NOTES ON READING FROM THE POET:

This piece was written during my first year of graduate school at a Catholic college, where I faced endless prying questions and comments about my trans body, all while seeing the brutalized body of Christ hanging over every door frame. What bodies do we consider holy while in the process of transformation?

carpenter

what really drives the nails through your hand to the wood is the way
their voices creep softly up an octave to praise your bravery the words
so soft and small they are just a phantom breath on your neck
crawling down your spine and raising up all the hairs     a cold hand
that weighs on your shoulders     pushing you halfway into the dirt    
pushing your body until it is buried     pushing your face out of the
dust until you are as trivial as they view you to be     only palatable
when your face is at an easier angle to step over     step around     step
on     stomp on     stomp on stomp on

you devised your own methods of survival        methods to harden
your body against the speakers of soft words     a guard you keep
balanced on your back to watch your back  eyes you must grow all over
your body to interpret what everyone in the room is seeing   the body
you have fashioned out of wood and nails and blood and spit and rope
and cloth      questions asked in the company of a crude reflection    
questioning why god has done this to you questioning why you must
be your own creator     questioning finding an answer in wine and bread    
finding an answer in starvation  finding an answer in your body   the
body that is yours to rule        the body that you present to the world
as a gift of certainty     the body you transformed in forty days     you
had become a man      your lifespan became drafted in stone   

sometimes you wear your reading glasses and look out the window    
the world outside blending     softening      razor bled leaves losing
their sharpness   rows of thorns leaking into shrubbery    
sometimes it is easier to look at everything out of focus     sometimes it is easier
to allow softness     it is easy until there is an exhale on your neck

i just don’t feel comfortable being in the bathroom with

i just don’t get why you would mutilate your

it’s just really hard to call you

can’t you see how hard it is for me?

the impact of a hammer along your bones the weight of your body
propped up by tongues aching to dissect a specimen that has lost       
its mercy      cold hands examining      labeling      digesting