My poetic remixes are based on how I learned to draw as a kid by tracing. I rewrite the poem in my own words, with my own experiences, memories, and sensations, as a way to trace the feel the flow, style, rhythm and meaning.

Rich’s “Trying to Talk with a Man” has been analyzed as related to her divorce, a realization of the end of love, gender trouble, the intimacy of dead ends, projection, co-dependency, and war.

I was struck by this poem because it resonated with the explosive tendencies that have existed in my close friendships with other men. I walk a fine line between a longing for camaraderie, physical attraction, and a desire for platonic intimacy, all of which, alone or in combination, trigger my gender identity panic.

remix of Adrienne Rich, “Trying to Talk with a Man”

In these fields we are testing bombs
that’s why we came here.
Sometimes I feel safe under the canopy of trees
Free to submit to the force of waters that smooth stone away
I see it like I see myself in you
Partial, deep, alive, holding, ready to break open
We run breathless as the rain soaks our skin

What we’ve had to give up to get here–
whole LP collections, plays we enacted
we were heroes, looking through windows into some other life
my love letters, your suicide notes
sunsets across the frozen lake
we could pretend we were free as children

Coming out to these fields
we meant to find something we never were
driving among careless robins and cornfields
We use a language whose grammar negates pain
You swaddle me with familiar silence

Punctuated by the cries of tired toddlers
reminding us of the limits of our choices
everything we were saying until now
was an effort to blot it out–
Coming out here we are up against it

Out here I feel more vulnerable
with you than without you
Ghosts rise from the road into the sun
rainbows disappear from view
We talk of past lovers, indiscretion
describing our heartaches as if they happened to someone else

Sirens approach and you look at me like an emergency
Your dry heat feels like power
Ignore me and walk ahead
as stars in my eyes demand your attention
reflecting lights that spell out: EXIT
Talk softly, walk closely against me

We go on talking of the danger
as if it were not ourselves
as if we were testing anything else