trannies faggots dykes butches femmes kinksters fairies
really have in common is that we know all about
how to hide the truth in plain sight.
three months ago i saw you slam
that fist into your boyfriend’s solar plexus in the middle of a crowded room
he was asking for it no one did anything said anything stopped you.
i get it, you were traumatized, triggered
sometimes you just can’t control yourself, though i notice that you
never hit me anymore, not since the time i grabbed your arm twisted it behind
your back, and told you if you ever hit me again, i will end you why is it fear
stops us from hurting each other
and love seems to do the opposite? i could go on and on for ages with examples
the head volunteer at the university campus food security project once raped me
i myself a lauded local poet
have been emotionally manipulative and crossed lovers’ sexual boundaries
if i hear another old white queer tell me that i should be grateful
for their revolutionary work in eighties while grabbing my ass, i think
i’ll twist his arm, too
is this the fruit, then, of our tribe’s rebellion? of Stonewall and Sex Garage
and Act Up and Queer Nation? we chew each other to bone while
getting into facebook fights with liberals and
flipping off the cops?
where are our elders? who can teach us how to justice, not just on tumblr
but on the dance floor in our homes in each other’s arms?
i think we gotta stop fetishizing survival we are all survivors
that’s why we all
bleed so much i used to think blood was so beautiful have to remember
we are more than scars
gotta stop fetishizing the dead
sometimes i need more than ghosts to fill my stomach
my pockets my bed my poems need to live for the living
i want to be able to honestly
tell the difference between those who didn’t make it and
those we left behind
peat moss man
i made a man
out of dry peat moss. gave him arms
made of twigs
and eyes made of acorns. loops of twine
and dollops of mud
bound together my peat moss man.
a saskatoon berry for a sweet belly button, and i
gave him a heart of scorched grass
so he’d know what hurt was like
a tinder heart for my peat moss man.
green boy
you spill
pollen and hayseed
all over me.
naked, i wear only
the grass stains
your fingers leave behind.
i want to go hunting for spring
in your body.
you open windows in mine.
my name in your mouth
is a pigeon, is a dove, is a canary
it circles the room – once, twice, three times
singing
then darts out the window
to light up the december night.
things you need to know
he will leave you
he will leave you like the rain
he will leave you like summer
he will leave you quickly
without explanation or goodbye
he will leave you unexpectedly
he will leave you high and dry
he will leave you for another woman
he will leave you for another man
he will leave you and ask you to pack him a brown bag lunch for the road
he will leave you without remembering to water the plants
or turn off the radiator
he will leave you like the ocean
he will leave you with bruises
and missing teeth
and internal bleeding in the tender places
and missing virginity
he will leave you like youth
he will leave you old
he will leave
he will leave you like the autumn
your leaves are scattered on the ground
he will leave you without kissing
or apology
he will leave you like the flesh
of mollusk leaving its shell
he will leave you hollow
a fossil
a relic of earlier times
he will leave you with his shape
impressed upon your bones
he will leave and damned be the compromises
that you made so he would stay with you
honey, he is leaving
he has left
he is gone
he is gone
he is not coming back
you are what
is left behind
you are the thing
he could not take away
you cannot be stolen, ransacked, looted
like an emptied bank account or an burgled house
you are the tough old tissues, the exquisite scars
you are the thing that would not die
you can be me when i’m gone
you promised you wouldn’t be this girl
the girl in the window
the girl by the candle
the girl in the rocking chair
the girl with wrinkles around her eyes
the girl with small, aching breasts
the girl counting time and dreaming into the night
the girl winding thread in her hands
the girl feminists draw cautionary cartoons about
the girl in the storybook
the girl whispering fairy tales into the flame
the girl your mother hated
the girl your father killed
the girl wondering
the girl wanting
the girl wishing
the girl waiting
dear white gay men
sit down, shut up, and listen.
dear white gay men:
you are neither the face
of my oppression
nor the hands
of my salvation.
dear white gay men:
your cock
is not my revolution
your marriage rights
are not my problem
health care
is my problem.
colonization is my problem
racism is my problem.
transwoman-exclusionary shelters
are my problem.
trying not to get fucked over and raped
by you is my problem.
dear white gay men:
i will not be
your backup fuck,
your asian sidekick,
your comic relief,
your oriental vacation,
your ethnic fling,
your mantlepiece trophy,
your second best,
your saving grace,
your china doll,
your geisha girl,
your soy sauce,
your token poster child,
your charity case,
invisible.
dear white gay men:
where were you
wheni was being
exploited
harassed
violated
by your brothers?
where were your posters
and community clinics
andyoutube video campaigns then?
dear white gay men:
i thought
we were kin once.
(dear white gay men:
i loved you)
dear white gay men:
no
interracial psychology
using the psychological shaping techniques
developed by military dog handler
s
i have been training my white boyfriend
to attack and devour racists
on command
(it must be said that despite some initial unease on his part
as a former vegetarian
he eventually developed a keen killer instinct
and a pronounced taste for haunch meat)
these days, he flies into a savage beserker rage
at the sight of an Abercrombie & Fitch advertisement
we have proceeded methodically with our kills
beginning with all of my other sexual partners from most to least recent
and moving on through various celebrities
and politicians. i have high hopes for him
someday soon we shall go to the White House
yesterday, shortly after a session of
passionate and violent anal sex
amidst the viscera
of a southern cooking tv show host
he looked at me with glassy blue eyes
and asked, why
do you make me eat my own kind?
and i replied
because i was given no choice
but to love you,
and tit for tat
is fair play
(it is commonly known amongst animal trainers
that it is impossible keep a dangerous animal
tamed forever. someday,
without warning,
it will turn on you
and take its freedom)
(i dreamed the other night
of the scent of sweat, jaws at my throat,
nails drawing blood at the base of my hair)
we will make love with our teeth
or not at all
you & me
you used to be lonely
but you’re not anymore
there’s something you miss
about the clarity of that time.
