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Nothing Much May 2015
Purple is often misunderstood 

People confuse it with pink or blue 

They cannot comprehend change

The synthesis of something new

Purple has been picked to pieces

Analyzed with Pantone paint chip cards

The public is vexed, this defiance of ***

Twirled around by color guards

They say that violet delights have violent ends
That from this “choice,” there’s no return

But they’re the ones who set us aflame

And we, in their triumph, burn
This is so childish ****
Nicole Nov 2018
I walk around these places
Trans-centric spaces
Yet I don't feel like I belong
I know that
I look like them
And based on my reading
I feel like them too
Though I still have this sense
That I somehow do not count
I am not quite enough
I feel without a place
Maybe because last time
I was at a trans art show
And my art lives in words
Not in images on canvas
Just another piece of me
That doesn't quite feel
Real enough or
Good enough
To be taken seriously
And I know
I know
This all boils down to
The way I treat myself
But I'm trying
I'm trying
Some things just take time
aeoxi Nov 2015
I often find my heart lies with the lads
And I find I related more than my body should
And other days I find I align with what my mother would be proud of

The confusion sickens me    
I feel like a freak
A shapeshifter in a circus
One who crowds gather to gawk at
It feels like they stare and mock my absurdity
It rips me apart to feel so different

And I have been told that it is for attention
But please know that no one would wish this confusion on themselves only to be looked at with disdain
I am me and that is simple and plain
an old poem of mine
L Jun 2021
"What do you mean, when you say 'angel'?"
"What do you mean?"
"I mean why do you call me that. What does that word mean to you?"

"You know what it means."

"Sometimes I think I do."

"It means dark thing. Because there's a violence to it. Because it's hard to see. Like looking at the body in the distance- the thing standing between the trees, with only the faint glow of the moon illuminating its face."

"You think angels are dark?"

"I think angels are mysterious. You know they're there, but that's it. You think you know what they are, what they look like, but you're incapable of grasping their image."

"So, what does that look like?"

"It looks like everything. And nothing. Total darkness, blinding light."

"Sounds.. overwhelmingly incomprehensible."

"That's why it looks like different things to different people. A woman, a man, the recurring nightmare from your childhood. Some people think it looks wrong. But to an angel, there is no wrong way to have a body."

"Now why does that sound familiar?"

"I think an angel looks like a sword. Like the terrifying indifference of nature, and the undying, righteous rage of a person with a good heart. All and none, never wrong in their being."

"And this is what you call me?"

"Yes. This is what I call you.
My darling mystery. My dark thing.
My angel."
Hale Salafia Apr 2014
Gender is a ****.
Now bear with me, I don’t mean it in a bad way
I mean it as gender is elusive
Gender is tricky
Maybe with my words I should be more picky
But that’s not the point
The point is gender is something I cannot hope to begin to understand

Maybe gender is a universe
And within it we are all stars
Or maybe gender is an ocean
Not quite the Dead Sea where everything floats
And not quite everywhere else where everything sinks
But somewhere in between
And within it we are all jellyfish trying to string together a coherent stream of consciousness that somehow makes sense

And-see?
It’s getting away from me
I used to think gender was a binary
Male, female, *****, ******
Everything coincides so we all fit into this dichotomy
But that leaves no room for Alex who is sometimes Alex and other times Cassandra
Or Sasha who is somehow both at once
Or me who lays claim to no label, because all of them throw up a red light

There is one thing I do know as fact
Pronouns are not a privilege
They are a right

They, them, their:
Singular gender nonspecific pronouns
A customer came into the store today and bought twelve packs of gum
I didn't know what was on their mind, but
Maybe they wanted to kiss their lover full on the mouth while an orchestra of taste crescendoed around them
Caleb came into class today with two cupcakes
One for them and the other for their best friend who hadn’t shown up in two weeks
Claiming “She’ll be here today, don’t you worry”
And the rest of us lapsed into silence, knowing she was never coming back

She, her, hers
No longer will I suffer in silence as those I care most for
Call me something I am not
I am not your daughter, I am your child
I am not your sister, I am your sibling
I am not a girl
I am a nonbinary
I know it makes no sense
But if you just listen you might be able see
To escape the past tense
And start living in the future with me

No longer will we stay quiet
Duct tape over our mouths as we are locked behind closed doors
Buried beneath accusations of
Transtrender
Genderspecial
“You’re just pretending”
No longer will we stay silent
The wrong pronouns whipping our bodies into submission

It
Is not a pronoun
*******
Is not a compliment

You sit in the audience groaning
When will this queer shut up and go home
Isn’t it enough that we acknowledge your existence
But you don’t
I cannot count the times I have been misgendered
I cannot count the times I have wanted to speak up but didn’t
Knowing I would not be taken seriously

Now I will not be silent until there are no more stories of
Schoolyard oppression
Trans suicides caused by a “lesson”
I will scream myself hoarse until
Trans women can walk the streets in safety and
Bathroom means bathroom not
Execution
Remember this
As we are forgotten by our cis siblings
As we are told we don’t exist
As you, the cis  in the front row
Realize
That your daughter at home
May not be your daughter
At all
Just a poem born out of my frustration with gender
- Apr 2016
Mozart,
deaf,
died, eventually.

