Girls being Boys

The Changeling
Judith Ortiz Cofer

As a young girl
vying for my father's attention,
I invented a game that made him look up
from his reading and shake his head
as if both baffled and amused.

In my brother's closet, I'd change
into his dungarees -- the rough material
molding me into boy shape; hide
my long hair under an army helmet
he'd been given by Father, and emerge
transformed into the legendary Ché
of grown-up talk.

Strutting around the room,
I'd tell of life in the mountains,
of carnage and rivers of blood,
and of manly feasts with rum and music
to celebrate victories para la libertad.
He would listen with a smile
to my tales of battles and brotherhood
until Mother called us to dinner.

She was not amused
by my transformations, sternly forbidding me
from sitting down with them as a man.
She'd order me back to the dark cubicle
that smelled of adventure, to shed
my costume, to braid my hair furiously
with blind hands, and to return invisible,
as myself,
to the real world of her kitchen.

I am sick of being sick

Pneumonia is so sucky...


My feeble attempt at NPM...sorry to you bibliophiles...currently tracking down a Judith Ortiz poem about crossdressing, as well as a super trashy, drag camp epic Disneyland on Acid...yum




Untitled

Before I awoke
Work was simply work
And stress was simply
Stress, and now that I
Am awake, a bright
Penny in a chipped dish,
The work is settling into
My new skin
My mind a fresh red button.

fun quizzes....why do we like them so much?

Your inner sex gender: Female

For you, sex is the best possible emotional connection. It's all about making your head spin. You think twice about having sex with a stranger, unless you think romance is in the air. And you choose comfort over novelty. You rather have sex you know you enjoy. This doesn't mean you aren't kinky... just that you choose your kinks rather carefully.

'What is your Inner Sex Gender?' at QuizUniverse.com

National Poetry Month: Father's Old Blue Cardigan

Sorry for the lag...been stressed out as of late: busy on campus, youngest has pneumonia...it's enough to make a girl tear her hair. And since most of the household management stuff falls into my lap, my nerves have been fricasee as of late...

Anyway off to beautiful words...Trying to celebrate this April Poetry Month Thang by scouring the world for GLBT (mostly T) poems about gender fuckery. This poem encapsulates some of the feelings I had when I began dressing as a young lad...wondering what feelings would arise when I played my mother in her long mirror. Though the author's experience is a sad one, it is another example of the power of empathy that crossdressing can offer.


Father’s Old Blue Cardigan

By Anne Carson


Now it hangs on the back of the kitchen chair
where I always sit, as it did
on the back of the kitchen chair where he always sat.


I put it on whenever I come in,
as he did, stamping
the snow from his boots.


I put it on and sit in the dark.
He would not have done this.
Coldness comes paring down from the moonbone in the sky.


His laws were a secret.
But I remember the moment at which I knew
he was going mad inside his laws.


He was standing at the turn of the driveway when I arrived.
He had on the blue cardigan with the buttons done up all the way to the top.
Not only because it was a hot July afternoon


but the look on his face—
as a small child who has been dressed by some aunt early in the morning
for a long trip


on cold trains and windy platforms
will sit very straight at the edge of his seat
while the shadows like long fingers


over the haystacks that sweep past
keep shocking him
because he is riding backwards.

A sigh

Personally ladies, this spring has been good, but psychically rough. Like it or not I am/was a latent trans woman, like many of my generation, mostly because of socio-political-technological reasons. Transwomen/men today benefit so much from the internet. Not that it is an excuse, but growing up in such a kudzu culture... it took me a while.

Geez, if I were a teenager now, dealing with these same issues, my life would have a different arc.

That's not to say my life to date isn't valid...it is. But everyone else views your lifestyle as a choice, not necessity. You know that ennui, trans people, how there's that fuzzy, gauzy past, our past sexuality, our past identity, past whatever, that exists, that acts as a standard to the growth of the trans personae, the true personae.

Regardless...a friend asked me today "What do you want from this self?" It was an old friend, a straight friend. "What does this voice sound like?" He meant the tone...and all I could say was aggressive, confident, proud.


And I thought about that. And what that meant.

And I hadn't thought about what I wanted, I was just too busy being me for the first time.

I came up with an answer, that may change...




My hobby is mirror.

Lipstick, rouge and heel
peel back my skin and skull cap
and like a goddess spring forth
into my bathroom,
my smoke ring
like a laurel
upon my gigantic pretty head.
From lips smack truth,
pink, or brown, or fuck hot red,

and black, deep pitch, and yes, I suppose

I am a freak
and showed up at the wrong address, the wrong party,
my real body somewhere else
doing whatever manila chore it does when it isn’t with me.
‘cause I mean who wouldn’t
want to be with me?

I be illusion, drum, and wail
give me a scarf I can make seas sick
with my pitch and bob.

And so what? The stork is not a smart bird,
after all, I am not weak, and though my smile
makes you sick, some clown
in a dress, some perv with the nerve,
you say, I am iron, to reforge myself,

to be iron is to destroy stone.







Note: Manila is meant to recall vanilla. Lately my girlie self has been more...aggressive...thus the diva turn in tone towards the end. In my small town I am very aware of how most stones (trans-phobics) react to difference. Down here, from my porch, I better be ready to back it up.

Ciao!

Chloe Prince's new social networking site

Chloe Prince's new social networking site can be accessed here.


Chloe's a doll...been following her transition for a while now and she has a lovely new site. Plus many wonderful pics...

National Poetry Month: Dystopic on 616

Trish Salah is a professor in Toronto, professor/author of gender/trans culture, politics, and literature. She is the author of Wanting in Arabic




dystopic on 616

i need to take a shower. i’m troubled by
increasingly distorted fanfictions, psychotic or melancholy,
with the loss of canon. i keep thinking there is a cure
for being awake that doesn’t involve fairies, pot or poutine.
i need to go to school. i am involved in
a memory relapse; i am particular about insults
i am aware of the i and troubled by it, possible worlds’
inflection, inflecting an i that leans towards
smothering, then purges. to generalize then, gross
conformity haunts narrower days in an inconveniently belated
montreal.