WHEN GOVERNOR ABBOTT DECRIES GENDER-TRANSITIONING AS CHILD ABUSE

by Remi Recchia

 

I call my doctor and tell him, I don’t want to be a man 

today. Detransitioning? No. I mean I don’t want to be alive 

 

in a place that thinks my heart strings are puppeteered, that I am  

a marionette genetically modified for road rage, sex drive, alcoholic 

 

tendencies. That I don’t want the pharmacy tech to stare extra 

hard at my driver license on a routine prescription pickup. 

 

That I don’t want to blush when drunk friends ask: 

tampon or jockstrap? Because they’re not asking, are they? 

 

The dive-bar dust on their credit cards will remind them later 

that yes, it was rude, but they were drunk, and they have a right 

 

to know who their friends are, their dates are, what I 

will expect them to suck or fuck. 

 

Greg Abbott isn’t asking why the children want to change, 

he’s asking why they’d want to look like that. 

 

Like a man in a dress or a woman who’s been mutilated 

from the inside out, breasts carved off by a butcher’s 

 

knife or by a tree when she lurched in the wrong direction 

at the shout of “timber,” wearing, presumably, a flannel  

 

button-up under a leather jacket. Like a turtle without its shell 

or a ring-tailed lemur without its jewels. But if Greg Abbott 

 

asked me, I’d tell him, what kind of parents agree to HRT 

in the first place? What kind of parents say, yes, I trust you 

 

to grow a beard you won’t regret? Maybe our mothers  

are lovely and our fathers are brave, but I have always been alone 

 

and I have always made my own choices. I’d tell Greg Abbott 

that sometimes a law is just a word and abuse is a red 

 

herring for an onslaught of transphobic legislature, an actual 

school of fish with teeth and fish with fins, and who, now, 

 

can win against the slaughter.     

Remi Recchia is a trans poet and essayist from Kalamazoo, Michigan. He is a Ph.D. candidate in English-Creative Writing at Oklahoma State University. He currently serves as an associate editor for the Cimarron Review and Reviews Editor for Gasher Journal. A four-time Pushcart Prize nominee, Remi’s work has appeared or will soon appear in Best New Poets 2021, Columbia Online Journal, Harpur Palate, and Juked, among others. He holds an MFA in poetry from Bowling Green State University. Remi is the author of Quicksand/Stargazing (Cooper Dillon Books, 2021); his forthcoming chapbook Sober will be published with Red Bird Chapbooks in 2022. 

DAKOTA CLEARING

by Peleg Held

On February 1st, several water protectors established the "Last Child Camp" in exercise of the 1851 and 1868 Fort Laramie Treaties. In response the Morton County Sheriff, National Guard, and armed mercenaries raided the camp arresting over 70+. —Winona LaDuke Honor the Earth, February 3, 2017

A man in holster and badge parts the fabric
of a Tipi. He is looking but doesn't see
the enemy or the polls as they converge
over his head. Behind him, his people come
as they have always come, with the license
of force and numbers to clear the land.
Warriors wait, laughing, chanting, bound
together by song and the smoke of their fire.
Under the earth, cold iron rings the emptiness
as a black snake dreams of the last child
on the land and how good it will be to be full.


Peleg Held lives in Portland, Maine with his partner and his dog Emitt. There is also the semi-feral cat, Smudge. And a kid or two. pelegheld(at)gmail.com.

WHILE ON FACEBOOK

by Andrea Murphy

I’ve become obsessed
scrolling and clicking
to read the obscene
blood splattered justifications
of racism in blue,
in blue with
bullets and badges.

One says: “Black Lives
Matter. Blah, blah, blah.”
Another says, “Kill the
blue rat bastards killing
us.”
SCROLL
CLICK
BREATHE

And I am black scrolling
And I am blue scrolling
And I am filled with
the numbers
of the mentally ill. Killed.
Of little black boys
with toy guns. Killed.
Scrolling and clicking
in terror, I beg my
husband to be a
loyal puppy,
docile dog when in a car
with expired tags
or broken tail light
or when caught making an
illegal turn. We have
a five year old daughter.
He’s sworn to wear
his license as dog tags.
SCROLL
CLICK
BREATHE

They dog-tag toes
of black men at
the morgue five times
more often than whites
killed by blue men.
SCROLL
CLICK
BREATHE
“Don’t shoot;
hands up.”
SCROLL
CLICK
BREATHE
And gasp
And grieve
at death and hate because
I am obsessed with the
loss of our humanity.



Andrea Murphy is a fifteen year educator, who is currently on hiatus. She has taught English at both high school and community college. During this hiatus, she has decided to focus on her passion for creative writing and is an emerging poet in the St. Mary’s of California MFA program. Recently, she published a poem on Moonglasses.com. If asked what she plans to do with her degree, she would tell you that she intends to enjoy it.  She loves the lyrical expression of language and has made it her primary intention of study as she writes about family, legacy, illness, and blackness from a “womanist” perspective.