On the movement of bodies, or, the transgender celestial

I have a poem in the latest issue of Voiceworks, #111, Riff. This poem is a lot of things: a love letter, an exercise in surreality, and a conversation between binary and nonbinary forms of trans identity. It draws on ancient Sumerian, Greek, and Egyptian astronomical theories, including those of Anaxagoras, Anaximander, Aristotle, Empedocles, Thales, and Ptolemy.

You can buy the issue here.


 

my body is a disc floating on an endless ocean

gently orbiting the distant island of your body

 

daylight reigns over my body and night over

your body black and absent of suns or stars

 

you are an immense vault studded with tiny

points of perfect light in which i am enclosed

 

the surface of my skin is much colder than

yours which is formed out of blazing metal

 

your body is a binary system while my body

continues to resist all binary classification

 

i am growing into a great old oak tree whose

questing branches twine around and into you

 

my body is no longer capable of sustaining life

and yet is still capable of sustaining your body

 

i retain my own field of gravity which is several

times heavier than the lighter gravity you exude

 

i am suspended in endless space watching you

plummet inevitably into a vast and infinite void

 

your body is a chariot wheel of mist-shrouded

fire encircling the hollow cylinder of my body

 

my body revolves not around the sun as initially

thought but in fact revolves around your body

 

the death of my body approaches rapidly but i

have every hope that your body will live forever

 

i am constructed from four elements while you

are formed of a single fifth and mythic element

 

you are a quintessence of luminiferous aether and

i simply consist of classical earth air water and fire

 

your existence is a scientific marvel while i am

considered to be a mathematical impossibility

 

my body is doubted by philosophers of antiquity

whose texts questioned the veracity of your body

 

unbeknown to many my body is not a flawless

sphere like yours but rather very slightly elliptical