Minutes after parking
in the rented-out
Christian Scientist
parking lot,
I lay here tossing
just as I imagine Mary Baker
must be in her grave.
You’d think it would
have been enough
to have replaced my
testosterone,
with female hormones.
Surely they could leave
some small sign of my
red-blooded manhood.
But no, these angels of mercy
have come to bleed me
as white as their dresses.
Today even my chi
seems taied in knots,
and I’m left with little more
than this feeble sense of humor
or what’s left of it,
to defend myself,
turning paler and paler
as each precious drop drains away,
a nearly invisible man,
little more than a few stray
electrons flitting across a tenuous
web of relationships.