Self-Portrait as Magical Girl in Translation
“Uranus is like a man & a woman in one. She
has the strengths of both genders. It is her
special advantage as a soldier.”
- Sailor Neptune
& we both begin / boy sitting awkward on another’s
tongue // become girl with blurry edges // become ink
blooming / from a censor’s pen // then become
whatever a foreign mouth / will make of us // & i too
feel more powerful / in a skirt // in transformation [or
translation] // body rewriting itself something we
cannot yet name // Ryosei : Genderqueer / the collision
of genders / bodies in between
teeth // world shaking weight / flattening our chests / &
maybe this is why / we know too well the heft / of a
blade // & what it can cut away // see language skinned
& stretched / until the body it once clothed
begins to disappear // becomes voice / bubble / emptied
// becomes hollowed out / syllables of a name //
becomes bone heavy planet // becomes constellation //
becomes a book where genesis is a
boy & what blossoms is a flower / unrecognizable //
A Study in Magnetokinesis
for Mauricio Barron
so i am Googling comic book characters / with mental
illness / & there are 424,000 results / it turns out that
Marvel has a page on their wiki / devoted solely to this /
& they have an entire page devoted to Mythomania /
[compulsive lying] / this disorder that makes castles out
of our mouths / kingdoms our half-truths into memory /
& Morg / the one character in the history of Marvel to
suffer / from this affliction
& then i see the section labeled / simply / insanity /
feel my jaw / pencil snap / shut // & let my eyes
trace the 13 pages / run their names / [253 names] /
over my tongue like seeds / of broken safety / glass
taste them bleed / together into one diagnosis /
bloom & blossom / into petals / Rorschach black
last month a man / in the middle of an episode / walked
onto the freeway / & into a car / as if it were a door / &
survived / only to be murdered / by the Highway Patrol /
& maybe this is his super power / how he draws the
bullets from their guns / like magnetism / maybe the line
between hero / & villain / is whatever the obituary reads
this morning i wake up / alive / & this feels like a
crime / & i wake up wishing / for Mythomania /
wishing this story was only / the most elaborate lie /
that my mouth could carve / anything from my teeth
without it looking like a tombstone / i wake up alive
& waiting / to not be / wondering when my diagnosis
too will enter a mouth / a seed / and
blossom into a eulogy
“Uranus is like a man & a woman in one. She
has the strengths of both genders. It is her
special advantage as a soldier.”
- Sailor Neptune
& we both begin / boy sitting awkward on another’s
tongue // become girl with blurry edges // become ink
blooming / from a censor’s pen // then become
whatever a foreign mouth / will make of us // & i too
feel more powerful / in a skirt // in transformation [or
translation] // body rewriting itself something we
cannot yet name // Ryosei : Genderqueer / the collision
of genders / bodies in between
teeth // world shaking weight / flattening our chests / &
maybe this is why / we know too well the heft / of a
blade // & what it can cut away // see language skinned
& stretched / until the body it once clothed
begins to disappear // becomes voice / bubble / emptied
// becomes hollowed out / syllables of a name //
becomes bone heavy planet // becomes constellation //
becomes a book where genesis is a
boy & what blossoms is a flower / unrecognizable //
A Study in Magnetokinesis
for Mauricio Barron
so i am Googling comic book characters / with mental
illness / & there are 424,000 results / it turns out that
Marvel has a page on their wiki / devoted solely to this /
& they have an entire page devoted to Mythomania /
[compulsive lying] / this disorder that makes castles out
of our mouths / kingdoms our half-truths into memory /
& Morg / the one character in the history of Marvel to
suffer / from this affliction
& then i see the section labeled / simply / insanity /
feel my jaw / pencil snap / shut // & let my eyes
trace the 13 pages / run their names / [253 names] /
over my tongue like seeds / of broken safety / glass
taste them bleed / together into one diagnosis /
bloom & blossom / into petals / Rorschach black
last month a man / in the middle of an episode / walked
onto the freeway / & into a car / as if it were a door / &
survived / only to be murdered / by the Highway Patrol /
& maybe this is his super power / how he draws the
bullets from their guns / like magnetism / maybe the line
between hero / & villain / is whatever the obituary reads
this morning i wake up / alive / & this feels like a
crime / & i wake up wishing / for Mythomania /
wishing this story was only / the most elaborate lie /
that my mouth could carve / anything from my teeth
without it looking like a tombstone / i wake up alive
& waiting / to not be / wondering when my diagnosis
too will enter a mouth / a seed / and
blossom into a eulogy
torrin a. greathouse is a genderqueer, schizophrenic, cripple-punk from Southern California. They are the Co-Founder and Editor-in-Chief of Black Napkin Press. Their work has been published or is forthcoming in 3Elements Review, Assaracus, Heavy Feather Review, Glass: A Journal of Poetry, Polychrome Ink, Rabbit Catastrophe Review, The Thought Erotic, Emerge Literary Journal, & The Feminist Wire. torrin’s work was nominated for the Pushcart Prize by Rust + Moth. When they are not writing or editing poetry, they are trying to survive in america long enough to earn a degree.