MY DEPRESSION
My depression
sleeps soundly
at the foot of
my gender.
There is no escape
from the dull hammer
of imagining
something true.
Once I was at peace.
Then existence
happened.
Great sea of fags
dykes & freaks
I crawl out
from thee.
Half-formed
& covered in
fingers I feel
my way towards
any light.
I find a warm
reddish glow
called woman.
She licks my neck
& says
this is what you do
to stay alive.
Once I was cared
for by a family
a self & each day’s
soft morning air.
Then I opened my
mouth & took
what was mine.
No one’s love
would survive
this transformation.
PRAY THE GAY AWAY
Church bells ring under my skin
Dad says something about praying the gay away
In the pews I imagine myself with my head
pushed between anyone’s legs
flying high with magic above the world
our juices mixing and scattering
inside the clouds
forming our own clouds
that rain down and beg men to stop being
such motherfucking pieces of shit
Dad walks up and down the hall speaking in tongues
I have nightmares about coming
to understand this language
I fear my madness will be his madness
and not the madness of a love unencumbered
by names for flesh, body parts, ways of being—
Make me gayer I plead with god
let me pray the gay closer
TRAUMA POEM
TRAUMA is one of the four fundamental states of matter
a pure TRAUMA may be made up of individual TRAUMAS
there is also compound TRAUMA made from a variety of TRAUMAS
what distinguishes a TRAUMA from other states is the vast separation
of the individual TRAUMA particles
this separation usually makes a colorless TRAUMA invisible to the human observer
because most TRAUMAS are difficult to observe directly
they are best described through the use of four physical properties—
pressure, volume, number of TRAUMA particles, and temperature
when describing a container of TRAUMA
the term “pressure” refers to the average force per unit area that the TRAUMA exerts
on the surface of the container
as the density of a TRAUMA increases with rising pressure, particles will, in effect
“stick” to the surface of any object moving through it
if one could observe a TRAUMA under a powerful microscope
one would see a collection of particles without any definite shape or volume
that are more or less in random motion
punctuated by violent collisions
rapidly expanding to completely fill their container
Joshua Jennifer Espinoza is a trans woman poet living in California. Her work has been featured in The Feminist Wire, PEN America, The Offing, Lambda Literary, and elsewhere. Her full-length collection THERE SHOULD BE FLOWERS was released by Civil Coping Mechanisms in 2016.**