TIVE
by Gray Davidson Carroll

Transgender Ideology-Inspired Violent Extremism

I wake up in the morning and I am a terrorist.
I wash the dishes, I read the news.
My hands are a terrorist’s hands.
My ears, a terrorist’s ears.
The underside of the right one a bumpy ridgeline
from where, as a child, my father cut me
trying to give me an unwanted haircut.
I jog through the downtown of the city
and the sounds of my feet slapping the concrete
are the sounds of a terrorist’s feet.
I go to my favorite coffee shop
where all the baristas are terrorists.
There, I see my friend from the terrorist knitting group.
He makes the most beautiful sweaters,
always decorated with flowers.
All the people I love most in my life are terrorists!
At the terrorist bar, where all the drinks
are named in honor of famous terrorists,
we pull our hips into one another like a prayer.
Our hips too, are terrorist hips, finally
learning how to hold sway. Each Sunday
I empty terrorism into myself
at the end of a needle. Each day,
I take a pill to metastasize the growth.
I knew I was a terrorist when I
was eight years old. The same year
I found my grandfather’s glock in his nightstand,
set the mouth against my mouth
thinking maybe, just for a second,
I could taste the sound of salvation.
And how many of my loves
gone now for what in them
the world was not brave enough to be.
Trauma is so good for poetry, someone says,
after the reading where I spoke about my friend
stabbed to death inside her home.
You killed it up there, they said.
You fucking killed that shit.
And it’s true, language is the best weapon
for killing at the root.
My terrorists! My terrorists!
I love each and every one of my terrorists.
My terrorists sing gospel. My terrorists
have children. My terrorists are found
in the gutter each morning,
skin turned blue,
etched all over with red and white.
No one wants to look at a dead terrorist.
No one wants to hear a terrorist’s sobs.
When my lovers and I touch,
we touch with the fervor
of a terrorist’s wanting.
Our mouths are wide,
and open. Fingers cocked,
ready to release.

from Poets Respond

Gray Davidson Carroll

“At the beginning of this week, Advocate broke the news that, at the behest of the Heritage Foundation, the FBI was considering designating trans folx in the U.S. as a terrorist group.”

#poem #poetry #activism #literature

https://rattle.com/tive-by-gray-davidson-carroll/