Magic For Beginners
an aubade
Morning and a thousand halos enter my body, last night we gathered fireflies
in our hands—the glow dimming and growing like a heartbeat or a pulse, which are really the same thing, darling, like gathering the embers to rekindle a fire
or a universe—nothing is impossible—so miracles are the stories we tell ourselves; the day in the woods and the pathway opening between the fireflies in that August field when I raised my hands and told the world
I know how to be wonderful. Or last night, when I placed the cup on the darkening line of evening catching what was left of summer for us to drink and be warmed with on a cool morning like this
when we must leave each other
symbols of hope on our bodies: a scar and a full stomach—that we may heal and never go hungry again—parting ways as the golden sky grows beyond ourselves, grows beyond my bedroom and the power of these rituals
that I have created from memory—these makeshift attempts at divinity—the night floating as a dream, the night washed away in the shower.
The Year I Ate The Moon
In our year without the moon no one went to bed on time, beach houses walked a mile in from shore lifting
their decks and porches as skirts afraid
of wood-rot and salt and fish-stink
clinging to the lumber. In this year I learned to see in the dark, pupils going slit and slant like a poem or, yes, a cat
roaming the alleys and making pacts with
night covered earth. In our year
without the moon every night was new-moon black— I stole everything: the hot water from your bath, the butter
you left to be toast-soft by morning, I came
as a succubus and made your bed-pants
slurried with come here and kiss me, stud dreams. I was mysterious without the moon reporting my movement to the stars, playing
telephone across the light years, Did you
hear about our boy, Calliope? Get Andromeda
on the phone! Without the moon I lived in anonymity. Without the moon I ruled the hunger fueled night with claws and
sex apps selling men based on proximity. Without the
moon, I defaced all bathrooms with call me, stud
latrinalia—nothing tugging on my blood, bending the capillaries away from my lips—in our moonless year, I went feral, frequently caught
red handed in the only light of morning, alarmed by my
need to bite and scratch.
Boy Lazarus
How many times have I left
the red cave with the painted figures of our fathers turning into red animals in a red light like a bright and smokeless fire, it was frightening, the weight of the air like a fist on my lung—
I want you to believe that when I crawled from the grave I looked devastating: seven points of perfect light around my mouth,
my body, holy and light, full of miracles like nail polish neat between the lines of my flesh—nothing messy—white robed as a savior saying let my love heal your wounds but
I was stained when I came back—
bending around you as a stray cat to drink water. When I turned into this animal I slept lightly jumping when you sat on the bed, squeezing under the couch for hours to avoid you like how I folded
my arms in the cave tight around my chest near my knees there was a time when I became hungry and having nothing to eat
I chewed on the red animals our fathers had turned into and when I became thirsty
I sucked life from their opened bladders—as silent as an instinct—drinking deeper than the darker shade of blue I would put on my own body with want— in the red cave was a way to die, a holding myself above a hole big enough
for everything, the bottom falling out of my stomach, the wait hoping to grow feathers and the fast moments later when I flied.
Mitchell King is a runaway witch living in Kansas City. Evidence of his wicked doings can be found on Instagram (@star_fag) and in various—and colorful—bathroom graffiti around Kansas City. Someday he hopes to colonize the moon.