*with language taken from the Family Research Council's
"Understanding and Responding to the Transgender Movement" and "The Living Dead" by New York Times Reporter Peter Andrey Smith
1.
We have only begun to enter this "brave new world" one that resists the genetic
imprint found in every cell in the human body Some convince others
to see them as the other sex No one can change his or her sex The DNA is marked
clearly male or female
the physical condition of their bodies surgical alterations to their bodies
involving as they do the amputation of healthy body parts
souls born into healthy body parts the state of being transgendered
is extremely unstable
an almost phobic lack of emotional and social flexibility
a Genderbread Person plastic and shaped by behavior a rebel against reality
walk with me into the garden shine like a ribbon snake
A psychologically healthy person accepts the reality of his or her sexual identity
A psychologically healthy person accepts the reality of his or her sexual identity
A psychologically healthy person accepts the reality of his or her sexual identity
2.
A psychologically healthy person accepts vines blooming on a rock wall
Touch them and itch when their mouth on someone's clit
is interchangeable I pretend I understand
what it means to be human putting oatmeal on poison ivy
Welcome small scoops of danger Welcome the hollow place
"Your chest feels solid" she says I am a gelatinous animal
under anyone's hands Walk with me into the garden
The animals can't line up by sex because there are so
If I were Adam I'd be so afraid of these divisions
3.
If I were Adam I'd be afraid my love of divisions
was a fetish for essentializing
(A psychologically healthy person accepts their kinks)
A psychologically healthy person crying "I think I see God" when I tip them over the edge
But this is not about my topping skills, but this about my topping skills
(Men of the FRC, I'd school you blow for blow)
Two psychologically healthy people holding each other close
thinking we, in all of nature, are simple
4.
A psychologically healthy person accepts their mortality
When a person dies the body begins to digest itself Will I be necro girl necro boy
Will it matter mysterious organisms rapidly emerge
assemble on decomposing mammal flesh cuddled by the microscopic
agents of death those shore-bound pirates lying in wait for the next shipwreck
There I'll be belly turned oyster Biologically normal persons of one sex cannot
become the other sex but I / they can decompose
the reality of what it means to be human is healthy body parts
eventually teeming with bugs to rebel against reality
believing the body rises again gender & neuro-circuitry intact
the physical condition of (our) (dead) bodies wizened strawberries , a slime trail
Instead of one clear reproducible light
Wren Hanks is a trans writer from Texas and the author of Prophet Fever (Hyacinth Girl Press) and Ghost Skin (Porkbelly Press). A 2016 Lambda Emerging Writers fellow, his recent work appears in Best New Poets 2016, Foglifter, Gigantic Sequins, The Wanderer, and elsewhere. He's the publicist for the Feminist Press and currently lives in Brooklyn. He tweets @suitofscales.