Born Year of the Uma

Scuffing our sneakers on crumbled

blacktop basketball courts dog-calling

Hialeah-hollering I say Is there anything

year of the faggy horse? Bitchass We

cackle loud enough to light crows off

telephone poles & of course it’s really me

who’s ashamed of being Horse-born year

after upended year still star sign of the

discolored stallion Me who is faggy My

bitchass

clings saddle-tight & nightly dream-

convinced to my mare She is brown my

mare so brown as turned earth my nude

body blending perfectly paint-wet

across her bumpy spine ropes of her

dark mane malting against my small

chest I lay awake most nights

anticipating her dreaming like me to

crossover the shoals of some fairy tale

body of river racing muddy through

field of green after uninterrupted green

But I grow hand over hand sixteen hands

longer than the muscled trunk of her & in the

illness of my youth fading I beg to be reborn

year of the Ox

huffing gold clouds misted in tall grass with

horns long enough to hang the worries of my

small worlds or begat by Tiger years of

cleaning manblood from my claws snagged

dewy through green stalks reaching long as

earth’s static hair for the underbelly remake me

in the image of the great red god of a Dragon

the years I prayed to spit fire to sling fangs to

fly far from the black hearth of yet another

abusive boy’s home

When finally I dream again of her my

mare she is dead There is nothing but

a paling body a corpse spilled oilslick

in the dirt So I skin her I quarter her I

pack her tough meat to sell on street

corners Because O I have grown for

so long long look at me & my claws

of the Tiger how I flayed her long like

the horns of the Ox how I speared her

long like the fangs of the red god how

I devoured her Finally ruthless I am

with the heart of a Dragon Dreaming

to be unmade not long for oblivion.