thank you

To the beautiful, twenty-something lesbian from the makeup counter at Macy's on Fulton Street today: Thank you for flirting with me when you're obviously out of my league. Thank you for touching my arm and then my curls as you leaned conspiratorially close to whisper that I could find eyeshadow of the same colors and quality at less than half the price at Duane Reade. Thank you for making me blush. Although I acted cool and unaffected, you made my day.

For Everywoman

I don't owe you/ pretty, or/ thin/ or shapely/ or "hot"/ I don't owe you/ my tits/ nor my ass/ nor do I owe you/ (or anyone else)/ "Modesty"/ Or a plan to shield you from looking at me./ (that's all on you.)/ I owe you very little in fact, nothing but what you owe me/ Like respect/ as another human being/ not as a "lady", or a mother or a daughter/ Just another human being/ who rides on the same bus/ Walks on the same sidewalk/ Or breathes the same air.

This morning in the laundry room,/ I learned that Jose had died./ Jose was a homeless man./ He stayed in the neighborhood./ He was kind and had a dog named Shorty. /He was eloquent and thoughtful and spoke like a poet. / I'm going to miss the fixture of his cart./ I'll pass the corner where he spent temperate days/ and miss the inspiration he lent my stories./ I didn't know him well, but I'll miss him./ Occasionally, I'll wander what became of his dog.

body

Naked, we press/ together in purple sleep, my/ budding breasts/ reach toward your back/ but my belly/ your ass/ put air between us/ This is our body/ ankles tangled / thigh between thighs/ under white down comforter/ pulled up around cheeks/ Warm breath on back/ against the cold/ late November open window.

The Butterfinger Incident

Since transitioning, I've become acutely aware of male privilege.  For one thing, taking the subway, or even the bus doesn't feel as safe as it once did, but that's something to be expected. I'm not by any means condoning street harassment, but let's face it, men can sometimes be creeps.  I was however surprised when one recent rush hour on the M14 bus, I was forced into the realization that something as mundane as eating a candy bar could be so controversial. I should probably explain. I'm fat. I take up space. In no earthly culture could I be viewed as "thin".  And so it was that one evening rush hour on the M14, while eating a Butterfinger candy bar that I was reminded by a man (who was at least once and a half my own girth,) that I was "...kinda pretty", and if only I would "... lose a few pounds, maybe [ I ] could get myself a nice guy".  I won't even bother to go into the myriad replies that filled my incredulous head, all jostling towards my mouth only to get stuck shoulder to shoulder to shoulder in the doorway (chief among them, I'm a lesbian who happens to be married, thank you very much!) In fact, I was sadly unable to say anything brilliantly cutting or clever before he disembarked at 5th Avenue.  Had I been quicker on my verbal feet, I might have retorted that women's bodies, indeed all bodies ought not be regarded as grist for the mill of public commentary. How many of us have looked at another woman and commented that she was too thin or too tanned, or that her breasts or ass were too small or too big? I'm not only pointing the finger at everyone else.  Admittedly, I've done this too. Obviously, as a lesbian I look at other women. I am afterall a sexual creature, and it's only natural, but the problem arises when we don't only look, but feel entitled to comment, as though we've some right to lay claim to another's body. I realize that I've digressed from my original point about male privilege, or, maybe not. The fact of the matter is, women are often complicit in creating the perception that women's bodies are public property, and although men are becoming increasingly regarded in much the same way, it's usually men who are already in the public arena as celebrities. This doesn't make it alright by any means, (in fact it compounds the issue) but that's fodder for another rant; this one's about women's bodies, and our right to own our own.  After all, a fat woman standing on a rush hour bus should be able to enjoy her Butterfinger, without it being an act of feminist rebellion.

