Cover illustration by Mitch Green
I’ve known Gene Gazelka through Instagram and the typosphere for several years now. He uses a Smith-Corona portable and a Royal standard to write fiction, poetry, and poetic snippets that get posted around town, making life a bit more interesting for those who may run into them. Gene is a trans man who’s been through a lot and turned it into words.
Last year Gene published Bodies in Transition, a collection of poems that each make me stop and reflect. Almost all seem autobiographical. Some are a bit cryptic, others tell the truth without adornment. Some have passages in prose, others make full use of line breaks and the arrangement of words on a page. Gene writes about love, sex, surgery, justice, and injustice.
If you lean left, or you’re not straight and cisgender, you’re more likely to empathize with these poems. If that doesn't describe you, I still recommend this collection as a trip into the experience of someone unlike you. As Gene truly says, “they are worthy of love just as I am.”
It’s not words you ask for, or
to be taken
Yours has been a life of
pain and you seek
care, to be seen,
to be appreciated,
to be re-wrapped
and re-gloved,
for your knuckles
are bloody
You do not have
to be the womb to
the world
It is okay to kiss
the sky when it is
at its darkest
Gene reminds us that
the body is a home and some are lucky
enough to walk safely in it
—while others are not. For them, it is precious to be acknowledged and welcomed as representatives of the gender they desire:
The first time
my name pronounced “Eugene”
from another person’s lips
lit me up
like a holiday festival
Why do so many people take pleasure in cruelty toward those who already feel so much pain? Why do some politicians choose to encourage this cruelty by scapegoating a small and endangered population? Why are so many so bent on reinforcing images of masculinity and femininity that boil down to silly stereotypes, such as the one that Gene quotes in a poem?
Boy: (n) a noise with dirt
on it
I read this line this morning. Later in the afternoon, while strolling through a thrift store, I saw its counterpart on a sign:
How tyrannical and how insecure to insist that girls can’t get dirty, boys can’t get glittery, or bodies can’t flow from one gender to another. Let’s let each individual struggle toward their own form of expression and desire. Gene makes the point with a metaphor that my readers should enjoy:
Each typewriter requires
a different stroke
One must be replaced with a lower
case L on my Royal and Smith-Corona
I have no exclamation point
You cannot see my emotions
Feel the rhythm
Jam
Adjust
Hear the clacking of the keys
Connect to the physical
There is the ink,
the fine print,
my love
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DCD116L8
https://www.instagram.com/with_a_gg_/
https://www.instagram.com/g.gazelka.author/
Dear Gene,
ReplyDeleteThose who take pleasure in being cruel to those who are different from them usually lack one thing you have in bucket fulls: courage.
What a lovely post. Unexpected in a pleasant way. Thank you!
ReplyDelete"How tyrannical and how insecure..." - yes! This insistence that everyone must be the same, behave the same, think the same, is tyrannical and insecure. How insecure must one be to think that how someone else perceives themselves is somehow dangerous. To whom exactly? Yourself? Kids? Society?
As a cisgendered, straight white male, that seems ridiculous in the extreme. I'm comfortable enough in my own gender & sexuality that I have no issues with those of others. And my kids are lucky to see examples such as Gene, to show them they can be who they need to be.
Dr. Philisms:
ReplyDeleteWhen you point a finger at someone else you have 3 other pointing back on yourself.
Or
When you don't like someone, what is it you see in that other person that you do not like in yourself.