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The world famous Tyler French! You know how stoked I am? #capfire5 #reunion #poetsbeingpoets #queercookie #queeraf 😃 (at AS220)

#poetsbeingpoets #reunion #queercookie #capfire5 #queeraf

Knives: Dedicated to the Poets of Capturing Fire 2015

Knives: a poem by Vita E The funny thing about scar tissue is, that it can always be opened again, if you’re persistent enough, and the tools are available. For me persistence isn’t exactly the option on the table, actually, that decision is no longer in my hands... I walk into a clinic of doctors wearing familiar clothing, they wear masks of makeup uniforms of mohawks with blues hair, blue and red shirts with black suspenders and bare feet, demin vests with buttons, white dresses with flowers and white fedora hats, rainbow colored glasses and shirts with coffee stains, the list goes on…. There are so many of them, each holding notebooks with my case file, and scalpels that resemble writing utensils. “Subject stands at 6’2”, wearing a lavender button down shirt, bikini top the color of a pride festival, shorts the style of Daisy Duke, make up and build the style of Nina Simone, hair the style, of Angela Davis, mental state of Robin Williams. Subject appears to have suffered from the condition of a scar tissue smile that symbolizes that closing of wounds that need to be opened again. That is why we’re here.” The doctors lay their new patient down on the table, but all I came in for was a check up, I don’t understand the anesthesia of hugs and hand holding, as if they’re preparing me for something totally different than what I expected, but I have become calm in that moment, and assume I’m ready for everything… The first cut proved otherwise… a slice of what it means to be someone who is more likely to blame themselves than their rapist. I marvel at the sight of blood here, because there’s more than I expected, but the pains similar to that of my first tat so I I don’t bat an eyelash. “Oh, well that was easy,” I muse to myself. “Maybe this won’t be so bad after OW!!!!” The second cut is the polar opposite of the first, slices into me flesh with the force of a thousand bayonets, a poem that makes me wonder if I’ll live to see 35. It was then, that I realized these pens were sharper than I expected, and that I was only through laceration #2. Cut 3 sends my body into a state of convulsion, a poem about domestic terrorism in the form of misgendering, I plead to the doctors for patience, with eyes that are becoming as dilated as waning moon phases, hands clutching those who have already run pens through me, hands that now have my blood on them, blood that has begun to take the shade of ink, Cut 4, rhyme scheme for a lost sister, Cut 5, sinful sex that is just as painful inside as it is pleasurable outside, 7 another regret in the form of another victim in the form of a 12 year old, I begin to feel sick, a heaving in my throat the size of a comet cutting through my atmosphere and making its way down to my planets core The explosion creates the image of an atom bomb detonating inside my stomach, and I begin to vomit poetry, One after another after another, words escape uncontrollably from my mouth and fly with wings into the surgery room, All the while, the doctors have not stopped their procedure. The room begins to fill with ink colored blood as cut 8, another trans person dead, 9, another non melinated nimrod names her a nigger, 10, tongues twisted in tantalizing tainted passion that would later tell the tendencies of drowning, The doctors are knee deep in my blood now, the room is filled with flying words that continue to escape from my mouth, my eyes, flowing with salt water, whilst the brown I carry in my eyes turns to crimson, then cerulean, then finally, lavender, My skin has turned purple, and my heart is beating so hard you can see it escape from my ribcage and into the hands of the surgeon in the white dress. She looks at me in the eyes that are more ocean than human now, as if to say, “It’s gonna be alright.” Her blade is one of the sharpest, story of survival through sex work as cisgendered teenager left homeless before the knowledge of what it even felt like to lose it, I lose it, my heart punctured in her hands for some reason beats the cadence of a thousand drums, then… as if a conductor stopped the orchestra with a look, my heart stops too. I now float above my body and examine it, cuts for every inch, some deeper than others, as a now lifeless piece of me lays on a table. The doctors wade through the ink that pours out of me, some swimming, some walking, some carrying others through the liquid. They collect my words out of the air and morph them into thread, using their pens as needles, begin to stitch flesh with syllables, leaving only my ribcage open. The final surgeon wears red marching band jacket and cuffs, wades through my blood with knee high converse shoes, grabs my heart and places it back into my breast, and stitches my ribs closed with the final words left in the sky, “It’s gonna be alright.” The doctors lay hands on me, scream poetry on the count of three, and I feel the gravity of the universe yank me back into my body. I launch up to a room at a 90 degree angle, I see them, they stand, their smiles are shining stars over the metal walls and no longer sterile floor. The all lay hands on me, different color skin tones cover my body now stitched in verses and lay me down to sleep. The funny thing about scar tissue is, it can always be opened again, if you’re persistent enough, and the tools are available. And sometimes, there exists a moment where we all bear wounds we’d rather see removed and replaced with new life, Sometimes it takes a room full of people who can see right through your scars, to know exactly how to heal you.

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