there are days when you dislike
the thickness of your skin
i used to steal
but i don’t anymore
no longer the scared shitless
streetwise queer teen
there is almost always
food in my fridge.
still, something
in me stays wild
occasionally, i still
swipe the leftover food off restaurant plates
i can go for days without doing laundry
or changing my underwear (i like to keep our mingled smells
trapped there, the promising ghost of
a love to come)
and lying on the sofa of your tenth-floor condo
i am nearly overwrought with the urge
to pilfer, to purloin, to rob
some mornings, when you wake up
you see that you have scratched your palms raw
while sleeping
your dreaming self would like to escape
through your hands.
you want to be so delicate
that even the rain might draw blood
you suspect that you are capable of feeling
much more than you know
you worry that this makes you weak
you wonder if this makes you strong
i’ve done a lot of things i shouldn’t be proud of
to survive
striking my father
comes to mind
the memory is painted red
his hand splitting air
landing in mine
my own hand on his face,
the crack of knuckle on bone
you hit me again and i’ll kill you
i said to the flesh and blood that bore me
i shouldn’t be proud
you don’t know that you are strong enough to hold me
you don’t know how much you can bear
but i do
i want to blow through you like a hurricane through a library
i want to smash open your doors and tear out your pages and
scatter your secrets and scream
until you swallow me up and i am still
i want you to know that i am terrifying
i am scared shitless of the person i become
when i’m afraid you’re about to leave me,
when something clawed and
lizardlike
emerges
still wet from the depths
still restless
still hungry
dear now
someday you will get tired
of trying to fuck your way into whiteness
as if by going down on him
you might, somehow
rise above
this body you were given
there will never be
enough white men who decide you are fuckable
to bridge the ocean between you
and your ancestors
and there is not enough cum in the world
to wash away your colour
someday, you will learn the difference between
what you desire
and what you want to be
— sincerely, the not-too-distant future
growing pangs
considering male to female hormone replacement therapy, i am struggling to remember what i am. struggling to recall the ancient ancestral inviolable knowledge that has flowed inside me thick and red and unstoppable for as long as i can remember. i was shamed, as a child. i was ashamed, as a child, and i cannot separate those two truths. my body was shamed, and i was ashamed of my heritage, i thought that my race was something that i wanted to erase, i could not place myself inside the story of gender that made a lie out of my body&soul. at age sixteen, when i told my mother that i wanted to be a woman, she could not stop crying, tears running runningrunning like the saltwater current that brought my ancestors here, running runningrunning like my own two childish legs struggling to escape the current of time. she said, you’ve been reading too many english books, and this is why you have turned out this way, you are confused. she had forgotten my childish self in pre-literate times, adorned in makeshift construction paper dresses, begging to be called a girl. yes, ancestors, i am struggling, won’t you come to me. won’t you answer me. won’t you tell me the true story the history the herstory the history the herstory the story storystorytruestory of who&what i am. won’t you remind me how to love myself. to love myself through loving you how to love through fluids thick and salty, like tears like milk like bloodbloodbloodbloodbloodbloodbloodbloodblood please. i feel you like hunger in my belly. i have always been so thin. the white queers taught me to love myself like the moon at its fullest, fat and unashamed, unapologetic, unabashedly singularly unrestrainedly entirely whole. in my rage, i learned to spin the world, tangle the stars, draw the ocean in my wake. but my mother&father, grandmothers&grandfathers taught me to love myself like the moon at its darkest, gracefully and silently, without fear or rage, sweetly in surrender and in sacrifice and knowing. knowing your name without speaking. knowing your body without someone watching. knowing you are loved without telling. to inhabit the heavens yet take up no space. to pull the weight of the tide and make no complaint. ancestors, i call to you. bring me back to the time to the time to the time. i remember you in the scent of smoke. i remember you in the taste of salt. i am afraid of changing my body, afraid to lose you&myself. and yet, you have always been with me. you have always been here. nd i am reminded that though the body of the ocean may change, though the waters may shift, the salt always remains.
the wounded for healing
you push your mouth against mine
i want to tell you
you have come to the wounded for healing.
like you, i am
imperfect flesh, and my
experience of violence has made me
no less likely to harm you.
history is doomed
to repeat itself
colonization and rape
are written on my
bones.
i want to tell you
i am trying. like you, i
have come to the wounded for healing. we
are two scars pressed together, trying
to give birth to new skins.
inside voice
someone told you when you were very young that you were a good
child because you were so quiet. and so you learned that silence
was something to admire, to look up at and aspire
to, like the moon – distant and unfathomable. you perfected silence. carved
it into yourself till it was miles deep. you dropped your words into this
chasm and watched them disappear. you could sit for hours, folding
your thoughts under your tongue, into themselves, over and over.
at school, as teacher droned on. on the playground, as the boys
chased and beat you up. at home, as your mother shrieked. in the hospital
at two, three in the morning. people told
you that you were a good listener as you got older. told
you secrets, their petty whims and hidden rages. their stories
of abuse, of pain, of tenderness. they never asked if you wanted to hear.
you thought this made you special. your silence was exquisite:
a many-faceted prison that gleamed like a dead crystal star
with your voice trapped inside love me. love me. love me.
the man you’re sleeping with has a girlfriend whom he adores. you
know because he won’t stop telling you about her while
you’re in his bed together. he makes you leave this bed once you’ve
finished making him cum, out of respect for their relationship. once
when she was sick with the flu, he stopped
in the middle of sex with you to call her and see how she was.
A Place Called No Homeland Page 3