that you're a man.

Your mother’s womb is laughing at her joke

because she wanted a carbon copy.

She was jealous. You were going to get

a part added that had pushed into

her neighbor’s arms, releasing something

she instead had to carry.

 

A trick was played on her. She thought she made you

in her image, but she gave you women’s _________.

Your body can change, become the real you

she stole, but she can’t banish

your Lifetime Achievement Award.

 

For someone who longs to caress women’s insides

with all the attention fingertips can give,

leaving prints like initials carved into a tree,

 

this is as close to a breeder I can get anymore.

Is this what it feels like to be in heat?

 

I once held the bodies of men, no was held,

caressing muscles along their shoulders

that made my thighs shimmer like fishes

jumping into the sun from the sea.

 

I want to kiss your outside where it matches

your inside…but help you mend the pieces taped,

stapled, injected that don’t match. Like roads

cut haphazardly into a mountainside, rocks

tumbling down to prove it was done wrong. 

 

I want to help you put it all back together, because

they are a story far more palpable than one where

a rock cracks a windshield on a road over

Teton pass with the falling rocks signs.

 

I want to take you home to my family,

if only to prove that they will know:

Author's Note

Last weekend I attended a conference at Westminster College in Utah. It was called Beyond the Binary and highlighted Transgender issues. I tried to delve further into what I got out of the seminar. It's told from the point of view of a queer woman interested in a transgendered man.

Reviews

[SR Urie]

Annette,
Kind of a confusing poem for a guy who isn't gay. Over the years my feelings of downright hatred for gay men has subsided a lot. College has taught me so much about people and their desires and my own hypocrisy in my love for lesbian women; go figure. Still you insight is interesting as well as confusing. (you are a lovely looking lady, obviously beautiful on the inside) BZ

[Aekmy]

Your interpretation of this is quite interesting, I'll say. I enjoyed reading about it, though, the stanzas were a bit choppy and difficult to grasp. Regardless, the embellishments on your phrases were absolutely lovely. Stanza three, the second half of five, and stanza six are my favorites.