Portrait of My Gender as [Inaudible]

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.