Mid-day subway: there are no icebreakers or pronouns for this

Mid-day subway: there are no icebreakers or pronouns for this Kay Ulanday Barrett (bio) For a long time I wanted there to be no barrier between pelvis and thetectonic plate of my chest. Just open. It’s impossible though. My belovedswoons at my nipples, re-stitched, body a tell-all, body terror. Strangers cullme on train, even in afternoon, spit out my looks like cherry pits even though I fold page in some book, secretly recounting how many steps it takes to get to the exit. I thinkabout how to make a man’s loud slander silence on the prism of my heel. Ibreathe in shapes I don’t want, my exhale puffed to the circumference of fistif any one’s too close. Three ways I can synthesize jugular, make husk of an eye. I muster courage. Proud uncles called me “Black belter” didn’t know eventually Iwas ready to spar with men who mirrored their drunken haze. I’m familiar with the sequence of bruised rib turnedcinder dust. Not again. There, I said it. In the name of thislabor let me smile at the sun, finally. In the name of all of us, no set of teeth sharpened every time we have to cross the street. By thelook of your terse pupils, you woke up sweat drenchedunder the starlight thinking it could be sheath too. You, wishing streetlamp were baton. You were hopingto dream something buttery soft slick, hoping withoutnightmares of pummel, hoping to give the moon a break. [End Page 308] Kay Ulanday Barrett Named one of “9 Transgender and Gender Nonconforming Writers You Should Know” by Vogue, Kay Ulanday Barrett is a poet, essayist, cultural strategist, and A+ napper. They are the winner of the 2022 Cy Twombly Award for Poetry by Foundation for Contemporary Arts, winner of a 2022 Tin House Next Book Residency, and a recipient of a 2020 James Baldwin Fellowship at MacDowell. Their second book, More Than Organs (Sibling Rivalry Press, 2020), received a 2021 Stonewall Honor Book Award from the American Library Association and is a 2021 Lambda Literary Award Finalist. They can be reached at info@kaybarrett.net. Copyright © 2023 Kay Ulanday Barrett