My Body is a Revolution

As a lesbian identified woman of trans history, my criteria for attraction/attractiveness already differ slightly from those of most of the hetero/cisexual public. That said, my wife was shocked when, during a conversation last week about "getting into better shape", I declared that I didn't want to completely get rid of my belly. The truth of the matter is, I like having a belly. I enjoy being "fat". It makes me feel feminine and in charge of my own image because, with the revolutionary act of simply accepting my body as it is, I've declared- both to myself and to the world, that the media will never dictate to me what I should look like, nor what I should find aesthetically or even sexually attractive. My body is a revolutionary act because, I declare ownership of it and responsibility for it every day. And to those who would cite the fact that I was born biologically male, rendering me incapable of understanding the angst and social pressure brought to bare on girls to conform to media imposed strictures of acceptability, I say this: I am a woman. I'm a woman who until only recently was perceived as, and expected to behave as a man, simply because, externally, I didn't fit anyone's concept of what a woman should be. Believe me, I understand the pressures of society to conform, and admittedly, I embrace some of them: I take hormones to grow my breasts. I still shave daily (because as yet, I cannot afford laser depilation) and wear makeup. I paint my nails, and do my best to maintain some semblance of a manicure which isn't easy, considering that I've got dry nails that crack and I'm a klutz. I do all these things and more, because they help me feel more in touch with my femininity, as well as helping me "pass" in the world, but mostly I do them because I like to. It's as simple as that. They simply feel right, like they're a part of me, and if tomorrow, Vogue Magazine came out in favor of absolute androgyny, and women everywhere began foregoing their lipstick and makeup for a K.D. Lang circa 1991 inspired look, I'd walk out my front door in my size 26 pencil skirt, blood red lipstick and matching nails, and- as much as I'd enjoy checking out all the hot androgynous women, I'd thank the universe for the fact that I am who I am: a fat, femme dyke who has, after years of struggling with identity and body dysphoria issues, finally come to love herself, exactly as she is.

The View From E 88th

Stepping outside my front door this morning, coffee in hand, ankle length winter coat for lack of a bathrobe, onto the catwalk: our street is eerily calm. It's cold, and there's a carpet of wet, yellow leaves on the ground. The three trees in front of my building thankfully withstood the storm, as did a carelessly parked Harley across the street. In fact, but for the news, loudly insinuating itself from my neighbor's apartment, one looking out on this street might think she had merely awoken to an average Manhattan morning still wet with the results of an average October rain. But there's no sound of traffic coming up the hill from Second, and no march of morning umbrellas torwards the 6 train on Lex and down on 14th, at Avenue C the cars' roofs are like islands in an inland sea.

Ritual

The sounds of her pills, my pills being counted / This diurnal inventory that greets me each morning.

Just A Comment

When someone tells me I'm "very brave" for transitioning, I can't help but think it has less to do with bravery, than it does that survival instinct that kicks in when one's house is on fire; if one wishes to go on living, one gets up from their easy chair and runs outside. My decision to transition was- indeed IS no more nor less than that primary instinctual imperative to get out of a burning building.

untitled

I did not choose this otherness
I did not choose isolation or
the fear
of leaving the house
unshaven and without my face
I did not choose this otherness, this
life apart, of complexities
and complications
I never chose anxiety
over which public restroom to use, nor
to be a target
just for walking in daylight
I did not choose this otherness
any more than to have two hands
or to be 5 foot 6
or to have curly hair
I choose only to be myself
Unapologetic
Unashamed
Let others be shamed by their sameness, their lack of courage
I did not choose this otherness
but I will accept it with
wide open hands.

Suheir,
The brothers in olive have
wrapped you in your own anger
You smother there
For whom?

this morning

We shared a pint of
giant blackberries
stained our fingers with
Blackberry blood--
a sweet memory from
our first meeting
and now I sit in my
yellow chair
reading your Hammad
my fingertips still red.





*poet Suheir Hammad

By way of my contribution to the "I need feminism because..." meme circulating on Facebook:

I need feminism because
people think it's ok to suggest that:
(a) I've sacrificed status, and
(b) I shouldn't be surprised or upset when people
regard me as a joke because I'm transgendered.

offering

Some intruders
come with hammers and torches
Knocking down walls, throwing
books to the pyre
Others come full of
only good intentions, with
Ziploc bags full of
sage for burning.

Cleaning The Refrigerator

Cleaning the refrigerator
in the country house
Is like some perverse exercise
in something the opposite of archeology;
In yellow rubber gloves and with
Lysol cloths
I erase the ketchupy finger prints
of a brother-in-law, 4 years past,
some short black hairs from "Spikeward",
the German shepard who shared my wife's bed,
2 years before me
and crayon marks from my 3 year old niece
(who's now nearly 17).
"Powerful Cleaner- No Bleach Harshness" reads the blue and white canister, but
what it fails to warn me of
are the myriad other ways
in which
the harshness of a clean refrigerator
might be felt.

7/28/2012: Kerhonkson

The radio off, we
drive in silence
She sits beside me
listening to cricket gossip
I, driving, write this poem:
The Kerhonkson roads
have a smell in summer:
At 62 Fahrenheit and 70% humidity,
Old wood houses
and lush green roadsides, and
ancient trees with porous bark.
(Occasionally, a skunk
a smell I like.)
My t-shirt sleeve grows wet by the open window,
And slow motion moths change direction before the windshield
white wings blue in the dashboard light
We round a bend where three 

Local boys died
Their truck split in half on a telephone pole
(the newest ghosts of Samsonville Road)
Each time
At this bend, I hold the wheel a little tighter
resisting the seduction
of entropy
We're almost home now,
There's a pickup close behind;
"better signal early, so he doesn't rear end us"
-my practical wife pulls me out of my own head
"remember to put the ice cream away before you sit down to write your poem"
She says to me as she
disappears down the hall.

