This week in the PEN Poetry Series, guest editor TC Tolbert features a poem by Trace Peterson. About Peterson’s work, Tolbert writes: “Trace’s work is thrilling, which is to say it induces a shivering, excited awareness of nuance and nearness. I continually return to her work (her book, Since I Moved In, was utterly transformative for me) for its keen ability to be inclusive of a variety of readers without being diluted. Her immense skill creates a space for opening. Insistent on a full range of linguistic choices and emotional trajectories (which is to say, humanity) for trans writers, she expands the range of what is possible for trans writing (and which, if you allow it, widens the range of humanity for cis writers and readers, too).”

 

Everyone is a Little Trans

Everyone is a little Trans
Everyone is a little Bisexual
Everyone is a little Genderqueer
Everyone is a little Not There

Everyone is a little GNC
Everyone is a little Gender Fluid
Everyone is a little twelve inch pianist
Everyone is a little Cis

Everyone is a little circular rubbing motion
Everyone thinks they’re Billy Ocean

Everyone is a forgotten hit record
Everyone is a little good at sex
Everyone is a little bad at gender

Everyone is a little changeable
Everyone is a little rigidly stuck in their thing
Everyone is a Post Office Worker
Everyone is an abandoned carousel with empty horses going around and around and around

Everyone is a little lurker
Everyone is a little mako shark
Everyone is a little romper wearing narc
Everyone is a little tailor with a broadcloth under zir arm

Everyone is a little stitch in time
Everyone is a little grammatical error that changed the meaning of our relationship completely by accidentally
         introducing a surprise microaggression
Everyone is a little discriminated against
Everyone is a little interested in sitting on the dryer while it vibrates

Everyone tells us everyone is a little gay means everyone who is cis
Everyone is a little white crisply ironed shirt
Everyone is a poet
Everyone says no more than what they meant

Everyone has disappeared from sight
Everyone is a little missing
Everyone is a little ventriloquized by this puppet
Everyone farts with zir armpit

Everyone is a little scientist building rockets
Everyone says it’s not rocket science even when it is
Everyone is an ineffective gangster
Everyone is camped out waiting on the grass for Shakespeare in the Park tickets

Everyone is a little unspecific thing
Everyone is a spork
Everyone is a precise floating ethereal ectoplasm except when it’s time to pick up a paycheck or eat or have
         sex or clean the bathroom or get attacked on the street for just existing

Everyone is a little angry
Everyone is getting on my last nerve
Everyone has poor food truck boundaries
Everyone shows a complete lack of respect for lack

Everyone is a little ignorant of how much better they have it than everyone
Everyone is a method actor
Everyone is a monster

Everyone drives a tractor
Everyone provides a blank member
Everyone listens to thrash metal
Everyone guesses the lottery number correctly

Everyone wins
Everyone is a little newt
Everyone collapses into parallel dimensions when they hear a Broadway musical begin

Everyone is now a little stand offish
Everyone is better than everyone else
Everyone is enjoying being penetrated
Everyone by stunning realizations and ideas from the history of western thought

Everyone is a little tired of liberal arts and its oppressive regime
Everyone is a little academically non conforming
Everyone is a little ADD
Everyone is me

Everyone is a little hog tied
Everyone is a little burbling brook
Everyone ditched their nook
Everyone is a little more into buying things online now to save trees from certain destruction even though
         global warming doesn’t officially exist

Everyone is a little smarter
Everyone is a little taller because of all the preservatives
Everyone is a little prepackaged
Everyone is wreckage 

 

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Once a week, the PEN Poetry Series publishes work by emerging and established writers from coast to coast. Subscribe to the PEN Poetry Series mailing list and have poems delivered to your e-mail as soon as they are published (no spam, no news, just poems).