Portrait of My Gender as [Inaudible]
By Meg Day
I knew I was a god
when you could not
agree on my name
& still, none you spoke
could force me to listen
closer. Is this the nothing
the antelope felt when
Adam, lit on his own
entitling, dubbed family,
genus, species? So many
descendants became
doctors, delivered
babies, bestowed bodies
names as if to say it is to make it
so. Can it be a comfort between
us, the fact of my creation?
I was made in the image
of a thing without
an image & silence, too,
is your invention. Who prays
for a god except to appear
with answers, but never
a body? A voice? If I told you
you wouldn’t believe me
because I was the one
to say it. On the first day
there was no sound
worth mentioning. If I, too,
am a conductor of air, the only
praise I know is in stereo
(one pair—an open hand & closed
fist—will have to do). I made
a photograph of my name:
there was a shadow in a field
& I put my shadow in it. You
can’t hear me, but I’m there.
