STEPHEN IRA

Night of the Chaser 2: Last Minute Business

I got all choked up and I threw down my gun
and said, “Worship me. I need to be worshipped
and you’re one of the ones who will worship me.
You’re combing the country all night,” I said,
“the river and the barns, the houses where the stingy
hand out potatoes to my sisters—Leaning,
leaning, safe and secure from all alarms—
with LOVE on one hand and HATE on the other,
looking for somebody like me to worship.
To worship what I cannot name! I hate to say
what I am, how I hate it! All terms make me feel
like a child, or doctor, or a child doctor, Doogie
Howser, Freddie Highmore, I hate it, I hate it!
You listen,” I said, “I said, ‘Worship me!
Take a knee, take two, take as many as you
need, take my knees, take my picture,
I didn’t know I had it before your camera
pressed against my crotch, please take it,
please take it away. I mean too much. It’s like
I’m a drain in New Orleans and I flood the street
unless you keep bailing me, you’d have to swim
in me,’” I said, “Please, come here, it’s a hard world
for little things, I can’t do it alone anymore, and—if we ever
 have a son, I think I’m gonna name him whatever I am.”

Love Line

When I was very young,
before I knew what
I was or that you
loved it, or who
you were, or whether
I would spend
my life alone—so,
very young, the nanny
and I listened to Love Line
on the night drive
to elocution class.
And one night someone,
some guy, called in
about trans women,
which wasn’t the term
he used or one
I knew. He wanted
to fuck one. It was
all he wanted, all
that he thought of—
he could not fuck
without the thought,
“You know what might
feel better…”
and the doctor
said: hire a hooker
get this out of your system
you can’t have a relationship
with a person like that,
which was in a way true,
a way specific to
that caller’s hunger—
not how the doctor
thought of it at all.
I sat where a poised
young woman did not
sit, and thought
I would hate
Dr. Drew as long as I
could stay alive.
I don’t recall connecting
any of this to anything,
not my anger,
not treating death
like a bad super
when I had never wanted
for a thing in life.
“Please fix those pipes.”
I used to love to
hear the troubles
grown up people
had with the game
they’d invented—did
they do it just
to hate it? I never
doubted I would out-
perform them. Funny,
huh? I have always
identified as good
at head, before I ever
gave it, like how
I knew I’d like you
in advance of speaking
to you, like how you knew
when you saw
the first you saw
(God rest her soul), that life
would take a turn now,
and you’d spend it
driving us to appointments,
wiping up vomit,
helping us move.

Stephen Ira’s poetry has appeared in The Spy Kids Review, heART Online, Alien Mouth, and other venues. He is a co-founder and co-editor of Vetch: A Magazine of Trans Poetry and Poetics. He is currently pursuing his MFA in poetry at the Iowa Writer’s Workshop.