Jo Black
Mothman Lives (Portrait of the Artist as a Genderless Void)

at the age of sixteen
I stopped wearing clothes
I couldn’t look at my closet anymore
I walked the streets in the cocoon of my hair
and no-one seemed to notice I was naked

at the age of seventeen I sprouted wings
and shattered all the lightbulbs
as my feet found their way to the ceiling

at the age of nineteen
I was a full-fledged moth
I landed on a pretty girl’s lips
and she didn’t brush me away

then the gathering came
and the terror was there
my heart snapped like a bridge as I watched them stare
when the waters rose higher, I ate through the curtains
until sunlight flooded the room

do lesbian praying mantises
bite off each other’s heads
or do they spend their lives together instead?

from dominant taxonomy
I’ve heard, I’m a strange bird
but many like me
sleep cocooned in the borders I roam

I want to know what we’ll look like at 75
with ladybug spots
and grasshopper thighs
will we be made of whole cloth, or something more?

unraveling seams in the whispers they sow
flame to the moths
in the light of their screens
we could burn brighter,
brighter than before