asher p

cw: some of this writing deals with themes of violence, bigotry, and gender dysphoria. not all of them tho :)

[lord-pigasus]

untitled

the sun drips down the back of my head. it pulls my ponytail. the rays makes my clothes stiff and matted. it calls eyes to me green grass dries out and those damn southern bugs never stop chattering who is she? what’s she doing here?

[lord-pigasus]

bankrobber

i stole these fishnets from target they were small enough to fit in my little purse (can’t remember which) in my big hands (cant remember which) i've always had to steal my womanhood ever since god's doctors gave you yours and past me by (someone painted blood above the door) remember when bank security held me down with their eyes and i (woman with cock) became robber with shotgun and every straight person became a (fucking) cop (someday I'm going to steal back all my rent money back from that bank) i can’t shoplift titties but im gonna be all the woman my money could never buy (i stole an eyeshadow too) so if i’m gonna leave target with armies of straight (hot knife) eyes then (fuck it) my (long) legs are gonna scream baçk with knives of their own (fuckers) my (tranny) legs are gonna look better in these fishnets than anybody could even imagine when they come for my body tomorrow

[lord-pigasus]

No Pride For The Police

(content warning: this essay contains conversations on police brutality, homophobia, transphobia, racism, mental illness, and rape that may be upsetting. it also uses reclaimed slurs)       Pride is our day to be out and be loud. To many, these events are the only face of the queer community. They're loud, colorful, and celebratory.  Seeing my people celebrate their queerness all over the country is inspiring. However, these marches often fail to focus on important political issues that affect more vulnerable queer populations.  Among these issues is the trend of increased police involvement.       Police are everywhere at pride parades, they escort the marchers, they block off the route, and they patrol the area. At the last pride march i attended, the police even paraded alongside the marchers in their cruisers, waving rainbow flags at the audience. Police love to play like they’re supporting the community. They smile, crack jokes, and pose for pictures. To them, pride is a way to build clout in the community. A way to get people to trust them and rely on them. Once pride is over however, they aren’t so friendly to the queers.       Mya Hall, a 27 year old black trans woman took a wrong turn off the highway and ended up headed towards the Baltimore NSA headquarters. Before she reached the gates of the facility, police open fired at her car. Kayden Clarke, a 24 year old trans man, called the police for help during an Aspergers-related meltdown. Instead of attempting to talk him down the police fired their weapons. Both of these people had their lives end at the hands of the police. Stories like these are shocking examples of how police interact with queer bodies. Police violence is a constant threat against us, felt most by trans people, people of color, and differently abled queers.       Black trans women especially are targeted. They are profiled as sex workers or drug addicts by the police who use the law as an excuse to harass, beat, sexually assault, and arrest these women with no repercussions.  According to the National Coalition of Anti Violence Programs, Transgender people of color are six times more likely to experience police violence that cis white people, and the Office of Justice Programs says that thirty two percent of black trans women report being sexually assaulted while in police custody or jail.       As a community, our number one priority should be to ensure the physical safety of our most threatened members. Any queer organization that supports or works with the cops does it in the face of every queer person targeted by them. If a group doesn’t fight for the protection of all queer people, especially trans women of color, then it is fucking useless.       When the modern gay rights movement began, police violence was one of the main points of action, and we would not have the rights that we have without our spiritual ancestors’ anti-police resistance. Unfortunately, that history of resistance has been lost or erased by the mainstream community.         In the 1960s, the queer community had to work underground to avoid police harassment. Raids on gay bars and restaurants were regular, and sometimes even scheduled.       Organizations such as the Daughters of Bilitis and the Mattachine Society worked to create public acceptance of homosexuality, but were very restrained and quiet in their tactics. They excluded trans people, demanded formal dress, and did their work from the closet using respectful and non confrontational tactics that were slow-working and ineffective.       In 1966, police attacked a group of trans people at Compton's cafeteria in San francisco's tenderloin district. Fighting soon broke out as queers smashed windows and threw plates, cups, and furniture at the police. this quickly became a battle between police and trans folk and spilled out into the street. Those riots showed the community that they had the power to fight against the police. It inspired queer militancy all over the country, and helped create a network of fags in San Francisco that would organize and fight for queer rights in the coming years.       