PERSONALITY QUIZ: WHAT KIND OF TRANS BIRD ARE YOU?

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POEM IN WHICH IT IS CLEAR I AM NO LONGER THE CRUDE GOURD

Nor      anything lacking a red-raven mouth

Nor      the intimate drawer home to fat wasps
                humming among glacier-blue lace                

Nor      the piano rolled into a tight ball then kicked down the stairs                                     Nor

       that simple creature
          made of wrists and
          funnybones and
          dashes of spite                                                                        Nor     
           
the moonwater lake with fishshaped penises                                                 Nor

       old thread with grapespeckled eggs along its length                          Nor

                        root vegetable peeking cautiously into the harsh blue world

Nor      creature too fearful to splinter
                 its clavicles against the straps
                              of a dress                                 Nor     

the thing gnawing frantically off its least favorite arm                      Nor      the least favorite arm

Nor      the broad antlers peeled to their brute centers            Nor your private lesson
                                                                 in progression             in fleshy mantles        

                                                  Nor the shadow
                                                  in search of a shape    Nor     

                                                                 gust of light                                                                                                                                        
                                                                 Nor gust of

                                        anything          Skin shadow of anything

                         Nor      rhododendron 
             
      Nor bound

Nor      rhododendron 
           
      Nor just

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On "Personality Quiz: What Kind of Trans Bird Are You?": This poem came out of two things: while texting my partner about something (I can't even remember), I typed the word "transness," and autocorrect changed that to "grandness," which was so funny and self-evident it almost felt like cheating. Around the same time, on a surprisingly warm and sunny morning (surprising because Atlanta has been under near-constant rain since the year began), a flock of robins was roosting in the trees outside my apartment window, which gave me an opportunity to just stare at them a while, admiring their stillness. Everything else sort of grew as connective tissue to bring those two moments together.

On "Poem in Which it is Clear I Am No Longer the Crude Gourd": This really was a poem that started with its title and grew out; the title itself originally came from a phone note that probably said "I am no longer the crude gourd," or something like that. Though I'm not sure it comes across in the poem, I saw the "crude gourd" as a masculine-identified body, and the line (and larger poem) was an attempt at owning that I no longer saw myself as in possession of such a thing. From there, it became a litany of sorts by way of conglomerating similarly-themed notes I'd taken over a period of maybe one or two months. "Red-raven mouth"; "broad antlers peeled to their brute centers"--all of these were just random things I'd written down in my notes app, hoping they'd find a place later. While I don't remember the contexts for writing many of these, I know "fleshy mantles" came from an episode of Blue Planet I'd been watching, which featured some sort of anemone that David Attenborough described as having a "fleshy mantle." So thanks, David, and to the writers of that episode, for using such peculiar language.