One Halloween I put on
black lipstick, a black dress,
a few sprays of expensive perfume,
and became the hottest girl
at the party. A football player
even asked me out in this

halfway house between the sexes,
refuge from my libido,
short stay in a long body
without want. My curled hair
and eyelashes enticed me into resting
from enticements. My shaved legs
were the smooth sheets
that the children of a thousand genders
wrapped themselves in as they slept.

Every preacher wants to be a writer
and have their thoughts endure.
Every writer wants to preach to us
in a way nuance won't allow,
maybe men want to be women and women
want something better than a man. Men move

through beds and all the dark tunnels
between them, only able to remember
a fleeting masculinity in their stumbling.
The beds soon become unrecognizable
from the tunnels, there is no manhood
on the sweating stones. I apologize
to the women I've used and wounded,
I wouldn't know what it is to be
a man without my time in drag.