More well known is the 1969 Stonewall Uprising. When the police attacked the Stonewall Inn, a gay bar popular with homeless queer people, they were met with bricks, fists, and shouts of "gay power!" In the aftermath of the battle, queer people began organizing into groups such as the Gay Liberation Front (GLF) and the Gay Activists Alliance (GAA). These groups borrowed tactics from black and anti-war activists, and advocated for queer people to come out and protest their unfair treatment.       On the first anniversary of the uprising, gay activists marched in the Christopher Street Liberation Day parade from Christopher Street to Central Park. Similar marches were organized in Chicago and Los Angeles. In the coming years, these marches had spread across the world and became the pride marches that we see today.       As we achieved more and more rights, the tone and politics of these marches changed. They became bigger, gained the support of city governments, corporate sponsors, and the police. The legacy of militant resistance was erased, and the participation of trans people, and queers of color was discouraged. Today's pride events hardly have any resemblance to the anti-police spirit that created the movement and gave us our collective power.       The only way to achieve queer liberation is to resist capitalism and the police that support it. Simply asking the system to give us rights can never ensure our safety, because the violence against us is a fundamental part of capitalism.       Gender and heterosexuality are constructs created by capitalism to assign labor roles on the personal level. Capitalism is strengthened when it can promote straight nuclear families that work for the benefit of the wealthy. If you were assigned male, you are pressured into doing wage labor for the wealthy so that you can support your family. If you were assigned female, you are pressured into unpaid labor in the home, supporting your husband in his wage labor and raising the next genderation of workers.  Gender is a life given to us at birth without our consent. Any deviation from those assigned roles is a threat to capitalism. As queer people, our bodies and sexualities are fundamentally opposed to the social order. We are the targets of violence because our very existence represents a loss of capitalism’s control over its workforce.       Police exist as the enforcement arm of the wealthy. They were created to protect the property of slave owners, and are the only group given permission to use violence. Their main goal is to protect the power of the wealthy under the guise of justice.  Because we’re a threat to capitalism’s control over the workforce, cops set out to terrorize and destroy vulnerable queer populations whenever possible. They don’t attack us because they’re homophobic, They attack us because it’s their job. No sensitivity training, policy change, or civil discussion can change their purpose. The police are fundamentally opposed to our existence and in order to achieve liberation, we must put an end to them and the capitalism that gives them power. Once we understand the nature of our oppression, it becomes our responsibility to resist capitalism and ensure that our community does the same.       In the 2016 Toronto pride parade, Black Lives Matter was asked to march as "honored guests". As they reached an intersection, the float stopped and the marchers sat down. As the entire parade came to a stop, the group demanded that the event's organizers agree to a list of demands calling for more inclusion of black and poc issues, and an end to police floats and booths. Within thirty minutes, the organizers agreed to these demands and police were not invited to have a float at the 2017 march. This tactic was effective because it was confrontational, direct, and gave power to the protestors. They spoke truth directly to the spectators, and obtained bargaining power that allowed their demands to be met.       We need to have open resistance against the police at pride events. Our tactics must be confrontational and dramatic. Pride is a stage that can be hijacked for a radical message. It’s easy to take the stage. even if you can't get permission to march you can jump in as a group and pretend to be a sponsored float. If you have banners and signs, none of the spectators will think twice about you being there.       At the risk of bad publicity, Police will be hesitant to use force at pride. Remember they're there to make friends and they're not trying to drag fags off the street. In a confrontational situation, there's nothing the cops can do to look good. They either do nothing and give us space to educate and agitate, or they react with clumsy aggression (the only way they know how) and end up looking like the gay-bashing fascists that they are.       There is no limit to the protest strategies that can be used at pride. You can set up booths, perform theater, hand out literature, and use your bodies to bring police outreach to a halt. You can chant, sing, dance, or speak. An organized group of twenty or thirty fags can easily turn a pride march into a radicalizing experience. In fact, it was a group of just a few fags dedicated fighting against the police that started the movement. Use your imagination, and don't forget what you're fighting for.       The mainstream movement has blood on its hands when it works alongside those who jail, rape, and murder our queer family. we have become obsessed with positive visibility and personal validation at the expense of ignoring the violence that continues to hurt us. Our liberation cannot come with rainbow flags and good intentions. Liberation can only come through action. -asher p. savio, 2017

