Bootstraps (draft of a new poem)

Let’s talk about these

bootstraps

double-helixed through the eyelets

of the shoes that you lace up

when you go running down

these streets where you feel safe

when you go running down

the folks who say they aren’t safe

in these streets

when you go running down

the ones whose dna laced different patterns

through the eyelets of the chromosomes

you use as shorthand,

Big Bang Theory boxset scientist,

who thinks toilets marked by crosses

like a plague door are a joke

to like and share

like the experiences

shared

the lips that suckle

at your breast,

the

monthly

bleeding

nature

girl.

Let’s talk about this nature:

let’s talk about the boys who bleed

each month and hate the stuff,

let’s talk about top surgery,

let’s talk about the tits that I am growing

which will never feed a child

and grant me

Mumsnet kinship,

let’s talk about the womb I’ll never shed,

the uterus that Lili Elbe died

in transplantation of,

let’s talk about the

‘unexpected’

cock which

- even clothed! –

makes me a monster,

let’s talk monstrances

and transubstantiation

because that’s the kind of

science

that you’re talking

here:

how many murdered trans women of colour

can dance in the space you routinely leave out

between adjective

 and

verb?

And if you say ‘cis is a slur!’

into the weeds on the waste ground

in back of the Dairy Queen

where Zoraida Reyes’ body was discovered

does that still make a sound

like your dog whistle words

on how the revolution came to you

as a woman on the cover of a magazine

who wasn’t butch

and white

and happy to play MichFest

until challenged?

Let’s parse the

theodicy

of claiming

‘gender hurts’

and ‘morally mandating’

that the care which cures the pain

should not be given;

let’s rule on who’s allowed to use

which lavatory in Heaven...

we’ve been saying since ‘11

that this maze has intersections

snaking like the laces

on our shoes you tied together

while we slept

for shits and giggles,

while you claim it’s not an issue

if we wriggle free and hurl those shoes

above the wires

while saying that we’re done...

but hey, success is not for everyone.

Let’s talk about the hard work you’ve gone

through, and all the things you had to do,

and reassure us that we’re all just like you,

as we ignore the faces

that we don’t see in this room.

Come: talk to us about the laces

in your big man’s

cis man’s

straight man’s

white man’s

safe man’s

Great Man’s

shoes.