I’ve read of the unending field,
how bounty has no end,
no limit, if you let it.
 
You can try to hold it, your fingers
insufficient, or you can drown in it.
 
You’ll drown either way, he told
me, don’t get me wrong. It’s a matter
of trusting you can survive
on this swirl of shining
stuff: your daily cup of coffee, the promise
of more time, work you love, an endless parade
of surfaces to lust after.
 
And yes, some of these will be other men,
their chests slick or rough, and many
dogs, their love simpler and less fraught,
almost as good, and the gentle
swell and roll of a life lived next
to me, he said, and to him I flew,
 
a hawk desperate for the perch of wrist,
for the fragrant dark of the leather hood.
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​Mark McCloughan is a transfeminine writer and artist in New York City. They were the winner of the 2018 Stanley Kunitz Memorial Prize from the American Poetry Review. They are the author of the chapbook No Harbor (2014, L + S Press) and their poems have appeared in American Poetry Review, Juked, Lines + Stars, muff magazine, and decomP, among others.