To kiss open
your mouth
Don’t mind me, swallowing
Teeth from the shallow
Bowl of your mouth
Tonguing for
Nerve bundle berries
Coiled tangles
of your throat
Inside of you is so dark
I can barely make out the purples
of your pink
Small intestine
I’m sorry I can’t say I love you unless
alluding to arching my spine
Mimicry of bend
of blackberry vine
It’s just that
When you said I was brave
Several golden stamens
Burst Bloomed from my mouth
Shrapnel from my orifice
I want to Bury Plant Dive
All of my tongues inside you
Your airways stuffed
with my flesh anther and filament
Pressed against the pith of you
At the aortic root of it all
Your heart is a beating thing
Tucked behind and between
Your lungs Life was
the greatest liminal space of all
Real only for the moment
I was as close to you as your blood
In the valves
Of your aortic arch
Do you even know
How fucking long
your aorta is
The roots were inside the whole
time the roots
were on the inside
the entire time Look
I’m pulling
them up from inside you
All your red string
cat cradle
in my fingers
At 17, Junix Seraphim started their first over-the-table work as a bookseller at Barnes & Noble in the mall. When that wasn’t enough to pay their rent, bills, and put themselves through community college, they moved to Powell’s where they also worked as a bookseller. Today, Junix is a poet, drag king, and grassroots organizer fighting for the rights and livelihoods of Filipinos in the homeland and in the belly of the beast, the U.S. Their love of goth culture and black lipstick is reflected in his drag performances, which range from campy character drag to macabre explorations of his personal relationship with death, and the relationships with death held by their communities. Junix and their friends are actively shaping the transsexual future.