Give Me a New Axis
by Sara Mae
Give me a new axis.
Wind to petal. Verb or noun.
Sorting powdery elastics in brown paper bags.
Sweating in the backyard of a cobblestone neighborhood.
Little wind.
Giggling about reality shows, MILFs, with a new friend.
He asks me to break the waters apart
for the ones whose hands are swollen, shows me
how to put sharps flat at the bottom of the bag.
(our eyes sparkling at one another & by turns I am
alight to feel his curiosity
but wondering if he sees I’m trans.)
I make these kits because when I did not belong
as a teenager, the people who held me were
in & out of recovery. Before I had language, I had
their backyards, their discount couches
the color of harbor water, the harbors
of their music taste. I keep a corduroy jumper
in my closet I never wear
because D— liked it. He sponsored S—,
the first poet I knew (how shyly I handed him
a book of Robert Service poems.)
Next week I will cut my hair into star-like points.
Petals.
I toy with the idea of trying cocaine,
wear a white tank to dance to techno music,
feel my hands on myself. I am shy around
the girls who show me how to dance & I
have always felt this way. Like I am being
led to the water, & pretend to drink, but
my tongue wilts. Give me a new ache, so I won’t have to name this one.
Too often I’ve gone where I am wanted. Not loved.
But thrusting my shoulders back & tangled with sweat,
green light, or following my guardian angels
to the rooftop to smoke, I pant like a thirsty planet.
I understand myself in the past tense.
Wind to petal. Verb or noun.
Sorting powdery elastics in brown paper bags.
Sweating in the backyard of a cobblestone neighborhood.
Little wind.
Giggling about reality shows, MILFs, with a new friend.
He asks me to break the waters apart
for the ones whose hands are swollen, shows me
how to put sharps flat at the bottom of the bag.
(our eyes sparkling at one another & by turns I am
alight to feel his curiosity
but wondering if he sees I’m trans.)
I make these kits because when I did not belong
as a teenager, the people who held me were
in & out of recovery. Before I had language, I had
their backyards, their discount couches
the color of harbor water, the harbors
of their music taste. I keep a corduroy jumper
in my closet I never wear
because D— liked it. He sponsored S—,
the first poet I knew (how shyly I handed him
a book of Robert Service poems.)
Next week I will cut my hair into star-like points.
Petals.
I toy with the idea of trying cocaine,
wear a white tank to dance to techno music,
feel my hands on myself. I am shy around
the girls who show me how to dance & I
have always felt this way. Like I am being
led to the water, & pretend to drink, but
my tongue wilts. Give me a new ache, so I won’t have to name this one.
Too often I’ve gone where I am wanted. Not loved.
But thrusting my shoulders back & tangled with sweat,
green light, or following my guardian angels
to the rooftop to smoke, I pant like a thirsty planet.
I understand myself in the past tense.
Sara Mae is a genderqueer raised on the Chesapeake Bay. They are a 2023 Big Ears Artist Scholar and a 2022 Tinhouse Summer Workshops alum. Their work appears in Passages North, the Georgia Review, POETRY and elsewhere. Their second chapbook, Phantasmagossip, won the Vinyl45 chapbook competition and was published with YesYes Books in 2025. They received their MFA from UTK. They write music as The Noisy, and currently live in Philly.