink like alive and I love it.
Say it. Say it again. Say it with me. Please.
We made it we made it we made it.

"ⁿ.ⁿ" by @theophage (originally on cohost)

ⁿ.ⁿ

Today's gender:
Scales and tails, claws and maw
Endless hunger, battles without number, and a need for the unjust world to be torn asunder

"There's a spot on my couch" by Sylvia Lilith (estrogen-and-spite) (originally posted on cohost)

There’s a spot on my couch
I keep open for you
It’s yours for when
you want to sit

We can laugh at a movie
You can lean against me
And I’ll put my arm
Around your waist

You can lay there
Your head in my lap
My hands in your hair
Gentle scratches

You can stretch there
Give me that impish grin
And I curl down
Lip to lip and smile to smile

You can curl up there
And I can hold you close
And scratch your back
Whisper “it’s going to be all right”

There’s a spot in my life
I keep open for you
It’s on my couch
And everywhere else too

"Find" by Rachel Barenblat (transcribed a lot on tumblr, having a hard time finding an official source)

If I had any pull with God, everything you need
would appear right now in front of you.
A door would open and inside it
a rose-strewn path, the yearned-for embrace.
I’d take the broken pieces of the afikomen
and restore them as if by magic.
But that isn’t how it works. God isn’t
a diner waitress saying what can I get you, hon?
That’s why our sages taught: a clay vessel
is purified when it breaks and is glued.
A human heart, charged with a lifetime’s losses
becomes real when lovingly mended.
All I can do: ask God to cradle your heart
in Her own hands and make you whole.

"V'ahavta" by Aurora Levins Morales