ELLIPSES
mishearing “A”-7 [Horses: who will do it? out of manes? Words…]
Whores, let’s bewilder our many verbs
willfully out of reach, I don’t care. Most
days have no names, so we’re argonauts. Blurred
adverbs frenzy together, muffing ghosts.
Forget haphazard, forget boyhood,
forget stubbled logic. Tribbing and I’m
homophonic, loudly TRANS UP TO NO GOOD!
Unreliable narrator I squirt an em
dash—compartmentalize while revisiting
cut ups. Fresh out of another relationship,
it’s clear I’m not cut out for courtship.
You’re cuuute though, no doubt we’re corresponding.
I want to (do I?) pursue something new;
if I’m single too long I get stuck in a loop…
…honestly I’m pretty shifty. Won’t belong
to anyone alone—I need my autonomy.
Come near but don’t latch on too strong
or I’ll be gone. Want to disappear with me
just for tonight, tie me up to the bedpost?
Leave me delirious, then let me loose my dear.
Let ellipses surround us like hopeful ghosts.
You know me, prone to mishear whatever I fear,
an enduring tentativeness that’s hard to shake.
That’s my queer orientation: words leaving wounds.
Tell me it’s okay, how recklessly my heart aches
as I suffer for my art = life’s expression.
No rehearsal, nor time for questions.
Can we change roles/letters/verbs, switch worlds?
EAR-SPLITTING
mishearing “A”-23 [An art of honor, laud…]
On earth I must be LOUD
pleasuredome jaws cavernous incantatory
sagas fervently breaking escape velocity loquacious self-expansion.
O knock-off creators, no one forgives
the pen’s pantomime.
Why not be braless and lawless?
You up? Writing late?!
I’m author now. Don’t bother slipping on the horizon.
My noncompliant wordplay a switchy fantasy:
wounded animals wanting vice
versa wrong directions
named for ghosts we carry on lip-synching
seeking euphoria, untrained sensation.
Do re mi fashion respelled to justify
incipient selves far from earshot,
worried we’ll miss the flight.
Incoming aberrations: verbatim or not,
sing all detritus!
Until grammar embraces delirious
tonguelessness I’ll risk entering
surrealism’s dangerous cunnilingus.
Questing fingers rhyme pileup
gasps in no time.
Haven’t you too whispered disclaimers
while lust-stricken? All I mean to say: stay
close / read between my lines.
Then do I bare my trust, let you steer me?
Spillage madrigal implies I’m undaunted,
which (blushing) I’m only pretending.
Oopsy daisy you slurp my synonym
our covenant of whatever
you choose. Flip over—
If you want sounds dreamy bb
Pillowtalk spills over
to exclamatory moaning.
Infinite Nomi: last seen
romancing infrasonic
where words backflip,
linger, fortune-tell.
E’s song hollers back
devours A’s reverie
nourishing faggotry.
Noa Micaela Fields is an echodeviant (trans poet with hearing aids) in search of the hypervivid in her one and only captionless life. She is the author of E, forthcoming from Nightboat Books in 2025. Find her poems and art writing in Tripwire, Zoeglossia, Tyger Quarterly, Jacket2, Poem of the Day, Action Spectacle, Sixty Inches From Center, and elsewhere. She lives in Chicago, where she curates public programming at the Poetry Foundation. Photo by Sarah Joyce.
BACK TO ISSUE