boatbound dysmorphic
I steadied myself into this body like stealing someone else’s
wood canoe. Ramshackle, unfamiliar, I just had to trust it
to deliver me from one mud to the next. I can’t help
my obviousness. I wanted to be approachable, waving
at the families stippling the banks, mistaking
my oars for my hands, swatting common loons right out of the sky while
the beach-goers gawked. It’s embarrassing for all of us, the clouds
included. Like them, I’ve tried to amend my edges, to small myself, be
unassuming as a sliver of wood on the waterline. On shore,
I coaxed a trout from the river. It shuddered, mouth slackened to a welcoming
O. I tried to wriggle inside it but I was just too gigantic. Still, I wanted something
to contain me, like the wide sky nestles the neon sun
in the upper corner of a children’s drawing, or the sea hoards immeasurable red
Coca-Cola caps. Inside the trout’s belly, if you’d peer between its teeth,
you’d see a thin brass key.
wood canoe. Ramshackle, unfamiliar, I just had to trust it
to deliver me from one mud to the next. I can’t help
my obviousness. I wanted to be approachable, waving
at the families stippling the banks, mistaking
my oars for my hands, swatting common loons right out of the sky while
the beach-goers gawked. It’s embarrassing for all of us, the clouds
included. Like them, I’ve tried to amend my edges, to small myself, be
unassuming as a sliver of wood on the waterline. On shore,
I coaxed a trout from the river. It shuddered, mouth slackened to a welcoming
O. I tried to wriggle inside it but I was just too gigantic. Still, I wanted something
to contain me, like the wide sky nestles the neon sun
in the upper corner of a children’s drawing, or the sea hoards immeasurable red
Coca-Cola caps. Inside the trout’s belly, if you’d peer between its teeth,
you’d see a thin brass key.
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Jean-Charles Cazin. The Boatyard, 1875. Oil on fabric. The Cleveland Museum of Art.
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Noah Baldino is a queer trans poet and editor. Their poems can be found in Poetry, Indiana Review, Black Warrior Review, and elsewhere.