Laser

The technician named Jessica tucks away her honey-mustard hair and says Let’s party,
grinning as she rubs a damp sanitary cloth across my shameful, holy face.
Easy life—glance at the ceiling lamp like a beagle at the sun, obliterate
your stubborn subdermal beard, pass as a girl, be loved by anyone who surprises you.
Jessica grips her ominous laser-wand like a pistol, hands me a stress ball colored like Earth.
I don my tiny Soviet-spy goggles to protect my useless retinas, and Jessica begins.
Mother, it’s like being stabbed by a billion little god-rays of blue fire.
Mommy, I am trying to be beautiful, and I do not think it’s working.
The roots of me incinerate like some microscopic transexual forest-fire.
Cheeks wet with tears, I croak—Jessica, you are the biggest fucking cunt in Somerville.
She giggles like a female alien, inhales serenely, and says Thank you.
She removes my glasses, lets in the bright room of a merciless life, and in my hands
is the mangled world, oceans strewn from grass, green patterns of continent cloven from foam.
I spy the flaccid tongue of Florida in the jagged remains, wonder if I’ll ever feel at home.
Jessica squeezes my knee, hands me the insatiable moon, and says Balls next.