The Following Account Is Absolutely True

So, at 5:08 a.m., I wake up to pee. I flip on the bathroom light, (silly me,) and one of the three 100 watt bulbs that hangs above my medicine cabinet explodes into a shower of shattered glass. Now I have to run and get my crocs (I only wear them in the house), plug in the tired old vacuum we inherited when we moved in (from my sister-in-law's "granny" in law), which has the shortest cord of any vacuum in history, and make sure every splinter of glass has gone with Elvis (left the building). I do just that. Mind you, I still have to pee, but now, so does Carrie. She gets HER crocs (she only wears them in the house too, I swear!) and shuffles into the dark bathroom. While she's peeing, I decide to put the vacuum away. When I pick it up from whence I'd leaned it, the canister, in an apparent show of sympathy with the bulb, forceably ejects, spewing dust, glass, and- inexplicably, peanut shells, all over the living room floor. Carrie says it must be something in my aura, and I search my Broca's brain for new and interesting curse words with which to experiment.
Through no small amount of therapy and gentle coaxing, I finally get Granny's vacuum to agree once more that it is, in fact, a vacuum, and clean up our now war torn living room. I still have to pee, and go to do exactly that, but first I don yellow gloves and flip the circuit breaker to make sure I don't get electrocuted as I surgically extract the root of the terrorist bulb from its socket. Carrie gives me the once over, says of my naked-but-for-yellow-rubber-gloves-and-black-crocs look, "You know, I'm certain there's a fetish for that somewhere if you google it", and helpfully shuffles back to bed. I meanwhile, replace the terrorist bulb with a new one, one of those twisty new bulbs which promise four hundred years of use and mercury poisoning if they break.
Job well done, I congratulate myself with a well earned pee, flush and get up to wash my hands. As I stand before the sink, I notice how bright the new bulb is. As I notice how bright the new bulb is, I glance in the mirror, and when I glance in the mirror, I see something stuck to my forehead. Is it dried blood? Had a kamikaze shard actually gotten through to its' target, missing my left eye by less than an inch, scarring me for life? As I lean closer to the mirror, it becomes apparent that it's not in fact dried blood at all, but a clump of dried tomato. "Where on Earth did I get dried tomato on my face?" My brain races through improbable scenarios until... Suddenly I remember last night's failed chili con queso operation, exploding salsa and all, and, as images of techni-color culinary misadventures splash across the movie screen of my mind, I make a decision: I'm going back to bed, and staying there until October.

Mizmor L'Avi (a new psalm- in progress)

I am running a race
for which there is no course
My feet
are insubstantial as dreams and
I'm running alone
Though the world stands by the side
they mostly do not cheer
but throw holes and rocks
instead before my feet.

1986

Instead of muscles and money, we
wore our guts on our sleeves
Open and ragged, bleeding and raw
Our strength was in our difference, and
With razor cut arms we pledged our allegiance
to all of the gods of
“not one of them”, and with
boots laced high, and
hair painted and spiked, we
stood aside,
while the parades passed by
mocking the band with our
own frantic beat.

A Transwoman's Declaration of Solidarity

A rare introduction: I wrote this piece, when someone accused me of trying to "cash in on female privilege", because I told them I'm transgendered; oh, that I thought fast enough to let this roll off my tongue at that moment, but oh well:


Female privilege?
Tell me all about female privilege, because
my sisters and I would love to know;
You mean like
getting dry humped from behind during rush hour on the
6 train, or
Paying more money for
haircuts and clothing
all while making
33% less than our male colleagues for the same exact work,
for the same exact job?
Or,
that patient condescending smile we get
when we
go to the auto parts store, and
actually know what we're
talking about?
Or how about
year after year
sitting in a cubicle
while some
20 something Jack or
Johnny-come-lately
suddenly gets his own windowed office?
Tell me,
Tell me about female privilege.
Tell me again how most
any woman could go out to a bar, most
any night, and
never pay for a single drink,
or
How lucky we are, that
even on a frumpy day
we can get laid,
whenever we want,
I'll counter your assertions by telling you that most
every day,
some poor woman who let some strange man
buy her a drink, gets
drugged and raped
and sometimes worse,
but never mind,
You were saying,
You were about to tell me
all about female privilege,
Because really,
No, seriously,
I'm pretty sure I speak
for my cis and trans sisters alike
when I say we'd
love to know
what it is we've
all been missing.