I cut off a part of my body because it could see too much of me…

My bed is more than a palace or tomb.
It’s the inside of a tree.
I can only grow larger and take longer showers.
I have only just forgotten.
Wide open forces of night.
When I was a kid.
The world clawing me up.
The seascape.
My passive lips.
Aren’t I?
Like a cow tripping down the stairs.
There are sunspots on the sun.
It’s like a sickness.
And the opposite of foolish.
Resuscitating shores.
I step out of my room like a wild duck.
Me with a lame wing.
A notable beating in my chest.
A picked bone.
It’s lonely holding a cup of ice and trying to become pure.
My mouth fills with gentle stones.
A dog barks against his leash.
I will wrap myself with rope.
I will say the truth even when I say it wrong.
I have dreams of terrible waves.
Trying to breathe in them.
Or how the whole room goes quiet.
Forgetting the memory so that I can still live there.
How wonderful and damaging.
A bird that lives in the deepest jungle.
That only knows his name.
As if I could be eaten up by the so hot sun.
Out there everything turbulent.
And yellow.
And very bright.
And shrill.


Rushing Pittman is a transgender man from Alabama. His writing has appeared in jubilat, The Boiler, BOOTH, Hayden’s Ferry Review and other various journals. He is the author of the chapbooks Mad Dances for Mad Kings (Factory Hollow Press, 2015) and There Is One Crow That Will Not Stop Cawing (Another New Calligraphy, 2016). He earned his MFA in poetry from the University of Massachusetts Amherst. He is an editor for Biscuit Hill, an online poetry journal. More of his work can be found at www.rushpittman.com.