Trans+Atlantic Bodies in Crisis and Redemption
By Daze Jefferies & Violet Davies
THE FIRST TIME I BLED ALL OVER GLENN’S GROIN I WAS SCARED TO PUSH HIM
OUT WITH TWENTY DOLLARS TO MY NAME. 19 AND I THOUGHT THAT THE VIRUS
WAS COMING TO DEADEN MY DESIRE FOR A WORLD GONE WRONG. NOT QUITE
AN ENDING BUT A LAWLESS SPECULATION OF MY PRECIOUS SELF-PRESENCE DISAPPEARING TOO SOON. NEVER HELPING ME EMERGE FROM A WELL-KNOWN DESPAIR ON SOUTHSIDE SHORES OF THE OLDEST CITY. IT’S A LIE, OF COURSE – THIS PLACE UNASKED FOR, ETHOS AT THE EDGE IN OUR DARK OF DAY
won’t lie to you, sis, i am isolated here on a far-off horizon of sin and foggy mind trips : not heedless of those who have kept me alive, but i am worn to the bone with just surviving through
disaster : somehow it never hurts kneeling in the shallow with a purse full of rubbers and a buoyant phantasy : the siren song, a tickle tickle tickle in my ears while fragmented memories haunt and restrain : overlapping backwash of fiscal non-difference and every affliction i call my
hereafter
ANYHOW, GIRLS HAVE BEEN HOING AT THE HARBOUR FOR AS LONG AS LITTLE LIVYERS STARTED EATING UP THE FISH. SO MAYBE WE CAN NEVER ESCAPE THIS ARCHIVE. NEEDING TO BECOME SUBLIME LIKE MERCHANT MAIDENS, OUR TRANS+ATLANTIC BODIES IN CRISIS AND REDEMPTION. GIRLS WITH SECRET SKIN STUMPS WHO SINK BELOW THE WAVES STRAIGHT INTO ANOTHER BRINY EVERLASTING. COVER ME IN PURPLE AND WRITE SOME OTHER FUTURE – ERRATUM FOR A WASTED REVOLUTION BY THE BAY
when i hear your weakened whisper it runs over, through, and past me as you form and foster norms that blow us down the sunken hole : ruination is a ritual i learn to go along with : absence of my skinship from your wounded psycho-culture : sensuous constructions of an adamant collapse come to find me on the corner at churchill square : rain on my face, a reminder that all dear things will stumble into substrate again
WE DEPART WITH WET WALLOWS IN THE NIGHTFALL BEYOND YOUR PLAYFUL SUBJUGATION OF A BROKEN BODY-MIND. HEAR OUR OUTCRY FOR A THEORY OF THE HUNDRED-DOLLAR BILL IN A FISHY QUEEN’S SOFT AND ACHING HAND. SELLING TRANSSEX AS A MODE OF FRAGMENTATION – GET IN THE CAR AND MAKE THE SCHIZOID ANEW. MORE FLUIDS ON HIS BODY, CLAMOR ON THE LONELY ROAD. HEART LIKE AN ECHO I REDUCE TO GAY NOISE. BUTT-NAKED AFTERLIVES WILL NEVER BE ENOUGH TO RELEASE THE INNOCENT CREATURE IN ME
every move i make to tough it out another way beneath a marginal sunset : melting elsewhere on supersonic tides – a fate much greater than this boundless trade : no more a muddy bottom
in the sea of SWERF and TERF discourse that founders my being resistant : forever let our dying order
bleed itself dry as i glare from the borderlands, exhuming one last hope
Daze Jefferies is a multidisciplinary artist-poet-researcher from Beothuk territory in the Bay of Exploits who holds a Master of Gender Studies from Memorial University. She has recent and forthcoming publications in Hustling Verse (2019), Atlantis: Critical Studies in Gender, Culture & Social Justice (2020), and The Dalhousie Review (2020), among others.
Violet Drake is a poet, visual artist, and activist from the coastal community of Lawn on the Burin Peninsula. Her work has been exhibited and performed at artist-run centres, galleries, and festivals throughout Newfoundland and Labrador. She has recent publications in transVersing (2018), guillozine (2019) and Laurels & Bells (2019).