[lord-pigasus]

my other names (from my aunt's Facebook)

a transgendered

someone who thinks theyre a female when science says theyre a male

a transgender

someone dressed up as the opposite gender in a bathroom

a transsexual

a delusional cross dressing dude

a tranny

a guy playing dress up and make believe

a cross gender

a man who got it cut off

a trans

a danger to our children

[lord-pigasus]

i wrap my future in a kiss for you i hope that every bush every bee every tennessee boulder every tree that hold open our perfect place in the mountain every minnow every mouse every sleeping snake or fox or bear and every ray of sun that touches your naked back can see how happy i am to wrap my future in a kiss for you

[lord-pigasus]

the squat

the always vines reach forever fingers up the fence pulling the city back into the dirt piece by piece the front line of the earth's immune system they drip dirty rain onto our packs and we're consecrated or condemned to kick open the plywood window . get out of this goddamn rain grip the the floorboards with your soggy rubber boots don't stumble on the landscape of trash . 7-11 pizza boxes, moldy clothes the crawlspace is alive and suffocating . roaches, ants, and a tangle of everything that grows slowly in the dark. fed by all the darkness that in a hundred years can slide under a southern porch the damp rotting weight of left-behinds laced together . spiderwebs, mildew, ratshit. carve away a patch of floor for sleeping wrap the wet chunky air in pot smoke two soft coat and blanket puddles breathing gruntled sleep for the next late morning.

[lord-pigasus]

steamboat gulch

the pines wake up and shake off their snow and sunday comes on a saturday with children and dollar tree sleds to fly down the gulch in the snow papa’s old fishing spot is frozen in the snow the summers spent there lay waiting in the ice under the creaky bridge that points us onward to fly down the gulch in the snow paps’s not coming, he’s asleep in his cabin covered in snow his course neck never had much to say at mormon outings he still loves the winter with his old greying dog, a real cowboy’s dog while i fly down the gulch in the snow we hit the ground like yahtzee with footprints tangling behind us in the snow carving out the slope like the lover’s initials on the trees and on the dilapidated picnic tables where the bishop is cooking chili while i fly down the gulch in the snow the sun climbs higher and slicks down our packed snow icarus in snowpants climbs higher and higher going faster and faster an unbaptized boy gets his first bloody nose. pinch it like this. lean your head back. while i fly down the gulch in the snow parent conversations flap like a downed bird in the snow little baking secrets, and how they miss their missionary sons. Each small crumb of revelation is shared until everyone is full while i fly down the gulch in the snow i sip hot chocolate while my brother empties his mittens of snow soon enough, we’re packed in tight like a covered wagon back home, there are fireplaces to be hugged and presents to be wrapped i close my eyes and fly down the gulch in the snow

[lord-pigasus]

The (cis)Women’s March on Washington

The women’s march this saturday was monumental. With three and a half million people participating worldwide it was a triumph of getting people into the streets. My wife and I went to the Washington DC march with a group of 15 women from tennessee and were blown away by the amount of people there. We were packed in like sardines, filling the national mall and all it’s side streets. With 700,000 people, we couldn’t even march, we just poured into the streets and went every direction. But, just getting people to show up isn’t enough to win the fight against fascism. We must keep this momentum growing. We must channel this momentum into other forms of action that directly improve the lives of oppressed people. Most importantly, we need to defend all of the oppressed people in this nation, not just the women in your circle. This was the biggest failing of the march. The voices of black, disabled, indigenous, queer, and latina women were hard to hear over the endless rows of straight white allies. As a trans person at the march i felt no solidarity from the other marchers, only thinly veiled hostility. My wife and I arrived early into a forming crowd of marchers about one block away from the main stage. The crowd was totally dead so we decided to lead some chants to get the energy up. WHO”S STREETS? OUR STREETS! WHO”S COUNTRY? OUR COUNTRY! WHO”S BODIES? OUR BODIES! WHO”S BODIES? OUR BODIES! Seconds after the chanting died down, a woman standing in front of me said “of course it’s always a man to lead the first chant” and when I tried to correct her she ignored me, pretending that i wasn’t even there. From that point on, i was constantly misgendered. One woman even told me that if i wanted to not be misgendered that I should have worn a dress. That woman was allowed to wear pants and so was every other woman in the march, but trans women always have to jump through extra hoops just to be treated with human dignity. We always have to prove our womanhood to people who only want to commodify our voices. Among a sea of half a million cis women, i felt invisible and silenced. Signs like “ovaries before brovaries”, “if men had periods, tampons would be free” , and the infinite variations of “pussy grabs back” were based on equating womanhood with having a vagina. This cisnormative gender ideal is blatant body policing and transphobia. It’s insulting and exclusionary towards trans marchers. Not all women have a uterus, and women aren’t the only people with a uterus. And even though we don’t have cisnormative bodies and identities, we still need feminism to fight for us in these next four years. We rely on Planned Parenthood for STD testing, birth control, and abortions. We can’t find jobs, and when we do we’re paid far less than the cis. We are being tormented in our schools, kicked out of our homes, and murdered in the streets. Planned Parenthood, NARAL, the march leadership, and every cis woman who attended one of the marches need to think long and hard about who their rhetoric is for, and who it hurts. Until there is trans, non-binary, and intersex leadership, i have a hard time believing that these groups are fighting for my rights. WHO”S BODIES? CIS BODIES! WHO”S BODIES? CIS BODIES!

