Gender Reveal Party
The gender emerges
as colored smoke from a glowing paper skull
as fire from the chains of a luxury SUV time-trialing the Nürburgring
as water from the tallest non-fatal waterslide at Schlitterbahn
as dyed earth erupting from a pumpkin exploding against the flank of a schoolbus in a cornfield
now that the forest is blanketed with colorful ash
now that the concussion wave from the grenade blast has subsided and the shields have
come down
and the great apes are plucking glitter from each other’s fur
the slender eel’s assigned its lent feel
now that the balloons have lost buoyancy and have begun to confuse the sealife
let’s have a selfie with the ticking backhoe
a panorama of the hysteria sweeping the bandshell
a group shot of the semipro paintballers hired
to pepper the laughing attendees
who all came to see what kind of steel will brace the tender
what will render Pangeal
the dispersant mounds of a life
incoming like mortars or storm
to cleanse the sordid land before it
up the esophageal stent
shins gender
so it can say which heel to slide under
and which monster repeal
every pelt arranged now
the net graveyard repelled
and the graveled pear enters
though the anagram machine reminds us
though we down cup after cup of phosphorescent punch
the grey antler pervades
Valediction
Unlike the universe, its reckless
blossoming, its stretching and stretching
over oblivion’s stiff lip its fabric
of billowing gaseous nurseries
of stars strewn like nickels and absence-
latticed lingerie from the mouth
of a crowbarred coin-op dryer,
I end. I have even begun
to shrink, the nurse the life
insurance company has sent
informs me as she packs up
her scale and measuring tape, done
now slimming my surplus
to numbers. This gift
of knowing now it’s started
is like any gift—a backrub
from a pickpocket. A heart
transplant performed by a crack team
of vampire bats. I read
the headlines to get a sense of how
to feel about it—KING BUCKS
CONVENTION, ROASTS PRINCE; FITIBITS
ON THE FRITZ SINGE
MOSTLY SUBURBAN WRISTS—
and all I get is silence. I macramé
the silence into a hammock
and string it from my panic to my apathy
where I swing between my choices.
Now that I’m eroding down
to the stub of a golf pencil
with a single sentence left in it
what will my final sentence be?
No like all the men before me? Oh
in faux surprise? Or, in
recognition of the miracle—O!
Conor Bracken is the author of The Enemy of My Enemy is Me (Diode Editions, 2021), as well as the translator of Mohammed Khaïr-Eddine's Scorpionic Sun (CSU Poetry Center, 2019) and Jean D'Amérique's No Way in the Skin Without This Bloody Embrace (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2022), a finalist for the 2023 PEN Award for Poetry in Translation. He teaches at the Cleveland Institute of Art.