Woody Woodger is a trans femme, pan, anarcho-commie currently living in Washington, DC. Her poetry has appeared in DIAGRAM, Northern New England Review, Drunk Monkeys, RFD, Exposition Review, and peculiar, and has been nominated for Best of the Net and Pushcart prizes. Her first chapbook, postcards from glasshouse drive (Finishing Line Press) was nominated for the 2018 Massachusetts Book Awards. Find her on Insta & Twitter @lovlyno1
ANDY
He’s a past
warbled like a morning through a bedside
tumblr. He is the direct descendant of William Bradford,
the first governor of Massachusetts.
Thanksgiving is his fault.
He can never remember to trim his nails. He lets them grow
like penance. He is white, perpetually guilty, too fat and spiteful
to live. He does this for the remembrance
of us. Above the altar, the cracker snaps. His mother
is already done with him,
and it's not even 5th grade.
He’s disgusted with the girl she will someday become.
Shut up. Look. He sits in a smelly pew. His hard collar. His nails. He is but the germ
of a person. His head hung, learning how prayer works,
unaware of what it does. He prays for everyone
he knows except himself—he believes
he has not earned
the right. Prayer is for the dead, he thinks, and he cannot yet even be trusted
with the wine.
***
Remember how the cop stayed in the room
with me while i cried. Or didn’t,
exactly. More whined then balled.
More dad than cop. He sat arms crossed, hat
off. Tired. Of me. How mundane
this evening. i had the urge
to make him a guilty martini.
My fishnets are camouflage
back in Mass. There, no one has a beard with
the lights off. i tell everyone that’s how they caught
me. Like the cop’s dad
taught him. Reach a hand into the dark morning
water with patience. Remember
how the cop adjusted himself like a gavel.
Woody, remember don’t tell them anything
more than they need to know.
Dad remembers when he had to bail out my uncle
and i don’t. Lie bi omission, Andy, is still a lie
Dad said to me.
i told the cop secrets
like it was an episode of Mad Men
and i’m just another buttery Betty
face blind to a man
in uniform. i folded
a shirt in my mind, ruthlessly. i am blubber. A mess. i am sorry.
i blew a .15
.16 in Maine, remember, is jail time. (In my poems, a period’s a question mark
waiting to happen)
Remember the front desk asked
sorry, Mrs. Is it?
The bi kid
and i blub-
burrrr it out in the drunk tank.
Remember he smile-cries. (Remember to smile, Woody.)
His face the face i make yanking
a stubborn sapling from between my brows.
The goopy root’s
a beak yelping.
Woody was born in a cold backseat, bound absolutely GAGGED!
Remember, Woody, you imaged
fucking him in his cell.
Remember what you thought at the time
because you’re not just guilty of what you say.
Our days in here
orange and numbered and fuzzy
and flat chested,
us both. The bi kid and i. We’d be like our cell phones are right now—peeking
through sandwich bags, illuminated.
Remember the 90s? 'member when South
Park. Remember gum
recession. Remember. i deserve punishment. Bad
girl. Bad girl. It runs down my leg
as i type this. Look, everything you care about, Woody: wa(i)st(e).
excess. Budget—
remember revenge is a whole
other species.
Me
—but with the wrong beak. A finch wishing
she had a new nose. Dar win. Favor
me. The lights announce themselves
in my rearview on the day i'm arrested. Walk over to me like Hollywood,
flashing its teeth and Aviators
and saying why don't you roll down
this window. Step on
out for me doll.
A college-aged crowd
walks past my arrest
and oooooos
like i just stumbled out of a cookie jar.
Remember money, Woody? Remember how it leapt
from your sleeves in the drunk
tank, filled in the linoleum floor
like my breath fell down the tube—a silent, consistent admission.
My makeup then
was just like the mug shot says.
There's no need to smile.
Remember why you’re here, Woody, i think once the bi boy stops distracting me.
In the drunk tank, i think
about the Woodger Boys watching from the pier on Cape Cod.
Brad and I the only ones who ever go in the water. Phytoplankton synch around
my waist like an aura.
The Woodgers. All of us
hold frosty Dogfish Heads like hilts
to nowhere. From the pier, Mom shouts, Now remember (shouts Andy,
watch your brother!)
It’s May it’s still freezing.
Remember. If you get in trouble, sorry boys.
You’re on your own.