[lord-pigasus]

wasted

you got me a (the cold doesnt feel so cold) kind of wasted you got me a (playing pin the cigarette on the ashtray) kind of wasted you got me a (love more intensely) kind of wasted (like every firefly is a star) you got me a (and every star is a sun somewhere) kind of wasted you got me a (trust no feds and) (all the others are motherfucking pigs) kind of wasted you got me a (i shouldnt be allowed near a phone) kind of wasted (or i'll vomit paragraphs of sleepy affection) you got me a (i can hug the entire world) kind of wasted (or i can just hug you and make it the world) you got me a (always late for work) kind of wasted (trashed on your kiss) (sloppy on your smile) all kinds of fucked up (on how you ramble) and we'll wake up in the morning without a hangover just tangled jelly legs and loving arms

[lord-pigasus]

autumn haikus

fingernail birds hop from crumb to crumb a parking lot feast at once they fly from stiff shivering bundled men searching for cigarettes and trees give the men golden leaves, it’s all they have they’ll be naked by winter

[lord-pigasus]

pay it no mind

when they ask “boy or girl” pay it no mind when they say ma’am mean man and apologize pay it no mind When they hate your voice Your walk Your clothes when they hate more the girl who wears them Pay it no mind pay no mind to the “freak” pay no mind to the “perv” pay no mind to the “faggot” “faggot” “faggot” When at night you can only imagine Drunk clawing hands And deep angry alleys Pay it no mind But when they come for you with fists Come back with a knife.

[lord-pigasus]

mother mary

in every orphanage a statue of mary cradles the lamb of god in her arms and here a mundane grey wire sags from her head to a lamppost giving priesthood to her florescent halo below her they planted a circle of roses a crown of thorns to keep children from crawling into her holy arms but at night she steps down to walk the creaky porches and cheap tile floors putting away toys sweeping keeping bad dreams at bay and the kids asleep with scraped palms and bruised faces look just like her son when she tucks them into bed and every morning she drags the florescent sun over the andes with a mundane grey wire

[lord-pigasus]

pressent

(i remember) sandwiching your breathing fingers

in a book to dry your touch 

like a flower to save it 

for later 

`

 (i remember) months later when dry hands brushed my back colorless 

(i remember) hearing dead petals crumble.

[lord-pigasus]

hill cumorah

we’re gonna make out on holy ground! because here, prophets and angels have walked just like us dirty sandals on muddy temple floors blue jeans on fallen oak pews our kiss is sacrament with hymns of hands and necks our lips are praying fuck you! amen! ! for everyone who says they know god better now angels are coming back in the tilt of your neck in hot breath in wet new york air in choruses of fingers of gloria! in excelsis deo!

[lord-pigasus]

sunset 1

it’s the time of night when the hills become eyelids so the sun can blink and our campfire sends a fleet of tiny rocket ships into the stars with a pop like the sun, i look at you and blink your fingers are kindling your lips are the tail of a flame your freckles are a sky full of embers and you keep me warm