Picasso, pervert, died; Whitney, Winehouse, drugs, dead; Elvis, Methamphetamine, died

(on the toilet).

Van Gogh,
missing an earlobe,
died.

Plath,
head in an oven,
in front of her kids,
Woolf
Patron saint of insanity, I guess
waded into a river and-

River. River Phoenix. Drugs.

Natalie Merchant wrote that song about him in 1995.

Flash forward.
Me, twenty-one, drunk.
Proprietor of a collection of lackluster poems.
Sold their small, nonbinary soul to the Devil
in exchange for a fortune,
gone.
Written to be a spoken word piece
sarah crouse Jul 2020
My gender can change at the flip of a switch
They say it's impossible They say it's just a glitch
They ask if I'm male, female or non-binary
I'm all three I'll tell them finally

that's when They start to frown
and look at me like I'm a clown
"you can't have all three you must choose one!"
"the science doesn't support it, ***."

how do you explain it then
when my gender decides to flip again
when I go from someone who loves herself
to someone who can't look at himself
when I can't stand to be either gender
I refuse to stand by and be a pretender

Is it too much to ask for you to respect me?
To let me be myself, to let me be free?
To ask me what my pronouns are
when you see me at a bar?

my gender is mine you will not correct it
you will not make me feel like a misfit
because I know who I am, what I am
there is no right answer to this exam

my gender is fluid
don't act like you're clueless
because I don't fit in a neat little box
I don't care if you think its a paradox
because you don't get a say
in who I am today

I'm not nonbinary
I'm not trans
I'm fluid
Nicole Oct 2018
As I picture myself in the future
Through years of HRT
Small glimmers of excitement
Reflect off the walls of my heart
I rarely feel excitement these days
So this instance is important
I picture ****** hair and muscles
A deepened voice ands flat chest
The physical changes excite me
It's the social ones that scare me
I cannot imagine having male privilege
I cannot imagine not feeling objectified
I cannot imagine being read as a man
I was raised in a position of oppression
I am constantly stared at and made into
Nothing more than the prospect of my genitals
And yet,
One day,
It will no longer be that way
I'll just look like a basic white boy
And they'll have no idea
Except that I will not stay silent
I will not hide in the shadows
I am transmasculine and nonbinary
And I refuse to remain invisible
Alexandria Hope Jan 2018
You remember me from Highschool?
That was six years ago!
I'm nonbinary now, and I'm gay
Dropped out of college, moved to and from LA
I've had four separate jobs
With different levels of pay
I've fallen in and out of love,
In and out of more beds than I'd rather say
I've had cats, and Jury Duty,
I even changed religion, okay?
You remember me now? I don't remember me then!
So spare me the back-when, what can I even say?
It's been six years since Highschool
I don't remember a single day.
Remus Johnson Dec 2018
you ask me why I wear concealing clothes
the truth is that I am trying to cover up the paint that you have forced upon me
People have sewn in labels and stereotypes into my skin
it's a constant struggle as I try to rip out the stitching
the second it is gone more is put in place…
people think that its ok to deadname and misgender me
I'll tell you “its fine! I know its hard to get used to it, don't worry!”
but it's not fine, not at all
I am not some practice dummy you can use to practice what respect is and isn't
I am a human just like you, but I am not like you at all
you people who use being trans and nonbinary as a joke
you people who treat trans people as if we are mentally ill
you people who think its ok to disrespect what and who we are
you people who debate if we should be allowed to exist...
I am told to “just accept who I am”
those people don't get that I do, they are the ones who don't
I am here
I am real
and I am not you
Hi, this is my first poem here, I hope you enjoy! It is about the struggles of being trans in such I cis-normative world. This is an angry poem, but it’s not angry towards everyone. It’s only only addressing my anger to people who are like what the poem describes. I hope you all have a great day!
Sydney Noxon Nov 2018
The words I don’t yet have are ones to describe my trauma.
Too young to understand what happened, young enough to let it determine the course of my future relationships.
Consent wasn’t part of my vocabulary until I was an adult.
Coercion, drugs, NO...
If I speak these words into the universe, the actions become real, not a figment of my memory.
The trauma of being called a ****, a *****, “giving it up” too soon.
Feeling like a chewed piece of gum, tape that lost its stick, a crumpled piece of paper.
No one wants you if you’ve been used.
An experience for one in five women, yet still taboo.

