Detail from the cover of Monster Beauties.
An op-ed by by Sampson Spadafore
There’s a certain sense of dread being a trans person in the United States. In no time at all, we are seeing just how swiftly and easily false narratives are being spread about trans people and used to justify our dehumanization. Journalist Imara Jones put it well on The Tend Podcast when she said, “Trans people are a perfect population to road test authoritarianism in the United States because it’s such a small group of people that you have convinced other people that they shouldn’t care about.” Authoritarians know their policies and practices are unpopular, so they have to strip away who is considered “American” in order to maintain their power. Trans people are the perfect population to figure out how to strip everyone’s rights away.
But, just like Jude Marx’s poem below, which won the Trans Poetics Archive anthology contest, I should want to survive. In these difficult times, I’m continually reminded that the majority of people don’t know a trans person, or have never met a trans person, let alone heard our stories from our own mouths. What I’ve seen through my work with t love smith and the Trans Poetics Archive is the power of telling our stories to change people’s hearts and minds, to break open something within them, and allow new discoveries of self to be born.
Marx writes, “To be here, I did what I had to do. Survive, that self inside myself said.” Even with all the horrible things happening to trans folks, from legislation to internal migrations to murders, I am still trans. I have no desire to detransition, to hide, to cut ties with all the wonders and loves that have been brought into my life because I am who I am.
I’m grateful for the Transcendence Poetry Festival, organized by the Trans Poetic Archive and happening May 20-25. Our survival is dependent on listening to the “want,” as Marx put it. Even amongst our grief and rage and fear, we want — to gather, to laugh, to connect. We want a better life for ourselves and each other.
The Trans Poetics Archive is launching Maine’s first ever trans poetry anthology, Monster Beauties, at SPACE on May 20. You’ll hear from poets published in the book, including contest winner Jude Marx, and enjoy performances, raffles and live painting. The rest of the festival is full of workshops, readings, panels, and special events with trans poets, scholars, and creatives. The full schedule is at transpoeticsarchive.org.
I Should Want to Survive
by Jude Marx
after Safia Elhillo
In the drought, the soil I
dug smelled like it should:
salt, stone, a fallow want.
Meaning, I went out to
the night garden, I wished to survive. I didn’t see moon over mesa. To
me, it was the cicadas I’d outlive, how they’d cling, stuck to my
hair. My softest parts in particular. No stars, only monster beauties
haunting the shadows. I
dug, a tickle of terror. Should
have listened to that want–
no stars, silver pulse to
run. Night was a thing to survive. Its origin: summer days so long
you think they’ll be enough
to keep out the smell, to
abate the scream of coyote, forget your own throat. If ever
you find yourself in the wanting,
let it be a coming to
terms. Here I’ll be
that darkness, touched.
I smell wood, think it
should be pine outside the window. Want, or fear, in this desert heat. To be here, particles of myself must survive, salty and sticking
to my armpits, bed sheets. I’ll
outlive these memories. Outlive my own skin cells, texture of
particular terrors. Stained bras. Beauties. Someone else’s skin.
I smell freshly laid asphalt, think it should find its own melt in August. Want, or fear, or sweat stinging my eyes. To be here, I did what I had to do. Survive, that self inside myself said. Long nights in the heat of dreams. Enough, that self inside myself said. To be here, I tried years to
forget, but I still longed for ecstasy, my ever-living particles
wanting myself anew, wanting to conjure a homecoming, to
be back in the pines,
touched like before.
Note: “I Should Want to Survive” is a golden shovel (two ways) of Safia Elhillo’s “Isha, New York City.”
