say something nice now.

This body is beautiful simply because it exists. After the mad, the starving, the sliced open-and-out-of memories, the question marks and mangled screams, this body still wakes.

Today, when you are feeling like the wind is too pushy, bend your way toward a moment of kindness.

The moon is polyamorous and will never run out of energy to love someone new. Give it your phone number. Invite it in. Its glow will remind you how illuminated you are.

Bridges are not just meant for jumping. They guide you toward the other side. From Brooklyn to Manhattan. From one borderland to another. Even with your fear of heights, look down, but remain on your level. It is a curious and brave thing to remain sturdy and steady.

Now, you can love. Now, you can love because you are gathering up letters beside your bed that remind you how necessary you are. These letters exist on paper and etched in your skin. Your silences have grown muscular. With tongue and vocal chord. Your silences no longer want to remain still. Now, you can speak up and love without restrictions.

Give up your hiding spaces. You deserve to be seen. In whatever form you take up and in as many ways as possible.

This body is beautiful because it exists. Because after all this time, it still asks questions and takes questions and has even has a collection of answers now.

 

connector.

Wrists are meant for reaching. Some wrists try to cut themselves off body, while others twist their way inside bands of time. Wrists fall deeply in love with palms, create weld of imprisonment. Wrists permit fingers to roam, and when they coil around some thing, wrists want a full report of texture. Wrists are depressive and dramatic. Some wrists fit inside other humans, while others are too shy to make a commitment. Wrists are romantic when they gather up stains and some wrists are trouble-makers. And some wrists so desperately want to travel, they detach. Wrists are hungry in the way they swallow ink and scars. Some wrists are photogenic, while others prefer to hide beneath sleeves. Wrists prefer you address them as joint connectors or cuffs or carpus. Some wrists are bisexual, while others prefer not to choose a side. Wrists are without appetite or judgment of body type. Some wrists are called dainty while others hold onto corpulence. Wrists can be wallflowers and comics; some wrists are nudists. There are wrists who are masochists, maneuvering themselves into places where they are forced into stillness. These are the wrists to stay in contact with. These are the wrists with stories.

clarity.

“i think i’m who i think i am” 

This was found on a wall type-written on fabric on a street called Dean in Brooklyn on a walk beside a poet who noticed it at almost the same time and while the poet photographed, I thought of all the ways these eight words mean something.

Perhaps one often wonders: what am I, really?

Perhaps there is a sense of: What is felt is what one really is.

I’ve got all these phantom feelings. Ghost gender. I think I am something invisible to others.

Several evenings ago, a human came up to me after a performance and they asked what led me to what I wrote. They wanted to know who it was about. I say: me.

They immediately looked at my chest and I tried not to notice. I was unbound, yet covered by shirt and vest. They said: But I don’t understand. What you wrote about….well….I’d have expected you to have bound your breasts or something.

My chest inhaled deeply at that moment. I began to defend my (momentarily) unbound chest, but stopped.

I announced again: It was about me. Bodies are complicated and don’t always need to defend inconsistencies. 

I think I’m (still figuring out) who I think I am. I think I may always be. I think there is something deeply impactful about giving ourselves permission to change our minds about how our bodies/gender/heart/voice/skin/mind/… make us feel. I think I may never figure all of me out. But that should never stop us from continuing the translation.

where are you traveling toward

Transgender: An umbrella term (adj.) for people whose gender identity and/or gender expression differs from the sex they were assigned at birth. The term may include but is not limited to: transsexuals, cross-dressers and other gender-variant people….Transgender people may or may not decide to alter their bodies hormonally and/or surgically. (“GLAAD Media Reference Guide”) 

It isn’t quite enough to collect words and press them to skin as an announcement of all the things we are and have been and might be and question. Words that mark one’s gender and the blur that has begun to birth its way out. It is also about taking the time to take these words apart and search out their gestures and movements. 

Here is the thing. There are gaps between bodies and what is learned and what we need to learn about. We search shelves in order to understand what keeps shifting in us and around us. What is unclear should be questioned.

Before, bodies were left to disrobe against a vocabulary that was not always their own. The impact of owning an alphabet that feels as honest as one’s skin can be. The necessity to find a sound that sounds like what one feels like….

Trans Bodies, Trans Selves is a comprehensive, reader-friendly guide for transgender, gender non-conforming folk and trans allies, with each chapter written by transgender or genderqueer authors. Inspired by Our Bodies, Ourselves, the classic and powerful compendium written for and by women, Trans Bodies, Trans Selves is widely accessible to the transgender population, providing authoritative information in an inclusive and respectful way and representing the collective knowledge base of dozens of influential experts.

