Poetry from Nova Martin – America's favorite transwoman feminist lesbian druidess poet
What if men had vaginas?
What if women had penises?
What if?
What if?
What if?
They do.
They do.
They do.
Right here
on this sacred earth,
where we will conquer hate
and men with vaginas
and women with penises
will be loved and accepted
… by even the transphobic
gay men and gay women
and also the hateful Christians.
My peni$ smells like pu$$y.
Good pu$$y.
Sweet pu$$y.
Again,
I’m talking about a peni$
my peni$, smelling like pu$$y.
And no, not because I
fkd a cisgender woman
with good, sweet pu$$y.
My peni$ smells like good
sweet pu$$y
because
I take female hormones
and I’m a woman
with a peni$.
You know,
womanliness wouldn’t fuck up
having a peni$.
Womanliness takes a peni$
and makes it actually ok, tolerable,
a real prized pony.
Did you want to see my gonads?
I’m not real sure you do.
They’re really very weird looking,
like all male-born gonads
(in my own personal opinion).
After receiving female hormones
they’ve shriveled up a bit.
I’d even say they’re kind of cute now,
as cute as male-born gonads can be.
46 years ago
they started on a journey.
Ever since, they have come outside,
into the golden sunlight world.
And since, I’ve wish they’d go,
go back inside,
or maybe even go away completely.
They’re going to be removed
from my body soon,
so soon, their unnecessary journey
will end.
I will grow old and die.
My body might slowly
lose its life and energy.
I will lose my beauty and
my youth.
My revival won’t go on
forever.
I will be in pain, be tired,
feel ragged and worn out.
Or
I could die sooner, from a
sudden illness, accident, or
heart attack.
But however this inevitability
happens,
I will have lived life on my terms,
with joy, believing in kindness
and leaning into other
people’s joy
regardless of what passes
around and within me
and how my fate peters out.
I was born male.
She looks at them on my thighs.
Soft brushy freckles.
She likes them.
Her lush lush lips go upon them.
She says I’m such a lovely, lovely
woman.
I giggle.
She kisses my soft, white legs more.
So I gasp and I moan.
This feels right. It feels succulent.
It feels more appropriate than
how I was originally made.
So I turn and I turn it on
more and more.
I burn and she melts me.
We melt together
in midnight and morning sun.
In a hotel room in Albuquerque
I wake up
in the middle of the night
to various things you said
speaking in my mind,
like a radio tuning in…
Initially there is static,
my mind is groggy,
the words are unclear,
but soon the more into
consciousness I awake
I can clearly hear:
“Women don’t have penises.”
“Women don’t dance like that.”
“Women don’t have those kind
of thoughts.”
“A woman wouldn’t wear that.”
“I don’t think women do things
like that.”
Then I get up.
Go into the stale bathroom of
my hotel room.
Grab my pink metal tweezers
and continue my tenacious ritual
of plucking out the remnants of
my beard hair, one by one,
as I stand there for an hour
underneath the nauseating
fluorescent lighting,
plucking probably 800 hairs
and plotting out my plan to
move to Berlin to become a
Sapphic lesbian, woman-only,
sensual and tender,
feminist healer prostitute.
The family of my transition
I will not grow old with.
I may likely know them
for a long time,
but they will not be family.
Though
on the walls of my home
I will still hang the artwork
their young daughters
gave me to celebrate my
ascending vibrancy in the world.
For one year,
one year alone,
they loved and accepted me,
they found joy, excitement, exuberation
in me being in the world,
and I consider that a great honor
to have had that effect on them,
to have
received their celebration.
They’ll find someone new in the future
to draw pictures for
and give Christmas gifts to,
to get cuddles before bedtime,
and my transgender transition
will continue
in its solitary and communal way
that no one can relate to,
yet everyone becomes a part of
its story.
The ghost voices of these young girls
will always give color to
my woman soul.
My woman soul will be colorful
thanks to the sparks of their love.
The purse my Mama
bought me,
I carry it like a teddy bear.
I’ve kept it for too long.
It’s actually uncool.
It’s not the greatest purse.
Wait, hold on there Nova,
let’s be fair and objective;
it is
pretty damn functional
and being black leather,
it is fairly versatile.
If I’m honest,
Mom did a pretty good job
picking out and giving me
my first purse
as a forty-five year old
now-woman.
I know some women
my age no longer have
their mom around
or they might not have
a great relationship with
their mom,
and well, my mom hasn’t been
exactly exemplary
as I’ve transitioned my gender,
but I do truly love, respect,
and admire her,
and she did give me a solid,
perfect first purse.
And so I cling to and keep up
with this bastard like it is
my favorite teddy bear.
Half a person, I live to be.
Never a daughter. Not a wife.
Not a land owner.
Not a mother.
Once a son.
Then
I turned away as a father.
I can’t stop what the sun sees
half in the mirror,
always half is the mirror.
The other side, holy side,
effervescence, the spirits.
Whole to my cat,
the little sprittlemites.
Born to be shamanic… supersonic.
Two parts are those oak trees,
pollinator and pollinated.
But me,
in the land of people and cities
and big box stores
selling merchandise from China;
I live as half a person.
Vanished and thriving.
Voiceless, unseen,
but I guess I get to be pretty,
sometimes,
depending on the beholder.
After he was done
he stood over me
growling and said
I was a good slut.
I was mostly naked
with my panties yanked
down around my ankles
and my negligée half off.
I felt barren and exposed
and wanted to cry.
I knew this wasn’t what
I wanted.
I felt a foreign and shameful
inauthenticity growing inside me.
It hit me full force in the stillness
after he left.
I’ve got to now,
He said moments after finishing
and lefty briskly without
exchanging any niceties.
Then
I cried and sobbed in the emptiness
of a Chicago apartment
built for a four or five person family.
The ice and snow outside
melted, merged, and ashened
from all the cars going by.
I believed I needed
a man’s masculinity
to affirm my femininity.
That is not true.
The most noble masculinity
I’ve ever experienced
originated from within
the curves of a woman.
And I find that more affirming
of my femininity and all femininity
than any man or
anything a man could do
for a woman.
I consider masculinity to be
the efficient ability to compartmentalize or
contain emotions,
while femininity
is the ability to swim
within an ocean of emotions.
I swim with women now.
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