The words I don’t yet have are ones to describe my queer identity.
Queer and trans but passing as female…
I’ll never “pass” as nonbinary because society sees nothing but male or female.
The struggle of questioning my gender, binding my chest, compressing on my lungs to force out the female.
The hourglass figure with the ******* and fat ***, thick thighs and that extra baby fat;
Female body down to the ******, but without the identity.
The pain of being called a ****, a ******, a “what’s between your legs?”,
having your body scrutinized, looking for your true identity.
Even in the trans community, there’s still a binary.

The words I don’t yet have are ones to describe a better future for us survivors.
The world I want is one where victims aren’t dismissed,
one where perpetrators are held accountable.
A college calendar isn’t proof of where he was that one night.
A president can’t just grab me by the *****.
A college ******’s swim career isn’t ruined because he “made a mistake.”

A radical thought would be to punish white men for their crimes.
I imagine a world where women and survivors don’t have to live with trauma,
don’t have to sit in court and face their perpetrator,
don’t have to relive their experience.
I imagine a world where male survivors aren’t ignored,
one where bisexual women aren’t more likely to experience ****** violence,
one where false accusations aren’t more of a concern than actual assault.

The words I don’t yet have are ones to describe a better future for queers.
The world I want is one where we can feel safe just for existing.
Activism doesn’t stop at marriage equality.
Bisexuality isn’t just “pick a side.”
Transgender people don’t need to disclose about their ****, *****, or other.

A radical thought would be to stop murdering black trans women.
I imagine a world where children are taught about the fluidity of sexuality and gender in school.
A world where parents don’t render their children homeless when they come out.
One where the closet is a place for your clothes, not a place to hide.
I imagine a world where your sexuality isn’t illegal,
where corporations don’t leech onto Pride for advertisement.

The words I don’t yet have are on the tip of my tongue,
but won’t cascade out of my mouth.
These words aren’t as free flowing as a waterfall,
but they’re as stagnant as a polluted lake.
Stuck in my throat, poisoning me,
until one day I scream them out into the void.
Nicole Oct 2018
Recently
The person I am now dating
Has come to terms with
His own trans identity
When we met he looked like a girl
But I could sense something within him
Something that resonated with
My own confusing feelings of gender
I asked him if he was trans
And at that point
He used the term nonbinary
I felt really excited about this
Finally there was someone like me
Who definitely was not a woman
But never felt like a man either
It was actually just a space in his journey
And he eventually came out to me again
It's my first time having a boyfriend
Since coming to terms with my queerness
And I love him deeply
But it has not been easy
Mostly because of the fact that
His transition has led me
To come face-to-face with
My own repressed identity
I have to address and recognize
All of my internalized transphobia
Most of which is aimed at the mirror
Fueled by years of denying myself
While I am definitely not a woman
And have never felt like a man
A lot of the time I feel like a boy
And hope that I will pass as such
I am finally ready to really listen to me
And the needs of my identity
To resume my rightful path
On the road to being myself again
John F McCullagh Aug 2018
By
MEG ELISON


I am the very model of a modern-age millennial,
I’ve got no cash, no house, no kids, and student debt perennial,
I know the rules of Tinder, and I’m not sold on monogamy
(For what it’s worth I think that stems from troubles ‘tween my mom and me)
I’m very well acquainted, too, with matters on the gender front
Myself, I am nonbinary; your labels I so do not want
Been disillusioned by my expectations with a lot o’ stuff,
The skills with which I am equipped for life are frankly not enough

My job prospects are hobbled by insistence on a living wage
Compete at entry level with some washed-up folks at twice my age
In matters of identity, employment and such petty ills
I am the very model of a modern-age millennial
Preorder the brand-new edition of the 2014 version of Boots Riley’s Sorry to Bother You—originally published with McSweeney's 48—and you'll receive your copy in September. Now a major motion...

