your eyes light up at the words child mental disorder. you start to tell me all about your autistic son, his obsession with cars, his gift for mathematics, the service dog you just applied for. how your wife couldn’t accept the diagnosis at first, how she cried and cried as you held her in your bedroom at night, when she was sure that your son wasn’t asleep and couldn’t hear her. it’s the moisture that wells in your eyes as you say it that i like most about you, as i nod and murmur and tell you what a good husband, father, man you are. the edge of your palm brushes mine and you blush pink as the lights in the plane go down. airplane military search and rescue man, i wish i could tell you about all the nights i dreamed of you, wanted you, burned and ached and wept knowing that i would never have you, be held by you, be safe in those muscled arms that once held a machine gun and fired it at people of colour in distant countries far away from the house your son sleeps so soundly in. heterosexuals said you didn’t want me because i was too fucked up, too weird, too ugly, too gross freaky faggot tranny tranny whore whore whore. radical queers said i couldn’t love you because i was betraying the revolution with my desire. well. airplane military sex dream man, let me tell you a secret that you might not understand, that i am just beginning to learn, let me tell you as the lights go down and your hand grips mine and your skin blushes hot: i can love you. i can love whomever whenever however i want.
3. trans femme warrior girl
all i can think to say is, thank god we’re trans. thank god for the childhoods spent learning how to stoke the fire of longing to come and become in secret. we could have just been normal boys. we weren’t. we could have just been normal boys, content in the violence, the privilege, no wanting, no waiting, no fierce hard magic made from the sacrifice of blood beneath fingernails. thank god for our bodies, for the lingering hairs dusting the hollows of cheeks and points of chins, that return each morning and resist all plucking and shaving and trimming and bleaching and waxing and lasers. we are that tough, girl, that hard to beat up and chow down, that hard to eat up, to make disappear. thank god for our hard-won hard femme glamour, for the charms that we grew out of bodies as lush as gardens and hardy as weeds. thank god for the locks you grew out long and dyed unapologetic colours like neon pink and sea green and deep ocean blue, in honour of the warrior fairies and mermaids that we pretended to be as kids.
thank god for your lips, so awkward and soft as we kissed for the first time, thank god for the broad arch of your shoulders as i leaned against you, thank god for the palms you pressed against mine. thank god for the jokes we made about converting to political lesbianism as we searched for something to love in each other, uncertain if we still remembered how after entire lives spent being taught how to not love ourselves. thank god for the mingling of our perfume and sweat, for the fingers you crept up the back of my skirt, for the jangling nerves of my imperfect consent, at once wanting and not wanting and wanting to stop wanting the wanting oh wanting, thank god that i wanted me wanted you. thank god for the beat of your pulse, the heat of your skin, the thrust of your abdomen pressed against mine. trans femme warrior girl, i am reaching for you. thank god. i will sing our song for as long as i live.
that trans woman
that too loud too large too many opinions can’t shut her up trans woman
that trans woman who takes up too much space
that trans woman who keeps on questioning everything, even
when she doesn’t know why
that trans woman whose political opinions are not quite right
that trans woman of colour who doesn’t speak white
that trans woman with her deep masculine masculinemasculine voice that booms
across the room and everyone can hear it
that trans woman who forgets or refuses to shave under her arms
that trans woman who wears dresses with plunging necklines only she
doesn’t really have any cleavage to show
that trans woman who sings lullabies to her breasts at night
underneath the full moon, in the hope they will grow
that trans woman who is jealous of other trans women’s breasts
that trans woman who is jealous of other trans women’s success
that trans woman who, like every other trans woman, is a little bit internet famous
because of her blog and now it’s totally gone to her head
that trans woman who wants to be special
(even more so than other trans women)
that trans woman who doesn’t know how to wait her turn
that trans woman who refuses to fall into line
that trans woman who feels like the world is against her
that trans woman who behaves like an entitled brat
that trans woman who cries in her sleep
that trans woman who lies and cuts her wrists for attention
that trans woman who checks her facebook every five minutes
to see just how many people “like” her
that trans woman who is terrified of being unlovable, and it’s just so boring
and not unique at all, because everyone, not even just trans women, feels that way
that trans woman who is terrified to stop being brave and just live in the world
like a regular vulnerable human being for once
that trans woman who was always too smart for her own good
that trans woman who was never quite smart enough to know
what’s really important
that trans woman no longer beats herself up over dating too many skinny white
boys
that trans woman who is trying to be better at texting her friends back
that trans woman who would totally apologize, but she doesn’t have anything
to be sorry for, but she’s sorry you were offended, okay?
