On the Hill

When growing up my every action

was an attempt to open the house

of god to what surrounded it.

I added windows wherever I could, even when

told no windows could exist. I was cold

without any passage for the sun to come in,

so I persisted, crafting tools from whatever I found

in the house as I wandered it, home alone

late afternoons, a latchkey kid.

I used my tools, assisted by the wind,

to dig and scrape, to invite

the light in. Then the light

and I played dirty games, played doctor,

touched each other, secure in knowing

god’s schedule down to the minute, sure

that he’d not be home

until his aerobics class

was finished.

Iris McCloughan is a transfemme poet living and working in Brooklyn. 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, Gertrude, and decomP, among others.