Hi everyone,
I spent over 10 years writing this poem, coming back to it over and over again as I progressed through my transition, and the politics surrounding trans people in America changed. It’s got some Whitman in it, and a lot of George Oppen. It means a lot to me. It starts in section 24, because it’s a sequel to a poem I wrote before I transitioned about having my gender feel in flux.
Confluence & Grief
Your eyes are in / a heavy case, your purse in a light; yet you see how / this world goes.
Shakespeare, King Lear
24.
As she walks the street
like the river of time
she keeps her hands closed
red nails beneath her palms.
25.
On the single corner
at the end of the horned city
stands a woman
with walnut heavy eyes
she hides her face
inside her face.
& sees the thin poppy petal sky
spring red delusions.
26.
It may be we are waiting for our own precision
it may be we are waiting
it may be we are waiting for our own
expansiveness to form closure.
27.
The horned city sighs,
is set down like we have been set down.
The stars set down the skyscrapers.
The streetlamps have set down the streets.
Under the city the night
sets down the shadow & the moon
remains a stutter
of some brilliant eye,
blood for a dry capillary.
28.
At night the city starves
beneath the fullness of the stars.
The stars starve.
Light starves, carves a hole
in the stomach of the moon.
29.
Tonight I’m putting on my face
I mark my eyes, my lips
by crimson lights
I shoulder expectation
& the constant desire
to not be noticed
in the horned city
the badges watch
for adam’s apple
as she walks by.
30.
A thousand moons could not
set down this light.
Maybe if we loved
the sun a certain way
we could define it:
absent eyelid,
scoured edge
of elohim, the day’s
small simper, an addition
toward delight.
There was a chance
when we could love
the sun this way. It moves
on different levels now.
We sail on plasma
wings pulled through
& shot on sunhot wind
toward the million
other suns too far
to reach. But go on anyway.
31.
In the horned city, we do not
define light or heavy.
The city tries to ask
for definition, places us
in sex shaped forms.
But looking for it,
we do not define
anything at all.
We are askew on this thin line,
dithering, dithering, dithering.
32.
& here we root it where
we are: the earth
among its bright confusion
we walk with our hips
through the horned city:
and we are watched
beneath its gigapixle eye
33.
& like a crane: enormous
spread across the sky: we never see
our silhouettes. You said the better practice
was to wait. To buy a mirror,
differentiate the self from image
of the self. Without a light you held
we cannot block it out. Instead we turn
it off & we defer
to your encyclopedic understanding
of grief.
34.
The coherence
of your absence rises & I find
in the morning, collision;
in the night, collision:
a small bitterness,
a nameless Wednesday in autumn
where you implied that we could fly.
Where I am readying
my palpable wings.
35.
In the position of windows
breaks the body
on blue wings
undone by evening
breaks the body
& the body cries god
& the body cries grey
& on grey skies discloses
its desire for some other
light cathartic
a laughter indistinguishable
from crying
or a sound bereft
from time
from presence
a leaf in the wind
understood
as hesitation is
36.
& in this hesitation
I begin
my process of rejoicing
37.
That I am here
that the winter of the world is so cold
that in beautiful rooms
I wear heels & spin light
with my hands
that there are invisible cities
where we live apart
in the queer & unabandoned night
a part of us where the gorgeous bodies
slide & dip & trouble
38.
As white paper dropped on water
turns slowly grey
as the wetness inflects its surface
as the thin leaves crisp slowly
at the edge from green to red
after the white rocked roads
& cobblestone
& after the lips
& the eyes & the taut faces
blend with the ocher light
& strings of light on the plaza
the horned city rises over
the lip of the world & the world breathes
39.
Where after the sound
the drop
& dance of it
we are in our lives our lives
our lives a long way to go
40.
Rejoice
in the goodness of collision
of blur, of motion
from body toward the other
in the glory of our blues
that we pass from
as we move toward this ridged water
on white wings
a great lake & the clarity
of its motion, wave after wave slipping
sound across its surface
I tell you I need to know
what it feels like to fall
41.
Rejoice! in men as they are
in women as they are
in the third & the fourth
& the queerest numbers
just as they are
or just as they will be
42.
& sounding my rejoice in quiet through cafes
& parlors & the tables & chairs of the loiterer
sipping his coffee for warmth & softness
for all is a life of immutable color
& for the inevitable surfacing of the bubble, the smooth spirals
in water churned by the current
how beautiful is the river of time
how beautiful is the cascade of my own ages
as they accumulate in the late sun
it was the end of the winter in 2016
March 7th, and the curve of a sphere was enough
to melt ice, little by little, time by time
not a moment to the day or a moment
to the wind & the winding of my eye over
unfreezing waterfalls
43.
For hesitation is boundless, so I slide
as a wave of color & thighs rejoicing
that there is color & brightness & blood at all
44.
Or rejoice that the form of the leaf
as it dries is the form
of the wrinkling sea
45.
For someone has told us a grief
but oh
that our grief might be so contained
for what rejoicing is there
that there is some
small blank
in the wide hand of grief
46.
Today in the horned city
there is no such thing as the sun
& as always there are
no such things as days
the way we move in this
vast city is the way we move
before the eternal eye
in our uneternal bodies
I tell you I hate the soul
that it does not exist
but take joy in gender
& the change of my season
47.
& turn my eye toward slow biology
& feel reckless in the cold rain
walking the black rock beach
watching the dip of a wave pulled down
48.