This is not just a book; It is a movement of history, a clarification of voices, a reconfiguration of gender on a body. Each full-figured chapter takes the reader through an important transgender issue, such as race, religion, employment, medical and surgical transition, mental health topics, relationships, sexuality, parenthood, arts and culture, and so much more. There is no text as thorough as this. Hopefully this is just the beginning of many more books such as this.

Get your shelves ready!

 

 

Tonight: A Performance of Many Poets!

Poetry Teachers NYC is excited to celebrate an evening of poetry, movement and mixed media performances tonight.

Teachers: Todd Anderson, Thomas Fucaloro, Caitlin Gill, Dan Dissinger, Aimee Herman, and Megan DiBello and their students get to present their pieces created from various workshops. 

This will be one of the most unique performances you will ever go to! With a mix of code poetics one minute, to collaborative poetics, to movement through the space. There is nothing like it!

This event is free and open to the public!

Come to The Pomegranate Gallery  137 Greene St. / NYC    6-9pm

We are honored to have our featured Poet, Actor, Singer, MC, Producer, All around GREAT person always, Shawn Randall.

For more info:   https://www.facebook.com/events/1445443312368894/?ref=22

mourning the innards of what was.

“I said nothing for a time, just ran my fingertips along the edge of the human-shaped emptiness that had been left inside me.” 
― Haruki Murakami, Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman

Drink in all this silence. If we are to search out each others’ scientific notations, then it should really be called bellow.

Decide when you want to say goodbye. You lose parts of you all the time. Flakes of skin leave evidence of where you were everyday on every surface.

This hair is deathly, so might as well drench it in the brightest hues to compete with the vitamins found in sun.

What is left behind can also be titled: love letters to the cement of city.

Take a deep breath. Inhale the shards of overwhelm. Step away. Walk back. Trace the outline of shadows steaming open skin. Try not to question the gaps. All that is here is also a part of there.

Sshhhh. Hear that? Keep listening until you can sort through the disconnect and connect what asks to be understood.

 

 

Tonight: Performance at Dixon Place

I’m deeply excited to perform at the International Women’s Art Salon at Dixon Place and celebrate the theme of body hair (something I know quite a bit about…..).

Come to this free show featuring other talented folks in the disciplines of literature, dance, theatre and music.

Dixon Place / 161 Chrystie St. NYC / 7-8pm

a dialogue between two lovers.

 –What color is it.  

–Yellow dusting like tea leaves in Autumn.  

–Why does the moon only appear when you look for it.  

–When I climbed into the room that night, I saw you drenched in burgundy and smelling of cherry pits.  

–When do you leave.  

–I hitched a ride on a bus powered by wind.  

–Can this be our song.  

–Slow drip of rain slipped through clouds against the dirt of your window. Or the suction of your skinny against my heft.  

–Remember the time you curled your hips and climbed into me like buckets of ivy poured onto brick and our kisses were like stepping into a campfire. All that ember and soar of orange rinds called flames swaying.  

–No. But I can assure you that tomorrow is Sunday and I will do my best to still love you even though it does mark the end of this. 

counting up the shards of remain

“This poetry. I never know what I’m going to say. I don’t plan it. When I’m outside the saying of it,I get very quiet and rarely speak at all.” 
― Rumi, The Essential Rumi

Arithmetic is easy because when you forget what comes next, you can use your fingers to remind you how much you have.

As a child, I counted dots on the ceiling because I wanted to leave my body alone.

As a child, I noticed the skinny fabrics sewed into themselves to create something called trousers or shirt.

As a child, I didn’t realize my body would be following me for this long.

As a poet, I recognize the moment I have nothing left to say is when I’ve finally reached the path toward an answer.

 

Tonight: A Performance of Gender Exploration.

Tonight, I attach placards to body and question the ways in which gender can be experimented on the body.

This is an exciting, new series of drag & burlesque performances by the Brooklyn-born NYC-based drag alliance Switch N’ Play and their special guests for the evening, JZ Bich and  Queer-E Sugar  (my performance alter-ego)! 

Come to Brooklyn and be a part of this highly entertaining, thought-provoking night.

Branded Saloon  603 Vanderbilt Ave.  Brooklyn, NY
$5 admission
Doors @ 9:00 PM, show @ 9:30 PM