This Is A Trans Poem About Swans

which begins in the boston garden / where people sit inside giant wooden swans

& i am the swan / this is normal / i watch the families cross the footbridge like balloons let adrift or pigeons darting after scraps of bread / because this is a long journey / it is something like orpheus a vertical transformation / but i could not pretend to cultivate myself like a garden / this body is something i am forced to touch when i suddenly grasp for love in the middle of the night / i want to become a myth that travels under & then above again but emerges differently / to become something beautiful like a swan fleeing from itself forever / this is a trans poem about swans & i desperately wish for it to be beautiful / but beauty does not escape & become a silent parking lot / in an emergency it cannot be trusted to shuffle quickly toward the nearest exit / it will never bring me away from where this body started / & so i am the swan / opened / because this is a trans poem about swans we must see entrails spilling / her flesh cut open with surgical precision / this is my body a temple under renovation / a pristine bright surgical center / a way to perhaps swim forward / after