Queer life
JOY LADIN
Statement by Joy Ladin
Changing the Subject, a poem from a sequence written during and trying to create language for the tumultuous inner process of gender transition, speaks from the time when my identity as a Jewish father and husband had become a painful, constricting mask fracturing under the pressure of the new, true, but still unknown self growing inside it, a self the poem imagines as “a nice Jewish girl / exhaling the dragon fire / that fuses body and soul together.”
The speaker of the poem, terrified of this new self and of losing the family and life built around maleness, is trying to stay safe by “getting man right,” living up to and hiding within the family-focused ideals of Jewish masculinity, unsure of whether the new female self will be able to maintain connection with others, will be accepted as “a nice Jewish girl” or seen as a monster “exhaling dragon fire.”
Joy Ladin (Phoyo by Lisa Ross)
From Transit of Venus, a sequence written during and about gender transition, originally published in Impersonation (Sheep Meadow Press, 2015)
CHANGING THE SUBJECT BY JOY LADIN
Feeling weird, Mr. Not-Quite-Right?
Cure that infection
by getting man right:
thinning hair, pivoting head,
all the standard signs of deserving
the lemon-juice drizzle of your life.
For extra staying power, put family first. Be happy
holding a sick baby in the middle of the night,
make believe everyone can see
the ultrafeminine silhouette
chemical imbalancing
your felicity.
Keep a lid on joy. Maintain routines
that prolong your coupled life.
Maybe you can stay put
in your skin; love
without feeling alive.
Or maybe it's time to change the subject.
Time to find out how you look
stripped of masculinity's lie,
to be a nice Jewish girl
exhaling the dragon fire
that fuses body and soul together
until you can't tell the difference
between being happy
and simply being alive.
Statement by Joy Ladin
Ready, from a book-length sequence forthcoming next year, embraces that “dragon fire.” Spoken by the Shekhinah, Jewish tradition's name for the immanent, female aspect of God who shares human feelings and experiences, this poem exhorts a human “you” who represents each of us. Like the “you” in Changing the Subject, the “you” the Shekhinah addresses lives a life defined and deformed by fear – not just the fear of losing family and community by becoming one's true self, but the institutionalized “fear that warns you / to hold your tongue / when cruelty and brutality, / degradation and evil, / stab you through the heart.” The Shekhinah debunks this fear, diagnosing it as a self-perpetuating product of self-hatred and of shame, of the belief that being human means we are “no one / [God would] ever choose, / a worm in a tunnel, chaff in a gale, / a nameless pool of blood / I could never love.” The Shekhinah presents herself, her voice and her vision of us, as an empowering alternative to fear's disabling voice and degraded reflections of ourselves, insisting that we are “ready to be strong” and “change the world.”
From Shekhinah Speaks, forthcoming from Selva Oscura Press in 2022
READY by Joy Ladin
Fear not, I am the one who helps you...
Isaiah 41:13
"7 Empowering Life Lessons from `Buffy the Vampire Slayer’"
Are you ready to be strong?
Are you ready to follow me beyond
the fear that warns you
to hold your tongue
when cruelty and brutality,
degradation and evil,
stab you through the heart?
Fear likes you this way,
self-loathing and numb,
believing you’re no one
I’d ever choose,
a worm in a tunnel, chaff in a gale,
a nameless pool of blood
I could never love.
I summon them all to judgment,
the fears that stalk you
to the ends of the earth,
the shame and disgrace
that nail you in your place,
everything that gets in the way
of you responding when I say
“Don't be afraid.”
Don’t be afraid.
I was here before fear
and I'm there beyond it,
opening fountains,
trampling kings underfoot,
calling you to me
by paths you haven’t walked,
by ways you cannot imagine.
I’m the mother
who really sees you,
the father who understands
you, every version,
real and imagined, future and past,
guitar-playing angel, queer fluid light,
thresher of mountains, solitary pine.
Here is the soul you thought was lost,
myrtles and olives, deserts and brooks,
entire continents
I created for you.
Here I am, the one who declares
you have nothing to fear
and nothing to prove.
Are you ready
to be strong?
Time to remake the world.