In A Hotel Room In Albuquerque

In a hotel room in Albuquerque
I wake up
in the middle of the night
to various things you said
speaking in my mind,
like a radio tuning in…

Initially there is static,
my mind is groggy,
the words are unclear,
but soon the more into
consciousness I awake
I can clearly hear:

“Women don’t have penises.”
“Women don’t dance like that.”
“Women don’t have those kind
of thoughts.”
“A woman wouldn’t wear that.”
“I don’t think women do things
like that.”

Then I get up.
Go into the stale bathroom of
my hotel room.
Grab my pink metal tweezers
and continue my tenacious ritual
of plucking out the remnants of
my beard hair, one by one,
as I stand there for an hour
underneath the nauseating
fluorescent lighting,
plucking probably 800 hairs
and plotting out my plan to
move to Berlin to become a
Sapphic lesbian, woman-only,
sensual and tender,
feminist healer prostitute.