Cx72 Poetry: Tyler Michaud
February 11, 2021

during a pandemic

I wash antidepressants
down with cum
prey on men
who tell me
they’re hunters
trace your name
into their chest hair
with my tongue
and in each ejaculation
the version of me you knew wanes
how long until I disappear
when I get home
it’s uncanny
the couch still bends
to your body
the cats seem to be constantly searching
the first roses you gave me
sit in a gold-edged glass box
on the bookshelf
next to a blue succulent
and a wine-stained copy
of The Year of Magical Thinking
in the mirror I see fragments
my edges splintered and bloody
two bottles of wine and one benadryl later
I try to sleep
but in the scratches
on the floor beneath our bed
I hear your staggered breath
and feel your hands
on my hips so
I text I miss you
but each time my phone vibrates
it’s just another stranger
begging to wash my feet
with his beard

Wildflowers but Make Them Black

If I had a daughter, I would name her Lilith.
She would have spectral eyes, and her tears
would grow a garden unholy with apples.
She would feed the snakes in her hair crushed

light bulbs, weave dresses out of spiderwebs,
and sharpen her talons on old gravestones,
whose etchings reduce woman to wife.
She would be resplendent, boast a fist

of obsidian for a heart to conceal a boldness
greater than any sapphire. She would learn
the finer details, such as white cloth is only holy
until the first wash, and a succubus never

crosses her wings when sitting. She would line
the edges of her bed with cactus spikes to keep
the monsters from leaving and lure the rats out
from inside the walls into a cage on her desk

without a lock. She would paint her nails black
satin and pick at them to leave a trail similar to
scorched ground in her wake. She would read all
the revered thinkers but learn that white ink

contains magic too tame and fashion a quill
out of a rose thorn. She would conceive of her
body as an inkwell of poison, a viscous substance
like a kite no string can tether.

* Originally published in Rust + Moth

Litany of Longings and Botanics

tell me again about wildflowers
how they quiver in the winds of the Great Plains

how we’ll go during the second week of April
when the reds are true and the yellows are happy

tell me again about that hedge of lilacs
your grandmother gave her summers to growing

about mornings in your twin-sized bed
breathing its heady scent just outside the window

tell me again how a weed can be a wildflower
but a wildflower isn’t a weed

about annuals and perennials
how Touch-Me-Nots are either

and Forget-Me-Nots are neither
about plants that heal

and plants that explode on impact
ask me again about Queen of the Night

and I’ll tell you stories of Eudora
how she would put on grand

all-night garden parties to celebrate
its once-a-year white blossoms

let’s for one intoxicating night
find beauty in impermanence

our bodies in sync and carefree
luminous in starlight

*

Tyler M. Michaud is a queer poet originally from Maine, now living in New Jersey. He is an MFA candidate in Poetry at Rutgers University, Newark and holds an MA in English from Georgetown University. He has forthcoming poetry in The Sandy River Review and has also appeared in Rust + Moth, The Anthem, The River, and Eunoia Review.