Jory Mickelson
Trixter
I don’t need a magic
to tell me how fucked & fractured
this world is, nothing
can wrap it into wholeness.
Why is it a crime to
change shape? Why police
a body that won’t
hold still? I have been sand
for men who raked
their hands along my every
side, been water parted &
pushed through. Been for them
fire too, lit them
quick & been lit, pyre we used
to climb the air, breath
exultant ladder. I’ve been
stone, broke them
and didn’t break, refused to be
plowed from the earth.
I could be something gentle,
wind maybe or grass, dew
to meet a hand extended to see
what might actually be
there: this queer, changeable
body, my trixter shape.
Give a man the sun & they’ll
walk away as you sift
into ash. Ask for water
& they’ll say your anger
keeps you in the dark.
Jory Mickelson is queer writer whose work has appeared in The Rumpus, Ninth Letter, Vinyl Poetry, The Collagist, The Los Angeles Review, and other journals in the United States, Canada, and the UK. Jory is the recipient of an Academy of American Poet’s Prize and a Lambda Literary Fellow in Poetry. The author of three chapbooks, Jory’s most recent is Self-Portrait with Men in Cars, published in 2018.
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