Treatise on a trans NDN love scene
I am ready for my close-up as lover of a cis gay boy.
A portrait of the artist as a young faggot. I am a wanted man,
wanting. I drizzle his lips with honey and suck out the poison
with my liar’s tongue. I am trying to be as beautiful as a poem,
as beautiful as a gay NDN love poem, as a poem made
of shards of glass reflecting starlight. My ribs a ladder
tied tight (can I keep my binder on) so no man can climb
to the moon on my skin. I am a shadow of a shadow, and you
are the rock formation I cling to. Staccato breath one, two,
three. The camera swings wildly, the way the world tilts,
as his blood sings through his veins under my touch.
Light speed travel invented via gay sex. Don’t stumble
on your words there, this trans body is a sacred mound
not a speedbump. By which I mean it is a place of sacrifice
and mourning. By which I mean let your fingers slip under the hem
of my shirt (yeah the binder is fine) and give me your heart in
the palm of my hand. It doesn’t mean anything. If I had a string
of wampum for every cis gay boy I fell in love with I could
replace international diplomacy with an oral history
of transgender longing, and maybe that would be alright
too.
Kai Minosh Pyle is a Two-Spirit Métis and Baawiting Nishnaabe writer originally from Green Bay, Wisconsin. Currently living in Bde Ota Otunwe (Minneapolis, Minnesota), they have been published in both creative and scholarly journals such as PRISM Magazine, Transgender Studies Quarterly, Cloudthroat, and the Activist History Review. Their current projects include editing a zine of Two-Spirit writing, pursuing a PhD on Two-Spirit Anishinaabe history, and as always, learning their ancestral languages.