What I'm Reading: Trans Climate & Eco-Poetics
Beautiful Transgender Words & Worlds
“Gender is the poetry each of us makes out of the language we are taught.”
― Leslie Feinberg, “Trans Liberation: Beyond Pink or Blue”
Kai Minosh Pyle
INSTRUCTIONS FOR GROWING A POSTAPOCALYPTIC LOVE
dancing around
that little itch, those
tiny blossoms inside
me when our skin
makes air grow thin between us,
I’m hoping you don’t notice
I’m
whispering prayer songs at night,
teaching small children how to grow
their hearts under incubators’ light
—organic sunshine hard to find
these days, but
yours is warm against my face
and I don’t want you to see the way
I capture it, cradle it close.
“THE CREATION STORY IS A SPACESHIP”
It will not be knowable in advance
what shape the new world will take. If she will take form framed in fire, or
arise out of the waves, like the last world. Pronouns are not a given.
We will build a wigwam out of soda bottles and mud, with an opening
in the top for the stars to enter. They will show us the way
to the ghost road. Follow those spirits to the end of the path, and that
is where we will build the next world.
Oliver Baez Bendorf
I Want Biodegradable Sex
Do you agree strongly, agree, neither agree nor disagree, disagree, or strongly disagree that certain plastics should remain single-use? By incorporating an assortment of organic elements, I wanted to create a sense of grief out of the cognitive dissonance. Plastikos, to form or mold, an art long before plastics were invented. Trans is a way of arranging the world through change, but plastic is durable, meaning it never goes away.
All I Have Is the Woods Inside My Head
to the deck in my trans masc robe
because in the end, no one will
remember. All that I’ve named
has a life outside of me. On
certain days, when the humidity
is just right, I remember everything.
I regret nothing. Birch tree.
I Just Chose My Place and Let the Circle Form Around Me
If I’m someday judged
on group projects alone, pray for me, nay, pray for you! But I wonder
will wealth be measured by what I gave away? I am interested in the gods,
their names, sacrifices, and what they gave up for their powers. Holy
lightning bolts will not come from my hand, but I too am unfolding, changing.
RIVER I DREAM ABOUT
Moon river, swollen river, river of starhole
and bright, harness river, lichen river,
river we velvet with our filth.
River of butter and river of witches, river
cracked open careful like egg, or burst
apart, unleashing its violet load.
Jake Skeets
Emerging
Act II: Chahałheeł
Once upon a time, { five-fingered being cold air
sunrise } stepped into a sentence: Nizhónígo bi’éé’ holǫǫ
dooleeł. Éé’tsoh diłhiłgo yii’ doo’nah. They stepped
further into the words. There is water; łeets’aa’ nímazí
shee hólǫ. There is a meadow, a winter’s meadow,
gathering in a bright morning.
KB Brookins
T Shot #9: Ode to My Sharps Container
Visual reminder that I can do it. Former container
of pickles so you smell like sour victory. Glass
house of my gender. Chest hair–maker.
My therapist called it “climate despair”
& I’m having a hard time being perceived. In public,
I puddle into the nearest corner. In private, I fidget
Rae White
clear skies
today
we are sunbeams
The three genders: women, men, consumerism
Andrea Abi-Karam
Andrea Abi-Karam Wants to Dance in the Ruins of Capitalism
FADE FROM FANTASY
just another day
in liberation
headlight don’t matter
when they light
the stage
make it
with me
Plastick Cover Up
choking on plastick
does anyone hear
the high frequency
injury retrograde
“We don't hold that poetry is a form of, or replaces, political action. Poetry isn't revolutionary practice; poetry provides a way to inhabit revolutionary practice, to ground ourselves in our relations to ourselves and each other, to think about an unevenly miserable world and to spit in its face. We believe that poetry can do things that theory can't, that poetry leaps into what theory tends towards. We think that poetry conjoins and extends the interventions that trans people make into our lives and bodily presence in the world, which always have an aesthetic dimension. We assert that poetry should be an activity by and for everybody.”
― Andrea Abi-Karam, “We Want It All: An Anthology of Radical Trans Poetics”
//CLIMATE CHANGE//
do u remember when the commons was a place u could go to
before it became strictly
imaginary
torrin a. greathouse
Anthropocene Anxiety Disorder
Our whole world is burning
& I am terrified by the mundane
-ness of it all. The scent of smoke
a season of its own. Sometimes, I mistake
the breeze passing through my hair
for the soft approach of flames.
A poem has no allegiance
to the truth. & even as I tell it
I fear you won’t believe me.
Last summer, Paradise burned.
Nocturne
I miss the summer,
Air simmered to ash with heat.
bathroom tile—private winter.
The moon is a glory hole.
This stall, the whole sky—
BURNING HAIBUN
Kayleb Rae Candrilli
Poem in which two trans boys take their first marital dance in the water
Finally, I am ready
to become what I wasn’t.
ELEGY FOR THE NOT YET DEAD RAINFOREST CAFE
my fingers through my partner’s hair and breathe in, for just
a little extra air. Photosynthesis is far more impressive magic
than any door leading to Narnia, any fortune telling 8-ball
twisted in your hands, over and over. You should already
know, every breath we take is a spell cast out and reeling.
To The Cherry Blossoms on 16th and Wharton
What do you think? What poems and poets would you add?
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The Transgender Legal Defense & Education Fund's Trans Health Project aims to ensure that all transgender and non-binary people can access the trans-related health care that they need.
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tysm for including me in this!