that trans woman who looks for the big dipper in the sky every night
that trans woman who is still writing those too-honest poems
that trans woman who is learning how to kiss, deep and long
that trans woman who is remembering, slowly, how to speak without talking
that trans woman who is opening up those doors inside herself
with a key she found wrapped in velvet in an ebony box inlaid with pearl
that trans woman who, someday, will know how to lie back and close her eyes
and let the silence pour over her
like clear river water
sometimes my body is a slutty bitch bad girl
sometimes, i do not walk my body,
some nights, my body walks me,
lifts me up off the threadbare husk of sofa
lying amid the takeout boxes, abandoned art supplies
garage sale copies of frantz fanon’s the wretched of the earth
and the mindful way through depression
strewn through our rad-young-women-of-color-only apartment
my body walks me
up
into the hallway, where we keep
the unruly fleet of a thousand shoes
(glitter heels, sneakers, flats, sandals, wedges, platforms, boots
enough to outfit an army of low-income femmes)
my body sends me out the door
and into the autumn night
my body walks to the rhythm of the wind
leads me down side streets, alleys, through backyards littered
with unkempt green
following a map written in the calligraphy of the clouds
listening to a tune whistled by my mad phantom foremothers
(all of them women who longed to wander,
driven to madness by the tyranny
of houses of kitchens, of
husbands, of bedrooms)
my body saunters, rambles; saucily, it slinks
rears its head and tosses my hair
it wants to be looked at in the wild autumn night
my body is a slutty bitch bad girl
&
nbsp; in a short skirt bare thighs and knee-high boots,
asking for it
and giving no apology
my body walks me down
to the sewage-filled canal that leads to the river,
that oozes, heavy and stinking
through the formerly poor part of the city
(now rebranded as the hip new
up-and-coming neighbourhood for young professionals wanting to start a family)
and just like this neighbourhood, my body remembers
all kinds of things that happened before the clean-up crews,
the sterilization, the gentrification, the romanticization
(the rape)
my body is a canal full of sludge and garbage, is swollen
to bursting
with viscous fluids that no child should swim in
nights like this, my body is a not
a young trans woman of colour aspiring
mental health therapist/inspirational speaker/community organizer/
internet writer/professional token
she is a dirty girl she-male
with yellow teeth and oily hair,
who doesn’t play nicely or get along,
and she doesn’t give
two goddamn fucks what you think
my body is a night-time carnivorous flower
weeping sweet sap to lure in fresh meat
it is hungry all the time no matter how much it eats
it is hungry for kittens and puppies
and naked rich boys who can’t make up their minds
about what they want in life,
it wants to stuff its mouth full of poems
and belch them all out again
in a million reeking rainbow hues,
it remembers freaking everything:
what we were, who we are, what we’re supposed to be
do you know who your body is?
do you know where it wants to go?
some night, your body will take you places
you never thought you’d go back to:
full of dirty girls with teeth and hair like crones
with teeth and hair like the pitted surface of the moon
and i will be there, in one of those places
waiting.
