I shared some poems on Vancouver Co-op Radio’s Wax Poetic with musical accompaniment by Glenna Garramone, you can listen to the radio show by clicking here.
Aug 27 2010
Who knew that being interviewed could actually be enjoyable?
Words Not Bombs rocks.
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Jun 23 2010
Packing
The one thing worse than chafing for days after an ignorant man has dissed me
or otherwise dismissed me due to my frequently feminine gender presentation
is that exact same situation when I’m hurt by another queer.
Someone who’s part of my community, who shares my oppression
in fact, I’m invested in their protection
because although they may be female-bodied they are much more masculine than I am
and so I totally understand that each day presents some degree of danger –
and I’m so sick of this.
Sick of explaining to unbelieving straights as well as gays in conversation and from the stage
that “The binary system falls short of many people’s realities,”
sick of remembering and respecting pronoun changes,
sick of trying to do my little bit to bend the edges of this repressive two-box system
to get more breathing room for you, and for me too
when so often, it seems, you choose to celebrate your hard-won second adolescence at a woman’s expense.
I don’t need you to hold the door for me, although I’ll thank you kindly when you do.
What I need is understanding that my gender is chosen
and every bit as complex
and deserving of respect, as your own.
And I know, it’s not as if there’s an abundance of positive male role models out there
from which to pick and choose.
But damn, don’t I wish that that could be a gift
my queer peers give to the dominant culture
along with turning assumptions about gender upside down, sideways and around,
the courage necessary to face down sexual shame and actually talk honestly about desire,
and a hundred and one fun safe and sexy uses for latex!
I don’t propose to try to deny anyone access to community.
I’m not about to present Lisa’s List of who’s worked on gender and sexuality
enough to join us here as thinking queers, but I would like to know:
What kind of responsibility rides with your expanded set of masculine privileges?
Who do you confine while you find new ground?
Has your girlfriend become a foil for your gender? (If so, bro, did she agree to that?)
…And do I hear you interrupting more often when wearing a binder?
I’ve been talking about this for a long, long time. Someone less stubborn might be discouraged by now.
So, whether you’re masculine-identified for a night, or embarking on a new life with or without hormones and surgery,
please believe me –
genderfuck is so much more hot
when you pack some analysis along with that cock.
Jun 23 2010
Super Goat Gets a Grip
having bruised her hooves
scaling several tall buildings a day
on the sheer strength of her own denial,
having hidden her insecurity
by extending generous forgiveness
to anyone who ever hurt her,
in the hopes that if she eased their guilt
they’d like her enough to be kind to her,
having repeatedly strained
at unsustainable rates
in one hundred ways
until careening into an internal limit,
surprising herself
almost as much as everyone else
by how abruptly she
…stopped…
super goat decided to try for a little humility;
finally unflinchingly faced her overwhelming fear
of being unloved,
made the choice to grow up,
and declared herself to no longer be a super hero.
she cheerfully recommended to those who reacted
with dismay that they go fuck themselves,
and then
she tied up her cape between two trees
and stretched out happily in her new hammock
to sleep for a week.
Feb 20 2010
tell it to me again
intuition rarely uses full sentences
prefers single syllables
says yes/no/fast/slow/less/more
won’t move or speak from within a leash
brushes long strong whiskers against the edge of a strange idea
knows where to go swimming
finds its way through fog in the northern quarter at night.
intuition can smell a lie
and will shout with incoherent fury at me
for 3 years until i finally grasp what it points at.
intuition’s brave, blunt, unapologetic
accepts reality as it is
then enters a quiet room to meet imagination
expands to fill the stillness
picks up my pen
and writes a poem on its own.
* originally published online on december 25th, 2008
Feb 14 2010
the games begin
There are those who enjoy mass demonstrations and rallies. Some people find them empowering, they say “solidarity” and mean it – they’re changing the world. For some it’s also an artistic outlet, fuel for creative collaboration on a truly awesome salmon puppet – I respect all of these people. But, I confess I’m not really them. And then there are those who like to shout, who have a lot of anger, at the state, or in general: alpha male behind a bullhorn, instead of in the boardroom. I tolerate these people, but I tend to think of them as inarticulate assholes. I really don’t like loud noises.
I also dislike breathing clouds of marijuana or tobacco smoke; I get headaches and nausea. But. Being comfortable is not the point of a demonstration, and I do attend on occasion, willingly if not enthusiastically, and especially when they tell us we can’t. Can’t protest outside of the designated zone, can’t carry an anti-Olympic sign – at these times, it becomes necessary.
I wanted to feel good about disrupting the route of the torch, and that we accomplished that without any violence. But I had a distinctly creepy experience walking towards the VAG last Friday. You know when you cross the border into the States and not much has visibly changed except from kilometers to miles, but then you realize that there are flags everywhere, and even though you know to expect it, it still evokes this kinda amused/incredulous/weird creeped-out feeling?
I had that exact feeling, in canada, last Friday. Walking past hundreds and hundreds of Olympic fans with Olympic scarves pins hats & backpacks, carrying and wearing canadian flags, with the maple leaf temporarily tattooed on cheeks and forehead – this in particular gets to me, by the way, because I can remember when maple was the trees I climbed whenever I had the chance, and an annual autumn display of a hundred glorious shades of red, yellow, orange and deep deep purple-maroon in southern Ontario, not this particular branding of what is somehow passing as patriotism. I almost expected one of them to accuse me of not supporting the troops. I’d thought my cynicism was thick enough to protect me, I thought I was past the point of disappointment. I thought I had accepted the fact that, to a lot ordinary canadians, the Olympics are a fun party to attend or just watch on TV, and they are pointedly disinterested in the compellingly obvious connections between things like Olympic corporate funders and environmental destruction, the tar sands and genocide, growing poverty and the social control industry, a crushing public debt and the cost of fake snow…but apparently there’s still room for shock in me.
In fact, if I were inclined to speak of a country as a person, instead of a collectively agreed upon narrative created by arbitrary lines on a map, I might say that canada hurt my feelings last Friday, and it made me so, so angry. Before I knew it, I had just about become one of those inarticulate assholes, staring back at red-leaf-decorated zombies attending the games…all I could think to say was Grow A Brain. Grow A Fucken Brain.
