mishearing Zukofsky’s“A”-21 [“some didn’t live the quotes / in between”] 

Sung with teeth: I learned to cut in 
between son, daughter. Outlines unmade. 
Whirled out of sorts. Daring to resuscitate
                                                                               art. 

A gender bequeathed braiding verse. 
Apocryphal, E’s madrigal admissions. 
When she knew erotic ransom. 
Each woman’s avant-garde secrets                                                                                                  
                                                                    aloud. 

Book that I need to alter—altar?— 
to fathom my person. All mythology 
intimates thieved visions. Derivative 
craft. Prosthetic under surface. 
Obsidian compressed. Gender-bent core. 

No access beyond contour 
rhyming inwardly. Set aside 
inventively. Form’s not 
preamble to living. Permeable. 
Directions erased incompletely. 

I blunder impressively. Choose to. 
Fall prostrate at golden hour, 
the prophet’s abridged way. 
Downward-facing dog, I fumbled 
arabesques wanting to titivate 
my mother’s foreign 
                                       life.



Noa Micaela Fields is the author of E (Nightboat Books, 2026), an alter-book embracing mishearing as a ritual of transformation. She lives in Chicago.