trauma is not sacred
violence is not special pain is not holy suffering does not make angels abuse defines no one you are more than the things that hurt you you are more than the people you have hurt do not make an altar to your woundedness do not make a fetish out of mine a body belongs to no one a memory is not made to be eaten does it titillate you to hear about assault if i told you my story would you swallow it whole if i confessed my sins would you feed me to the beasts to purge your own i will show you mine if you show me yours we have all seen the darkness now give us the dawn tell me about the joy you keep in the hollow spaces between your bones tell me again how you laughed when you realized that you were not wholly unloveable i’ll tell you again how i cried when my best friend told me that i was not a bad person remember how we used to count the lines on our palms when we were little how we used to try to read the future for its gifts how we used to make lists of the things we would dream of when finally we were free i will make you a list of the things i am grateful for i will sing you a litany of reasons to be alive i want to know the songs you wake up for in the morning i want to marvel at the unbelievable graciousness of your being i know that i am capable of pouring love like lavender oil into your cupped palms there is forgiveness like honey pooled in the chambers of our hearts you are the thing i am most grateful for all bodies know how to heal themselves given enough time all demons carry a map of heaven in their scars beneath the skin of every history of trauma
there is a love poem waiting deep below
i guess you could say that i’m just tired of The Movement
like you could say that i’ve gotten
more conservative in my old age, like
my friend once told me
that i am a more conservative woman than her
because i go to work wearing dresses with high necklines
in neutral colours, like
my other friend once told me that i pass more
because i have straight girl hair, like
i am less trans than either of them because i am trying
to make it in a traditionally white middle-class profession, like
the texture of my hair could ever change
the complex weirdness of my race class gender, like
i am afraid that i am losing contact with someone i used to be, like
i never danced at parties wearing nothing but ribbons
& blue eyeshadow & glitter, like
i know it’s a cliché but i still always feel that heartstop moment
before using the bathroom at the mall, like
i never ran before clouds of tear gas spewing cops at a protest, like
i never sat with a young tranny with hairy legs in a black satin dress
and held her hand as she cried and cried and
told me about her elaborate plan to kill herself with, like
maybe some things never leave you but people can always leave you, like
i am angry at my sisters for suggesting that i am different, like
i am angry at myself for wondering if it is true, like
i want to tell them this but i am too old now for text message battles
and facebook flame wars, like
maybe talking about privilege doesn’t change the fact that you have it, like
maybe talking politics doesn’t make people love you, like
let me just admit that i was only ever an activist to make people love me, like
maybe there was always something wrong with that, like
maybe there is nothing wrong with that, like
i am a woman whom someone used & left, like
so many of us are used & left, like
all i want is to turn my lungs into a glass instrument and let them sing glory
to my sisters, like
i want to be young like i was never allowed, like
i want to have never seen the scars on another girl’s wrists, like
i want to run a brush through my hair eighty-nine times every night
and sleep dreamless, like maybe
i want to write poems that are not about politics, like
maybe The Movement never held me in its arms, like
maybe i want to hold you in my arms, like
a woman holds another woman in her arms/
softly
gently
sweetly
resting.
acknowledgments
I am grateful beyond measure to the individuals and community without whom this book would not be possible, and for whom a place called No Homeland was written:
To Brian Lam, Oliver McPartlin, Cynara Geissler, and the rest of the team at Arsenal Pulp Press – what an honour to publish my first poetry collection with you all!
To Amber Dawn, femme mentor and wise woman, whose editorial work and generosity have transformed and refined my poems.
To Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, whose ferocity, love, and fervent belief in my work have challenged and inspired me to grow and heal.
To Emily Clare and Wai-Yant Li, whose artistic vision gives shape to my dreams and to the cover of this book.
To Emily again, for always believing.
To Kama La Mackerel, whose body is the ocean, and whose voice is my light.
To Kelly, sister witch.
To Parker, my brave Angel.
To Andrew, fierce femme and brother who teaches me to beautiful.
To Kota, who knows how to love monsters.
To Phoebe, dancer and dreamer.
To Lydia, whose courage and strength have been an inspiration for almost a decade.
To Shriya, the best reader.
To Cassandra, my number one fan.
To Sadie,
my xiaomei.
To all brave trans femmes and women of color poets, who give me life.
To Doris, Paul, Robyn, and Roselyn Thom, my beginning and my end.
PHOTO BY JACKSON EZRA
Kai Cheng Thom is a writer and performance artist. Her essays, poetry, and fiction have been published and online in such publications as Buzzfeed, Asian American Literary Review, xoJane, and Matrix Magazine. She is currently a feature writer at Everyday Feminism. Kai Cheng’s debut novel Fierce Femmes and Notorious Liars: A Dangerous Trans Girl’s Confabulous Memoir was published by Metonymy Press in 2016. She lives in Toronto.
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