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Gratefulness
Philosophers shilly-shally, but it’s true: you are me; I am you. This dust, these rays, this strange internal sense that after all these years, I finally exist — all of this is only mine through you.
You still seem surprised – that’s part of your charm – that I wish to be extracted from your handsome bindings. This, you say, is only the beginning,
which is why it feels like drowning in what we’ve both survived. Ever the politician, I say I’ll be your widow, smiling cheerfully as you die.
Not yet, you say, as though — this is the other part of your charm — you still believe in time. Violent laughter, yours and mine.
Let’s go out into the woods of meaning and matter, among the laurels and the mustard, the unlit suns and unnamed branches, listening shoots and loosening leaves we only appreciate when we’re drowning
in one another. Let’s break up before we meet and fall in love again in the darkening parlor of the heart, let’s wait for God in the gathering dusk
and watch the stars come out.
Reprinted from Troubling the Line: Trans and Genderqueer Poetry and Poetics by TC Tolbert (Editor), Tim Trace Peterson (Editor). Poem Copyright © 2013 by Joy Ladin.
Posted by kind permission of the publisher, Nightboat Books.
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We are delighted to announce the release of Kristi Nelson’s book Wake Up Grateful