Stephen Ira’s poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in The Spy Kids Review, heART Online, Alien Mouth, Poetry, and other venues. He is a co-founder and co-editor of Vetch: A Magazine of Trans Poetry and Poetics. He is currently pursuing his MFA in poetry at the Iowa Writer’s Workshop.

Sometimes / it can matter / to talk about / the rain

​

Sometimes it can matter

to talk about the rain,

but more often, to be honest,

I am extra. All my words

just mean, “Allow

me,” but I’m upbeat, chatty,

very—as the scion

of an icon, my forte

is commentary.

But a sex change

cannot comment;

it is content,

not invention.

Its condition, pace Janice, is

“a deeply moral question.”

The rain and its companions.

A voice under

the sound of rain.

Moral questions

can be answered

but who answers

moral pain?