& in my trying to rejoice
I find the whole of grief
in the treatment of my people
so weep that they kill us
that our sisters are beaten
in restaurants in Seattle
that they mutilate our genitals
while they kill us
that we are burned
& stuffed into bags by our partners
in this horned city, the badges
laugh as we die
10 feet away, imprisoned
begging for aid
50.
& in this long year we weep
that there are 82 bills
across the country criminalizing
our existence
& so we weep for we are in danger
simply by being
in this vast city trans joy
is always in the shadow of our grief
51.
& please, for those of us
who are taken every year
what can a poem do for them?
say out their names:
in 2019 we have lost so far to murder:
Dana Martin
Jazzaline Ware
Ashanti Cameron
Claire Legato
Muhlaysia Booker
Michelle Tamika Washington
Paris Cameron
Chynal Lindsey
Chanel Scurlock
Zoe Spears
Brooklyn Lindsey
Denali Stucky
Kiki Fantroy
Jordan Cofer
Pebbles LaDime Doe
Tracy Single
Bailey Reeves
Bee Love Slater
Ja’leyah-Jamar
Itali Marlowe
Brianna BB Hill
the majority of them
black trans women
many homeless, many killed
by their lovers or intimate partners
there is an epidemic
of death
among my sisters
52.
I have five close
trans women friends
3 of us are unemployed
3 of us have been deeply suicidal
all of us live
below the poverty line
I love them all, they are
the riot in the hazelnut
the world sees us
as through glass
an oddity
or aberration
& so touches us
with rough hands
53.
Our light’s the same
although my face remains
a failure to understand
the world: where in
an old stone building
I saw small holes
for breathing
in the floor & light
came up through them
& remained
a brightness in the ground
54.
You said I had to have
an apex of some kind
a stone to keep
the whole architecture
of the mind from falling
like the body falls
it’s weight that keeps
the whole thing up
on paper it was an attempt
to measure stillness
or a recognition
that the attempt to build
a hopeful system
failed beautifully
55.
In this diurnal smallness
I tell you I am beyond
the eyelash & the pale
my will a sprig
of rosemary
to be fanned out
from my spine stem
I close myself
& out from your erratum blooms
this paper sky
56.
In this horned city two
stalks raise the yellow moon toward
another: in spite of this the sky
is already bright
with light like ice like light like ice
it was spring & already I was looking
for ice: in deference
of your grief: you asked us
to portray lightness without
reference to light:
instead we broke our bodies
trying to understand collision
57.
In the horned city: hesitation
is a color boundless sped across
this dim horizon
whereon I deferred again
toward your hesitation: we spoke of blueness
to god in the morning: he spoke of light
without reference to light
58.
Like an enormous crane
what we looked for was weight
was something other
than bitterness to carry home
there would be time
for that we said
why should it be now
but without the bitterness
we weep for the laws they pass
to felonize our youth
& felonize our health
& ban us from locker rooms,
this horned city seeks
to make our existence illegal
& what else is a life
59.
& so I resume
my process of rejoicing
for to heal the body is
to speak like god
a splinter in the light
when it was fall
collision came
too early for this light
60.
I cannot rejoice in the accumulation of violence
but that there is brightness at all
61.
Rejoice! of the world & its windows of glass
Rejoice! that to be is not always to be seen
Rejoice! someone has told us a grief
Rejoice! that there is not silence only
Rejoice! if only so that there be rejoicing at all
62.
We were asked to name
with lipstick, with heels,
with dresses & blue pills
what is not visual
what we gained
was a grammar
applicable to love
love understood
as hesitation is
63.
In the ontic morning
everything
was made of water: we said it made
being more fluid: & our wetness
inflects this city
64.
Rejoice! how beautiful we are in this new light
65.
What the sun is made of
in the morning is
not unlike a smile
seen by chance
exchanged across
a room
brushed as watercolor
how you sat
and at your coffee
smiled a thing
not meant
for anyone
66.
In the morning we were asked
to put our names on forms
in the morning we were asked to speak
we sat in hesitation
unable to defer
our grief
was still in making
still in silence
I was asked to speak
unable still to name
67.
In the morning we were
the only inhabitants
of the horned city
sunrise through low haze
mist hung under
& over every / thing coalesces
they asked
that we paint our names
in blue that we open
toward nothing
what I didn’t say
was after
the all this death we were
a kind of nothing worth
opening for
a kind of nothing that grows
& grows & grows,
spinning light
in light of violence
a nothing
where we hold each other
a kind of place for peace
help us
there ought to be peace
beneath all these
blank white lights
68.
The last image that I had from you: that water
is the single substance
of the universe
that underlies all things
we shape ourselves & our containers
while the horned city breaks day
breaks bread, breaks glass,
breaks poverty over its knee
& we live on anyway: good
69.
& the rain
today is barely sleet,
making its shift
from grey toward white: I was told
that there might be hope
there ought to be hope
so I paint my nails, turn
and spill out life
upon the page & hear the last
gasp of the horned city
where I am
what I’ve always been
a woman
looking you dead in the eye.
I admire the skill with which you put together words and create images that linger in my mind. While reading this poem I felt many emotions wash over me. The primary one was grief, especially in the section where you listed the names of trans women who had been murdered. Another was awe at how you and other trans people continue on in a world where many people choose not to (or believe that they cannot?) accept you as you are.