Before the Not-Child’s Not-Howl by torrin a. greathouse

First runner-up in the 2019 Los Angeles Review Literary Awards, in the category of poetry.

Final Judge: Matty Layne Glasgow

My lover comes inside me
& I weep inconsolable. My body,
pressed almost through the sweat
drenched mattress, impotent as wax
fruit before a starving man.

Outside the window birds pulse
into the air, their wings become broken
scissors etching the clouds
into confetti. Open a doorway
to the sun’s soft light & the dark
pit it burns in my eyes—

thin slice of ginger-root, apricot
seed, a stomach’s perfect
swell. Every animal sound
reminds me of a future child.
Their ungentle howl. The babble
of a baby’s brook-mouth.

After my lover dries the sudden
ocean from my cheeks, I search for beauty
in the world as if I were new.
Gather it in fistfuls. Tongue the sun
-light. Teeth against the buttermilk moon.

My half-sobs syncopated like a heart
not yet beating. I palm my narrow
hips & imagine a dream passing through
them like wind through the eye of a needle.
Imagine a child, against my chest, still
borne from inside me like a wave.

Imagine my life without this
inconvenient truth: A record rewound
so far it begins with a new song, a choir
of children, mouths curled into the shape
of a grin, a chorus, a laugh,
of a mother’s name.

torrin a. greathouse is a transgender cripple-punk & MFA candidate at the University of Minnesota. She is the author of boy/girl/ghost (TAR Chapbook Series, 2018) & assistant editor of The Shallow Ends. Their work is published/forthcoming in POETRY, Ploughshares, & The Kenyon Review. She is the youngest ever winner of the Poetry Foundation’s J. Howard and Barbara M.J. Wood Prize.