Poetry from Nova Martin – America's favorite transwoman feminist lesbian druidess poet
I’m taller than her.
She knows how to hold me
in a womanly way.
She’s held a tall woman before.
She’s an athlete.
I think that helps her with
confidence and cool calmness.
She’s stronger than my last
girlfriend and my last girlfriend
was pretty strong.
I really like strong women.
Swoon. It’s my achilles.
I love feeling weak in my
babe’s arms.
What I remember from her
is just something visceral.
Something in the body.
Raw. Ancient.
Long life. Sentient. Awake.
Star stuff.
I know we were a shitshow.
Bad words and hurtful things
said, done, and felt
to each other.
But somehow all I remember
is powerful, visceral, psychic,
physical, soulful
feelings.
Well, just a feeling.
One feeling, one unified feeling.
It feels very similar to
sunshine on your skin,
on an early October morning
in Texas,
in autumn of the northern
hemisphere
on Earth.
Do you know the feeling I’m talking
about?
When the sun touches you and
it feels your skin,
it fills your soul.
In Angel Land,
sometimes we eat
ice cream in the morning.
And sometimes that is
after we’ve had
blissful, woman to woman
morning sex,
with soft skin and gaspy moans
melted into each other.
And sometimes
we eat ice cream
when we haven’t had
that blissful morning sex
but we wanted it,
so we take a deep, still moment
to savor the rich and sweet
cream instead.
Either way,
the ice cream in Angel Land,
on a sunny, rainy, or cloudy morning
is always
quite a delightful experience.
The oak tree down the block,
diseased and old,
sent the cat,
diseased and old,
on his way.
The tree called me down the street
to take a strip of its bark
back into the house,
so the spell of diseased and old
could be broken.
And then like that,
in a matter of weeks,
the cat whom I had
lived with and loved for
seventeen years
passed away.
Then one day,
eleven days after the cat had died,
the oak tree conveyed unto me
on an afternoon walk;
that those seventeen years
I’d spent living and loving the cat
had been given back to me,
that time doesn’t always work
the way humans think it does.
On the day
we signed the contract
on a house that we’re hoping
to live in for the next 20 years
and raise her girls together,
she started by asking if
I was still open to, still considering
getting a vagina.
She said it was confusing to hear
me recently say that
I’m starting to be secure with
being a woman and having a penis,
my belief
that I can be a woman and
still have a penis.
She nodded in agreement,
then furled her brow, but…
but there was something else.
True, yes, she said.
But it is incongruent to see me
as a woman, for me to be a woman now,
which she assured me
she experiences me as,
and then for me to have a penis.
Those are not two things that
normally go together… her words.
She continued, having something
inside her she needed to share.
She bumbled awkwardly with her
words at first.
Something she was uncomfortable
or a little embarrassed to share.
So I softly cajoled her to get it out.
Finally, she shared:
There’s no other way to put it
that doesn’t sound crass,
I want vagina.
I want to experience pussy.
She breathed heavy and dreamily,
sighing.
So yeah, maybe that’s yours
when or if you have one.
I’d like to experience that.
Or, or, or.
Maybe, maybe
it’s another woman.
She stopped, paused,
trying to find her words.
I mean, we’ve talked about
non-monogamy, but never ended
up there.
Yeah, maybe that’s something I’d
like to experience.
I confirmed with her I understood.
That I really like pussy.
That no, in fact, I love pussy.
That it’s wonderful.
I get it.
Then I stood there thinking in my
mind;
why did she bring this up at the
end of the day on a day when we
made a big commitment to
each other,
why then?
I don’t know.
Was it because of
our big commitment now
she was more comfortable
being honest with me?
And maybe she wouldn’t
understand this,
but my mind wondered
back to a couple days ago,
and I was thinking about how
these two douchebag guys
in a bar
invited me over to their table
to flirt with me and then
cut to the chase
and asked me about my genitals
and my plans for getting
a vagina.
I guess these inquiries
about my genitals are happening
now
because I’m finally
starting to look like a woman
and maybe me having a penis
doesn’t add up to folks.
Yeah, it’s good to know;
I’m finally a woman.
I’ve finally arrived.
Welcome to the world, girl.
She is a sapphic.
Wasn’t supposed to be
according to
her family’s expectations,
the cultural conventions where
she grew up,
or her own guilted inhibition.
But these days
when her children are away
or sleeping
she lays on her bed on
sunny mornings,
easy weekend afternoons,
or sleepy evenings
and makes love to herself
and cums really hard
watching lesbian porn,
thinking about women,
and clutching the soft and strong
loins of her body.
Things were not supposed
to turn out this way.
But they have.
It’s just how things are now.
Angel Land is not a place.
Angel Land is found.
Be a woman, then it’s pronounced.
The love of women.
Holding them. All of them.
All forms. All shapes. All bodies.
All colors.
And to be held by them.
From behind.
Chest to chest.
On our sides.
Quietly, judgment is held
when talking,
no judgment.
Just sunshine coming in
from the window
onto the softest of skin
in the morning
and warming.
Angel Land is in life,
in these hours,
on this Earth.
Angel Land turns the eras.
Calls all angels.
We are gathered.
God is coming.
We come.
We replace God,
the fatherly god.
We give God to everyone
who sees us,
hears us,
hates us,
embraces us.
Angel Land is the era.
Meal Prep Disney, she lives
in the tissue in my head
in a tissue-neighborhood called Tokyo.
The neurons are densely packed there,
though there are openings into blue skies
above them.
Something about the density mixed with
blue sky is comforting to the residents
of the tissue-neighborhood called Tokyo.
She smells like elementary school books,
kinda like ham and phlegm.
She meal preps with ham products often.
I’m trying not eat pork these days,
it makes me phlegmy and aggravated.
She and I need to have a talk.
Sometimes it’s tough to have hard talks
over differences with others.
But when you exist in a reality of
densely packed tissue-neighborhoods
called Tokyo,
it’s inevitable you have to have those
hard talks.
My friend said avoiding those hard talks
is what makes me a lesbian.
But maybe it’s realizing they need
to happen is what makes me a lesbian?
I’m walking over to Meal Prep Disney’s
house now.
She lives on the twenty-seventh floor.
It’s a lovely day in Tokyo.
We’re going to have the talk.
The best therapy I’ve received
all year
was laying on a hard wooden floor
using a plush toy rainbow bunny rabbit
as a pillow
while a three year old girl
and a five year old girl
drifted off to sleep with soft gentle breaths
because they were no longer scared
because I lay on that hard wooden floor
protecting them.
Something about their pure, deep breaths
was life affirming,
very much like an elixir.
All the things they’ll face in life,
yet I sat their gently with those breaths,
knowing
we all grow and die, time passes
and
this soft breathing of children into sleep
somehow gave me soul-soothing courage.
There’s something to be said
about the Tao of making
your partner’s bed.
Maybe not exactly the Tao,
but probably more like the zen of it.
That is;
the joy and fulfillment of doing
and the beingness while doing so.
Because with deep, passionate
love for her
it brings me big, infinite,
self-pausing joy
to do something that will ease her mind
and give her a soft pause
of breath for a moment
when she comes home alone
later in the day
and finds the perfectly made bed.
Lord, the pleasure of being lost
in the focus and meticulousness
of a cause beyond oneself.
If this is not zen
then perhaps it’s love.
Or perhaps zen and love
are both one in the same and
and all of this together is what
Lao Tzu called the Tao.
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