Two poems about my gender

1.

Gendre is French for son-in-law,
your daughter’s husband. One Tuesday night
I make cheese souffle because you said
your dad made it when you were small.
I’m sweating, fretting, setting multiple timers
for its final fart-blown emergence.
I did not realise I wanted to be
in direct competition with your father
but the feeling now is that I am
the opposite of a possessive dad with a gun:
I am an egg-beating son-in-law.


2.

My gender is a paper fortuneteller, grubby at the edges
and I’ve already read all the fortunes, so pick
your colour with care and I’ll recite it like a mantra:
G R E Y
	(which incidentally might be the most common non-binary name)
A S H	L E A F	C R E E K,
bodies that turn to the earth. I’m your dog-eared darling,
your schoolyard talisman. My gender is as much for you
as anyone else, as much for me as nobody.
Someone wise once said that everyone ought
to be forced to touch expansiveness,
and these things roll unaligned
like my tyres—which of course
are wearing on one side. As is customary with gender,
we all run a little uneven and none of us
can handle the terrain. I hate
writing about my gender.