hot take. definitely ripping off miller oberman—his piece "On Trans", which you should read, but maybe also his piece "Joy". of course the joke is that cis prople arent real. more of my work
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i want to be bones twirling in the sky
has a breathless, singsong free-write feel to it, and I adore. I'll need to read it many more times. is so sweet — maple syrup not too much maple drizzled over autumn oak leaves so crunchy-light with arterial honey fossilized in a season going crunch between the grinding molars of some small child (that's me!) jumping in a big ol' raked-up pile at the bottom of the hill where the soccer field doesn't quite begin but it's not the playground anymore so nobody minds if you say a whole leaf pile is mine! mine! — doesn't ask you to share (but you'd share anyway, just don't take leaves from it like treasures, keepsakes, don't make the leaves more than the pile).
-Styg
What is life if not the contrast between what has been and what will become?
This poem feels really big to me, and I really struggle to grasp it. But I'm going to try because it does feel right there slightly outside of my grasp. It feels like one of the characters in this poem is trans or some sort of gender non-conforming and the other is cis, but I really can't tell which is which (of course I could be completely wrong in constructing a binary here, but I do feel like a specific difference is being drawn between the two individuals).
I think it would make the most sense if the speaker is gender non-conforming and the 'you' is cis. The speaker appears to admire the person this poem is addressed to, wishing they got what the addressee has. But it's not negative, because they do get to have it, the trans speaker does get to have what the cis person does, and both of them see that as beautiful. They look at the fire and see one, even though getting there took two different paths at the end of the day they are one and the same and their skeletons will hang in the sky together.
Warning: I probably have no idea what I'm talking about and I'm way off. Thanks for getting me to think, carolynn, good poem as always +1
Edit: God I'm even less confident in my interpretation seeing your edit to your author post lol. Ah well
as i mentioned in private i do think i've misled you! or that the speaker of the poem has, who is obsessed with this sense of perfect coincidence and purpose, who seems to be very happy and comfortable surrounded by unassailable fantasies—like that the ocean can be drunk—and who attributes perhaps too much to a figure of the One. i do definitely intend for the initial read to draw the reader into this gentle domestic/natural scene and then have the question "where is the cisgender?" destabilize it in some sense, but in light of ur comment (with some really lovely interpretations that i think should absolutely be in competition with others and that i Should have no right to affirm or deny) i've edited the piece just a bit to hopefully make it harder to take the speaker's sense of stability and wonder at its word.
i do think your read on the speaker being trans and the addressee being some cis object of a somehow positive and loving envy is true to my intent nonetheless (at least in some sense)! i kind of imagined the speaker as being myself from a cisgender past or alternate present when that system made me feel like maybe i was going somewhere.
thanks again for reading i'm always glad to share thoughts with each other :>
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