On Monday I killed Applebee’s, on Tuesday I axed country clubs
I’ve never bought a diamond and I have no use for cashmere gloves
I quote dank internet memes in lieu of sharing actual thoughts
For earnestness has been passé since sometime in the early aughts
Still advertisers flail and fail to capture all my buying power
(The sum of which amounts to renting GIG cars by the paltry hour)
I’m subject to the bleak nostalgia of Generation Xers
And YouTube sensibilities adored by web-savvy youngsters
So I get to the take the blame for our country’s tanked economy
While fighting for my basic rights and ****** autonomy
In short I’m ****** in matters from the vital to the trivial
I am the very model of a modern-age millennial

In fact, when I know what is meant by "social justice warrior”
When I can tell at sight a fascist MRA conspirator
When such affairs are treated as unsolvable new mysteries,
I shake my head and wonder if the Boomers studied history
When I have learnt what progress has been made and then just flushed away
My generation’s best bet looks like playing Fortnite drunk all day
In short, if you’re angry right now and spewing aged white vitriol
Remember you created me: the modern age millennial

For I’m the generation raised upon the game Monopoly
You’re hoarding all the wealth and jobs and mock me for my poverty
So now I’m skewing socialist with discourse quite ungenial
Please check your local ballots for the modern-age millennial
I am reposting this good song parody by author Meg Elison as I am a fan of Gilbert and Sullivan
Boaz Priestly Nov 2017
you killed all the
nice queer people and all
that’s left is me
with my shaking hands
and cracking voice
and fear giving way to anger
and a tiredness that nestles
ever deeper into my bones

and monday the 20th is
the 18th transgender day of remembrance
where the community mourns all
of its trans and nonbinary and genderfluid
and gender nonconforming siblings
because they were killed for
daring to be themselves
in a world that would rather
bury their dead sons and daughters
than have a child who changed their
name and gender marker
to the right ones

because being trans and queer
in a trump america
is an act of deviance and rebellion
where i could get beaten up for
using the mens room
and it would be my fault
because i am other
i am a freak
they do not understand me
and therefore that makes
me the enemy

but you have sat next to me
on the bus
in the movie theater
in the bathroom stall next to mine
while my anxiety mounted as
i waited for the bathroom to clear
out so i could leave safely
and i know when you look at me
you do not know what box
to force me into

and i want to know
you owe us all the answer
of how many more of our
siblings have to die before
you realize that we are people too
i am as human as you are
my correct hormones are just store-bought
and i had to claw my way into
the words of brother
and son
and nephew
and grandson
and boy boy boy
and male male male

but you have killed all the
nice queer people and all
you have left is me
and i am making my anger
into a louder voice
that will never be silenced
because you can cut out
my tongue and you can
take away my basic human rights
and you can even **** me

but the truth is that you will
always be more afraid of me
than i am of you
because while you ****
what you do not understand
i embrace it
The title is from a quote, the full quote being: “not gay as in happy, but queer as in *******.”
Dani Jan 2018
Before the thunder coats my lungs I whisper soft

The storm is a cacophony of pink that flows between slow and stop.
In every direction, pointed hats and sharp signs
stinging words and biting looks
phrases dotted with peaches and comb-overs
hardened women fiercer than the surging wind.

I had never imagined feeling so powerful until
50,000 women
and men and nonbinary friends
engulfed my senses in magenta and bubblegum
and lightning struck 100,000 times in the space of two blocks.
Rowan Feb 2019
It’s weird how much
I love times new roman and
how the sight of Jordan Maron playing
below Zero Subnautica makes me clap and grin.

I’m the nonbinary watching youtube to sleep
and to feel comfort. I find the sound of the Misfits Podcast
soothing. The first degree black belt resting on my shelf
means I worked seven years, but when I learn Jiu-Jitsu
I’m up against the wall, stuck in another corner.

My closest friend group full of a bunch of LGBTQ+ and
mentally ill kids, from transgender to bisexual, from depression
to panic attack disorder to separation anxiety. We’re all just trying to survive.
Living comes later.

I’m writing a poem to express who I am, is
this enough? To the heart of me, the soul,
or whatever you want to call it.

Does the horse tattoo I got three weeks ago,
on my left shoulder blade or the way I fold my clothes
in my suitcase tell you? How about the green of my eyes,
that my best friend describes as a soft jade with small streaks of gold,
the outer rim a pillowy chocolate blue?

I love the sound of acoustic guitar and the powerful choruses
thrumming through the air. Editing is always done on paper and
grammar is a learning experience. I go horseback riding every Sunday
with my campus horse club.

But this tells you nothing of my times, when I found myself
Alone, utterly without hope and trust. Or I could say,
I trusted that I was not enough and that I could never amount to anything.
But it’s taken me a long time to take back what was always mine,
and I’m fighting for those rights yet.

I need to wash my water bottle more,
I need to say I love you to my best friend more,
I need to… to…
Love Myself.

And maybe that’s what this poem is for.

— The End —