Top Surgery

The breasts are gone.
Are you reborn?
Stronger, leaner, more confident?
Stripped of the mammalian reminders
Of paths untrodden.
Breasts.
Your breasts;
Full and heavy,
The hot weight your soul
Rejected.
Now you are free
And as I loved your breasts,
I will love your new chest,
Cannot wait for you to heal
And hold me tightly,
Closer to your heart
Than ever.
You are my love,
In any body
And finding you now,
After my long and winding journey
Fills me with gratitude.
Wake up and let me kiss you
And cry with relief.

1sagefemme

All Rights reserved 2016

Labels

We are given
straight
Jackets at birth
Swaddled tightly,
Torpedoed,
Into our proper places.
Boy
Girl
Burritos of expectation,
Many failing early,
Arms and legs clambering
To be free
From those coloured
blankets.

The label
Schema
Scheme
Schism
Becomes dictator
Absolute
And corrupt.

First gender
Then name
To denote, identify, relegate…
Popsicle sticks in the dirt
To let us know what we’re growing
And when a thistle erupts
Under the label “Rose,”
Well, that’s a weed.
We’re
Not
Growing
Weeds
In this Rose garden,
Yet there it is.

Dear thistle,
Wind yourself around this sharpie
Give yourself a new name
And the rising wilderness will feed you.
Your roots will grow legs
And run, run
Into the welcoming woods
There to join the named and nameless panoply.
Rosish thistles, thistlish roses,
Not-a-rose-or-thistle
Call-me-Tree
People
Anthropomorphism aside,
People.

We are the rainforest
Magic and medicine,
Root, rhizome
Pistil, stamen,
Unique.

We take our labels
Our straight-jackets,
And snip snip the seams
Furtively,
Or loudly rending
To produce these
Queer
Costumes
To fit our queer bodies
On the way to
Transcend
Dance

We meet in Salons
To chant and spin
And show off our creations,
Ourselves.

Do you like my dress?
It’s made of popsicle sticks.
I wear it ‘cause it makes me strong
I wear it ‘cause it turns me on
I’ll be a thistlish, thorny rose
And you be your own original prose
We can be he or she or they
Or boi or girl or free-flying fey.

Let our weed-children grow unfettered
Straight-jackets abandoned
Wending joyfully
Through the gardens of life.

1sagefemme © All rights reserved 2016

“Butch” a poem

Butch

I am a queer woman,
sexuality leaning hard left of center,
heart fluttering for a dying breed of boi-girls and athletes,
Girls rocking masculinity like music
A furious mash-up of rock and lullaby, muscle and emotion
They may or may not identify as “Butch,”
Purr in a girl’s ear,
Call me Zane, Jordan, Charlie, Mitch;
Walk in comfortable shoes polished to a glassy shine
Or mud-caked work boots and a wind-whipped work-man tan.
They have a thing about
Penises and
Breasts,
A relationship fraught with conflict and desire,
They love tits,
but not on themselves,
The shirts just don’t
fit
right,
They may have a penis in their
mind’s eye,
And sometimes in draw-string bags, in boxes, in drawers,
They like to strut,
Sideways smile at flirty girls,
Buy long-stemmed roses and dapper suits,
They are strong, and fragile,
and oh so complicated.
I love them all,
Want to be Femme for them
(A short-haired,
Small-breasted version
all my own)
Wear matching bras and panties,
Perfume and lipstick,
Catch their smiles in mason jars and line them up
On my window-sill
To remind me that this species
Still exists.
I want to wrap my arms around all of them,
Tell them how lovely they are,
Thank them for saving me from despair
For without them,
My desire would never find a mark.
I want to tell them,
Thank you.
Thank you for polishing those shoes,
Tying a double knot,
Doing bedside push-ups at night,
Perfecting that confident swagger,
Learning how to lead,
And being willing to follow.
Thank you for tolerating the bathroom stares,
For not putting on that goddamn bridesmaid’s dress,
For being such a good cook, or driver, or motorcycle rider,
Thank you for holding my purse,
For sitting in the shade with me,
Thank you for working so hard
On that hairstyle,
The top cropped, or spiked, or waved
Just so.
Thank you for not being afraid
To hold my hand,
And look up at me,
And tell me,
sincerely,
How much you like my heels.

1SageFemme © All rights reserved 2015