The Shape of Self

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Protest, Part 3: What Courage Looks Like

Dear Seized Readers,

How is the weather where you live?

The sun is bright here in Central North Carolina, and spring is beginning. From outside my writing room window, I see the Autumn Alice cherry putting on its annual show of pastel blossoms. This leads me to think about authenticity. The cherry tree is thriving, being its true self.

In contrast to the natural world, people are unable to thrive when they don’t feel natural within their own bodies. Transitioning into a different gender becomes critical to authenticity and well-being. Courageous trans brothers and sisters reflect in their changed bodies who their spirits are called to be. The verse of trans poets strikes an emotional chord, enacts how their transitioning is crucial to happiness and self-fulfillment. This poetry also fights back against the anti-trans sentiment which is particularly loud and ugly in our nation at present.

Book reviewer Rebecca Foster, in her review of Transgenesis by Jewish trans poet Ava Nathaniel Winter, includes these lines from Winter’s closing poem, “Lament with Cello Accompaniment:” I do not choose the sound of the song // In my mouth, the fading taste of what I still live through, but I choose this future, / as I bury a name defined by grief as I enter the silence where my voice will take / shape.

Photo by Philippe Bout on Unsplash

For me, these aching lines by Winter convey the pain of feeling alien and trapped within one’s given body—a name defined by grief, of conveying a gender along with the expectations that come with it to the world while enduring the sorrow of the physical self not reflecting one’s inner identity. A true voice can’t take shape without the authentic body to internalize its music.

Our current administration has negated the humanity of our trans friends, neighbors, and family members. The present moment calls for action on their behalf.

Today’s post shares two powerful poems by trans poets.

Photo by Diana Ewell Engel

My Trans Body

See and hear Espinoza read “My Trans Body.”

I pick up the phone 
and send you some words/
about my trans body. 
They float 
across America/
and are careful 
not to touch 
anything between

us or worry about who 
sees them. They just/
crackle and spin and soar 
through the air/
observing scenes of everyday events—

many birds moving like 
a single animal,/
trees swaying in place,/
men being men to 
everything’s detriment.

When you hear my words 
it reminds me/
I’m solid matter. 
In some sense I am/
the daydream of 
an alternate universe.

In another sense I am far 
too present here./
I say look at my shoulders, 
look at all I carry,/
but all anyone sees 
is their shape.

No one hears 
what my legs do 
or remembers/
how I built them 
from nothing./
How I trudged through 
the dull grey shit

of a gendered life until 
I could no longer take it./
They make movies 
about us being sad/
and dying but 
they never talk about

what it is for us 
to be alive,/
to love life so much 
we choose this brokenness/
just to have the smallest 
taste of it.

I’m not trying to play 
with your emotions./
I don’t want to be 
your inspirational object./
I’m saying I am here now, 
embrace me

or get out of my way. 
I have big plans./
They involve staying alive. 
They involve/
claiming my space 
and never 
being quiet again.

Joshua Jennifer Espinoza, from her book, Outside of the Body There Is Something Like Hope. 
 
The text of this poem can be found on the Paris Review website: December 6, 2018 article, “Poetry RX: You Are the Penultimate Love of My Life,” by Sarah Kay.

Photo by Trevor John Williams on Unsplash

Joshua Jennifer Espinoza bares herself in “My Trans Body.” She helps those of us who are cisgender feel her pain. Her well-conceived, beautiful metaphors of “everyday” life, the “many birds moving like a single animal,” and “trees swaying in place,” relate, for me, how nature works as a community in contrast to humankind which conquers and colonizes. Espinoza’s protest arrives at the end via a strong declaration of self.

African trans poet Adunni Tiwatope conveys fury in her poem that follows, “Tone It Down.” Tiwatope advocates for trans rights in Lagos, Nigeria. She is the programs director at a trans center, “Femme Hive.” Tilewa Kazeem in her SERVICE95 article, “How The FemmeHive Project Is Providing Hope For The Trans Community In Nigeria,” explains how this center provides “community, empowerment, and support” for trans women in Nigeria. While it is frightening to be trans, particularly now in the United States, it is a terrifying predicament in Africa.

Photo by Alexey Demidov on Unsplash

TONE IT DOWN

Just the exact way 
you say it 
to remind us 
of outdoing the box,/ 
An imposing call to order,/
reminding us that 
we might just 
be doing too much./
After all, we paid dues 
with our heads
buried under the waters/ 
And dreams dying 
in thoughts./
Yet, we are advised to 
TONE IT DOWN!/
Denying ourselves 
of existing 
at their comfort,/
While we are made aliens 
in our birthplace, 
homes and even 
to ourselves./
They say, the more 
the normality, 
the better the acceptance./
We have been taught to/
HATE who we are,/
BE AFRAID of what 
we’ve become/
and BEAT DOWN 
at anything 
that takes our form./
They say you do not 
have to be out and loud/
but you, you… While you 
stay flourishing 
in the regretful corner 
of your heart,/
your freedom is to impose 
restricting opinions 
on our expression of self./
For what we love, 
who we are, 
brings us together 
and so that same…/
the same is the joy to exist 
differently and free./
How so sweet to consider 
our safety/
but it’s not in our position 
to apologize/
when they are not 
close to comfort 
with our lives.

-Adunni

The text of this poem is available on the TransLash website. 

Photo by Ehimetalor Akhere Unuabona on Unsplash