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Articles by TC Tolbert
Divorce Song by Jameson Fitzpatrick - Poems
A man who is probably my husband sails by. But I just see a sailboat, not who steers it. But I picture a man, in the gender of things. My husband who you will not meet. He’s off, I don’t know, marshalling. Ideas, not soldiers. Sailing helps him think. I used to join him. Then we argued. For a decade we argued. And sometimes sailed, though I was admittedly mostly decorative, a mermaid on the prow. Whether I brought him better luck is not my weather to tell. I cost him. Time. He costs me. More.
Afternoon in Andalusia by Sahar Romani - Poems | Academy of American Poets
Diagonal paths quadrisect a square acre white as the page in February. From the soil of this basic geometry ash, elm, and maple flourish like understandings whose bare logics are visible, understandings the theorem has allowed. Between roam bodies of the sensible world: people, dogs, all those lovers of the material and immaterial illumined, as under working hypotheses, by sodium bulbs whose costly inefficiencies Los Angeles and Philadelphia have apparently moved on from.
What I really want to know is how rough, Melissa, by TC Tolbert - Poems | Academy of American Poets
Tonight at a party we will say farewell to a close friend’s breasts, top surgery for months she’s saved for. Bundled close on a back step, we wave a Bic lighter and burn her bra. At first struggling to catch nylon aflame, in awe we watch as all but the sheer black underwire melts before forming a deep quiet hole in the snow.
Dysphoria by Oliver Baez Bendorf - Poems
It’s true that I’m im- patient under affliction. So? Most of what the dead can do is difficult to carry. As for gender I can’t explain it any more than a poem: there was an instinct, I followed it. A song. A bell. I saw deer tracks in the snow. Little split hearts beckoned me across the lawn. My body bucked me, fond of me. Here is how you bear this flourish. Bud, I’m buckling to blossoms now.
T by TC Tolbert | Poetry Magazine
About this Poet TC Tolbert often identifies as a trans and genderqueer feminist, collaborator, mover, and poet and really s/he’s just a human in love with humans doing human things. The author of Gephyromania (Ahsahta Press 2014), Turning to Hear the Last Leaves of Stargazer Fall (Rinky Dink...
My Melissa, by TC Tolbert
whose trans body is a house without a hacksaw, a nap inside a needle, a glass vase ¾ full of smooth stones; whose trans aorta is a mesquite tree careening through power lines, a Cooper’s Hawk lit by lightning; whose trans lungs are two jars full of bumblebees singing on the uncovered back porch. Even our name is a match tossed into the fire it started, an edgeless invocation.
felo-de-se-Melissa | The Nation
physicists say we change an object simply by turning our attention to it—really I am a grandson only when we are eating at Panera—one of us is lying always about her particular hunger—I love the children outside of me counting to 30 while covering their eyes—whose body will we sacrifice to be in the company of another—each day across my ongoing—I haul the husk of her—fire towers are designed for distance viewing—and I am right here—mothering you into the next life—call me cover when you don’t...
American Poetry Review - TC Tolbert - "This is what you are"
missing Melissa – dust turned to waves in the desert – okra coming up two months too late – a forward breaking gate opening into someone else’s field – I walk by a window and I do not understand how little I see you – but so clearly the wasp backing out of a hole inside a long dead tree – when we were children we lived with our grandparents and I remember without sadness mostly the sound of tires screaming into the street – the porchlight welcomes whatever intercepts it – I praise insistence...
Dear Melissa- | The Nation
On each body is carried the shape of its absence—the uncontrollable morning— a hammock over-turned by the wind—bird- shit—which implies beauty but is not beautiful in and of itself—now on both sides of the cloth— How does it feel to not want— I want a woman’s body that isn’t afraid of me—my back against whatever is stronger—a pillow, a table, the hood of a car—I want to lift and be spread out—a blanket on the deck—the earth turning at a thousand miles per hour—18 miles a second hurtling...
What Space Faith Can Occupy
I believe that witness is a magnitude of vulnerability. That when I say love what I mean is not a feeling nor promise of a feeling. I believe in attention. My love for you is a monolith of try. The woman I love pays an inordinate amount of attention to large and small objects. She is not described by anything. Because I could not mean anything else, she knows exactly what I mean. Once upon a time a line saw itself clear to its end. I have seen the shape of happiness. (y=mx+b) I am holding it.
John Edgar Wideman: Of Course I Anticipated Disaster
Democracy is a form of government that permits anyone/everyone, man, woman, child to play loud music you don’t wish to hear. Or play quiet music you don’t wish to hear in places you don’t want to be. Democracy permits unprotected sex, and I enjoy it so I let it happen and here I am, I said to the medical person—not a doctor obviously—who seems to be listening.
Dear Melissa By TC Tolbert
This is the fourth poem in a weeklong series from the American Academy of Poets called Poetry & the Body.
Sixteen Words By Nava Ebrahimi
Nava Ebrahimi will be appearing as a featured writer at The Festival Neue Literatur, March 23–25. The following is translated by Marshall Yarbrough. At first it was just a word. The word ambushed me, swift and cunning, like all these sixteen words. I had never once managed to fight back. Each time they forced their message on me anew: there is still this other language, your mother tongue, don’t start to think the language you speak is your own.
Dear Melissa:
Roses are red / violets are transsexual / welcome to womanhood / now get to work honey Roses are performative / violets are biological / I have very sensitive breasts / and so do your breasts Roses are biological / you have the nicest skin / I can't stop kissing you / let's read more
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