Keagan Wheat

Medicalized Transition

Mechanical wet noise sent
through rounded squelching
synthetic compression. Leaky
lateral tunnel pulling
questions on saturation.
Pick through letters
reflecting slip-ons, shine
sterile halls.

Line stash backed by letters,
squirming mess of similar signature
opting out of dropping
professional patient conditional
& congenital.

Patch skin scaping bruises
flashing through green and purple
and receding behind white skin,
interrupted constantly by slipping
jam red rising scabs.

Sliding oily needle subcu
charge leading
through, veins
thicken looking for tubes dripping
or sleep drowning.

Clean Break

Then switch without context,
wait for no response
switch into the absence
your mother expected
without legible hue.

Then remain with hand-
painted flowers proving
excitement without forethought.
Remember she was
only hoping you’d exist,
only trying to remove reference
to cyanosis.

Switch with camouflage
and memory to retain
your fear of every
skeletomuscular pinch.
Switch away from the blaring,
the most uncomfortable chair,
the bed slanted enough to nearly push
you off.

One Night I Consider Suicide, So My Organs Might Still Be Useful.

I’ve always tried breathing through the pain.
All my jokes framed in cones, in held breaths.
The honey wave through my liver
splashing stings and burns. I’m too young
an applicant but overly qualified for this mass bed.
In heartbreaking drag, patient F, I’ve had all
the wrong kind of intimacy. Slide my body,
plain view groping, pinned down wailing.
Lubricants pre-warmed as computers collage
my endoscape.

Keagan Wheat (he/they) writes poetry on FTM identity and congenital heart disease. His work appears in Anti-Heroin Chic, The Acentos Review, The Bitchin’ Kitsch, Kissing Dynamite, and more. Check out his interviews with Brooklyn Poets and Poets and Muses. Living in Houston, he enjoys collecting odd dinosaur facts and listening to many podcasts. Find them on social media @kwheat09.