#trans poets

[lena-oleanderson]

transgender jesus poem (working title) some explanations below the cut

this is very much a work in progress but if i only posted fully finished poems here, i'd post twice a year.

anyway i was reading about the resurrection some time ago, and how there's some debate over the nature of the resurrected body of christ - as in is it the same body that died and was buried and then rose up, or is it a new, transformed body, the way paul talks about the spiritual body as opposed to the natural body (you know, the one that's put on immortality and incorruptibility and whatnot). as i understood it, the debate is mostly whether jesus gets his spiritual body at the resurrection or at the ascension. and i guess the how exactly did this body change debate made me think abt the trans experience and then i read about the transfiguration, where jesus takes a few apostles up a mountain and glows divinely, and that, too, is a kind of bodily change, if temporary. and i guess luke 24 is one of my favourite bits of the bible because the guy has just fully risen from the dead and while everyone is like hey what the fuck we like. saw you die. you're not a ghost, are you? jesus is like relax, it's me. look at my hands. touch me. you got anything to eat here? and then they get him some broiled fish

and i don't view transition as a kind of death, personally, but it is often a kind of resurrection still. it's a change - but when i hold my friends' hands, i know it's still us, and we are not dead, we are alive. and we're going to get something to eat.

[endlessnebula]

Paradox

They say they love me,

A person whom I've never met,

A dream of parents who want nothing more than they know.

I am infrared and ultraviolet,

A small seed shrouded by the dead husk of his soul.

I am the hopes of a boy, no more real than I;

A boy who is loved more than me.

Though I am the one who subsists,

He is the one who exists.

[cainvstheworld]

The Phlebotomist by Cain Birch

This is a persona poem from the perspective of my phlebotomist (person who draws my blood). It's a bit different than what I normally post on here, but I wrote it for my creative writing class and liked how it turned out.

[Text ID: The Phlebotomist by Cain Birch. The youngest tremble more than the graying, the grayed. Some of the children beg, barter with their parents, howl at the sun as I borrow their blood with a slender needle, but I offer every flavor of lollipop, so their pain is not fruitless. My heart breaks most for the ones whose fathers extract crumpled doctor’s orders from their jangling pockets, whose mothers offer tight smiles as their child squeezes their eyes shut, stilling, accustomed to the burn of the needle. I call out girls’ names into the waiting room and choppy-haired boys follow me into the sterile room, let me slide silver into the tender crooks of their elbows, measuring the hormones in their budding bodies. I call out a man’s name, and a woman with a five o’clock shadow coating her cheeks holds her arm ramrod straight for me. I don’t know how to ask her  what she’d like to be called, whether the “Samuel” in her chart should spell “Samantha” instead, perhaps “Iris” or “Rose.” Instead, I make small talk about the prices of gas, of chicken. I don’t tell her that the fried chicken my husband brings home grows cold by the time I arrive, that I do not turn on the heat in my hatchback even though my car’s engine sputters into the frigid night as I turn the key. I don’t tell her that I chew the tough meat without the microwave’s aid, so my husband’s breath, his still body is molten by comparison when I slide into the sheets next to him, drawing warmth into my bones, pretending the fire between us is more than a fading flicker. He wakes me up before dawn, before leaving to fill in the northeast's endless potholes, fills me up for a few minutes, catches his breath as he slides on his belt, his dirt-caked boots, kisses me with a closed mouth. I lay in the nest of blankets, let my mind slither off to hopeful gardens. In a few weeks, I will call a child’s name for the last time, his ailments healing, his parents glowing with quiet optimism. In a few months, I’ll call a woman’s name, Heather, and she’ll stick out her arm, ramrod straight, beaming. I won’t know what to say, but I’ll smile back at her. /End ID]

[fantajoseph]

Virgin Birth

When i met you

i only heard one side of the line

As my mother said on the phone

"How am i supposed to explain to him"

"Boys that want to be girls"

"he wouldn't understand" those freaks

mom didn't say the last part

But it was easy to understand

Easy as breathing

Easier then that had been in a long time

"No, I get it" went under my breath.

I never got your name

To be fair, I didn't know mine yet.

I'll call you Mary

Mary, why were they talking about us?

Did they see you at the mall?

Maybe you were important

Or just a short straw, breaking the news

I hope you wanted to be there

Did you know they didn't stop me?

I hope you're as okay as I am now.

I'm trying to talk to more girls like us

I hope you are too.

Mary?

I hope someday, I'll hear your name

From someone who understands.

[typewriter-worries]

The Child Formerly Known As ____, Cameron Awkward-Rich

[blurryufo]

Post-Op - Fox Rinne (on The Offing)

[st-dionysus]

Poetry dump, all mine.

[inkbyday]

[unnumbered: mysteries of brooklyn]

— Day

September 2023

[poem text:

When we planted the seedlings in June, I unearthed shards of glass from the dirt—dozens of dusty fragments from its former life. I pictured the still buried pieces suddenly wrapped in roots, tangling with new growth. As I softened the soil with sweat, my partner sheltered small shoots from the sun’s heat.

Yesterday, we stepped outside to find a single shoe standing in the middle of the yard, one lace disappearing between cracks in the pavement as if grown from the concrete itself.

Another mystery of Brooklyn: without fertilizer or stakes to climb our tomatoes managed to stretch seven feet up (and counting). Broad leaves overtook the basil and pepper plants, devoured the neighbors’ fence and every trellis we tried to add. Stubborn green veins towered so tall that when August storms came, they keeled over entirely under the water’s weight and crept across the concrete, displaying all two hundred of their tiny, hard fruits—not yet ripe.

Across the yard, a bed of weeds shot skyward, as untamed as our carefully tended tomatoes.