What song(s) do you think most represent your work? Or what did you listen to while writing this poem?

The first one that comes to mind is Cleopatra by the Lumineers. The core of that song is this repetitive resolution to change, coupled with an acknowledgment that it can never really happen: “I was late for this, late for that, late for the love of my life/When I die alone…I’ll be on time”. That paradoxical viewing of the self, combined with the chronological storytelling and following of the self as they live many lives, forms the basis of this poem. Other songs that come to mind that I think represent what I aspire to in my work are Ketchum ID by Boygenius and Send In the Clowns by Stephen Sondheim - the former, because of the dynamics and dreams that are so vividly captured in just a few lines (“You say ‘How are you?’/I say ‘I don’t know’/Let’s dissolve the band/Move to Idaho”), and the latter because of the sharp turn, tearjerker ending. I hope to always end my poems with some kind of “mic-drop”. Hanif Abdurraqib wrote that a poem exits the body when it can be read by everyone in a room, and I hope by the final line of a poem, it has ceased to be totally mine. 

Near the end of the poem, the imagery and metaphors pulls off a real tonal tap dance. There are actors on the stage, the doll/toy image screwing legs off, and the silly putty, which–in isolation–are light images. Yet, they're being used in a really delicate way to develop this bare and–for me–painfully tender exploration of the body. Could you talk a little about how you thought through tone, imagery, and craft while writing and revising this poem?

I wrote this poem from an almost nostalgic place; in the dream I describe, which I really did have, I was the man I aspire to be. So this identity I’m longing for is not altogether unfamiliar. I also wanted it to be clear to the reader throughout the poem that this is not just a yearning away from a certain body, but a yearning towards another. I think dysphoria is often understood as a pure ostracization from the body stemming from a visceral discomfort within it. But I loved your use of the word “tender” in describing the bodily imagery: I wanted to preserve this throughline of charged intimacy with the body, precisely because of this well-worn ache. I think that’s why the images here, like you said, are almost childlike in isolation. Pictures of quotidian moments, of toys and performance, symbolize how for me, dysphoria builds up slowly. It mingles with other ways of existing in and seeing the body; it emerges in parts, not all at once in a tidal wave. So, the tonal tap dance you mention is my way of navigating this inherently contradictory feeling that’s, here, primarily wistful as it manifests in a longing for something that remains unattainable. The final image of the poem is meant to more directly evoke that unreachability, and is really my “cards on the table” moment with this fantasy; that there’s so much more to it than just the body. It’s about everything that comes with the dream, which is so much the absence of dysphoria: an existence that is mentally “clean” and free of intrabody strife. 

I saw you were an O’Hara fan! Tell us how his work influences you:

Where do I start?? “Lunch Poems” was the first collection of poems I really loved and felt changed by when I read it at 16. I think there are two key reasons for this, and both disproved what I thought I knew about poetry. I thought poetry couldn’t be optimistic, and couldn’t be direct. O’Hara definitely taught me that obfuscation does not necessarily make a poem rich for interpretation; I can revisit my favorite O’Hara poems and see something new every time. I love how his poems feel simultaneously conversational and deeply intentional, and I especially love the ways he writes about love: my best friend and I send each other his “Isn’t it wonderful…to drink too much coffee…and love you so much” all the time. I think he inspires me about how to live, and fully enjoy life, just as much as he inspires me to write. But O’Hara also inspires poets who inspire me, creating this amazing poetic lineage: I’m thinking of Ocean Vuong’s “Someday I’ll Love Ocean Vuong” and Cam Awkward-Rich’s “Meditations in an Emergency”. His fingerprints are all over the world of poetry.