Claire Heinzerling
Another Trans Poem
i refuse to write another trans poem.
i will not write about my softening ridges;
Not a line about the silhouette i’ll chase
Until the day i die,
Nor about the woman who smiles back in knowing grace
From every dark windowpane.
And when her smile turns to leer,
i will not spill from my self-given wounds,
Silken and sheened,
Onto flat white page.
My womanhood is mine to keep, though i
May, from time to time, lose it among
Loose thoughts caught somewhere
Between carcass and ash.
i will admit to having written about my body
And the dresses draped over it
In the past–but no more.
i will lock those bright pinks, the frills i still mistake
For self, behind steel’s ice,
No longer to be taken out and played with
Whenever my pen sees fit.
Yes, I will only write. About blue storm. And
Sun-orange calm. The lifelike grays.
Of a lake not yet disturbed.
By willful stones. Or anxious toes.
Or the breath the breath the breath
Of starlight on my tongue.
Previously published by Powders Press
Remains
I check the toilet bowl to
see if my remains have spoiled.
instead they are perfect-clear, glistening and
still under the fan’s roar.
waking is its own battle–first with
body, then with sunlight.
it pays to keep a gun by the bed.
I check again. this
time they are rotting, conceding
in an orange-red fight with death.
I sink slightly deeper into light
and my father asks where I’ve been.
the next morning they are blue,
the tropical-neon shade of
lucky charms and powerade and guilt.
on my phone I find a picture of my cat
that must have been taken in
another life. she smiles at the camera.
at night they are quicksilver,
sleek as starlight. at
night they shine nothingness.
at night they are the insides
of a machine wanting to love.
I bring them outside. I bring them out
under cloud cover and hissing airplane
fuel. I bring them out and watch them drip
dripdripdrip onto water-loved grass
onto stale cement. I bring them out
because the world feels so lived-
in: the world feels so ready to escape
itself. I bring them out to ask the starful
sky, will you be my valentine?
I bring them outside and soon
they are
not
mine.
Take Out The Fucking Trash
Can you hear it?
The dishwasher, trying to forget last night’s dinner:
pasta with meatballs, because your lover
couldn’t stand another night of quesadillas,
and the whole time, you couldn’t stop wondering
whether the blue in her eyes
was ice or sky.
Can you hear it?
The beating heart that holds onto
your silk-strong shoulder.
It says to you, I know your secrets.
it’s love.
I won’t tell her, because she would rather
rest on your death-sick chest
than not rest at all.
Can you hear it?
Your phone’s ringing.
It’s your mom.
She’s thinking of you, or more
specifically, of the time she found your hands
strangling a kitchen knife,
wearing the shirt you wear
when you get this way,
listening to Nirvana, or something.
Can you hear it?
It’s Christina’s World: you know, that painting
where the girl is crawling through the field
and there’s no look on her face because
she’s facing away from you but the look on her face
says that there’s a world of desire and
it’s staring back at us,
daring us to say yes I do desire
and yes I do deserve
except you’re the woman in the painting
and the sound is the music of a rattlesnake in
the grass,
Claire Heinzerling is a trans writer living in Colorado. She loves writing because it reminds her to breathe.
Find Claire on Twitter @ClaireHeinzerl