Dysphoria

“The aim of this month’s posts is to interrogate our need to reconstruct our bodies, minds, and identities to fit the cultural standards of who and what we should be.”

— Natalie El-Eid, “New Year, New You … True You?,” January 8, 2019

Write something, Write something, Write anything,
Write

About bodies, about my body, about a new year body full of hope
Full of
Shame — Exhaustion — Grief
José Muñoz depathologizes melancholia, takes the sickness out
“Hold on to bodies of the dead
Take them with you into battle”
Not as shield. As banner
Marsha P. Johnson, pray for us

Write about bodies
#glowup #pubertychallenge
# I cut my hair off for a reason
Do you enjoy my obligation?
Performance, on demand
“More changes to come! LOL”
(The “LOL” here implies that these are tears of joy)

I curate a display, sartorial attention
Leather biker boots, suspenders, plaid, just a touch of glitter
Do you read me as queer,
Students?
I know the they/them thing is hard to remember
But try
I concede

Write about bodies, my body — fat, queer body full of
Spite, Patchouli, Good Intentions, “Bad” Desires,  
Lust
For black leather boots
And the lesbian with a spirals of red-brown hair, warm brown eyes,
Who passed her thumb over the toes of these boots
Nine times,
Covered in Obernauf’s
She called me “Sir.”
Write about the man who called me Daddy
Write about feeling seen

“What do we mean when we say gender is a social construct?
In this writing intensive course, we will explore”

“I use non-binary to indicate that I do not identify with either of the binary genders.”

“Moving forward, I hope you can accept the way I choose to express myself,
And my gender identity,
And join me in celebrating the person I have grown into
By using my new name and my pronouns,

Love,
— ”

Write about being invisible
About the fact that I have never heard my birth name used so many times
As the Christmas day after I told my parents
My name is —
Write about loss

Eat it,
Shove it between cracked, queer teeth
Down the throat to settle
Like stones in the belly. Heavy.
Vomit them up sometime, make them abject again
That which is apart from me
A part
Of Me

Cover Art by KC Rosenberg — visit his webpage.

Rhyse Curtis is a Ph.D. student at Syracuse University where they study (and occasionally write about) film, queer narratives, masculinity, trauma, war, and fan fiction, among other things.