POEM OF ONLY LIES

                    by Myles Taylor

I was the bad boy in school, necked in shoplifted silver & drugstore nails.
Watched horror flicks under bad fleece.
Started smoking in high school until I got smart.
I get smarter as I age & know it.
I do something feminine and a chorus calls it big dick energy.
I hang out in the local guitar shop.
The cashier learns my name & talks shop with me.
Every time I am good at a thing I am told I could pursue it.
I don’t want to, though.
I don’t take myself too seriously.
I join a dating app to look for other people who don’t take themselves too seriously.
I go to a campus bar with a fake ID and laugh a lot.
I bar-hop under the stars.
I know all of their names.
On my way home I see a poster of a shirtless man in a motorcycle jacket
& I go outside shirtless with a motorcycle jacket.
My dad loves how much I look like him & hates how much I talk like him & worries how much I act like him.
My dad grows as he ages.
Expands until he spindles like a redwood tree & from above he calls me my name and says something about basketball.
I was born with a God that I could grow out of.
I have a dream where the shirtless man in the motorcycle jacket is in the mirror.
Then he opens the mirror like a car door and puts his hand on my sternum.
His hand breaks through and my chest spills sprouts of purple orchids.
I run away trailing flower petals and wedding processions begin to follow me.
Two brides follow the same path of petals and collide.
I empty of flowers until I am light as a feather.
I blow away happily.
I have another dream where the shirtless model is in front of me.
He puts his hand on my sternum.
I tell him I can’t feel anything & he knows.
His hand is on someone else’s body.
I wake up without a body.
I wake up a man.
I wake up thinking about breakfast.
This poem never turns.
I remember why I wrote it.
I remember why I wrote it.
I spend money without budgeting for future medical bills.
My chest is covered in tattoos of orchids that I do not worry about butchering.
I don’t go by a nickname anymore.
I use a public bathroom.
I see myself in the mirror.
I do not write this poem again.
I don’t have to don’t to make things true.
I never never. I always. I just do.










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photo by Ilyus Evander

Myles Taylor is a transmasculine poet, organizer, barista, Emerson College alum, Capricorn-Aquarius cusp, and glitter enthusiast. They run Moonlighting: A Queer Open Mic and host at the Boston Poetry Slam. Their work can be found or is forthcoming from Academy of American Poets, Washington Square Review, Underblong, Crab Fat Magazine, Slamfind, and others.