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More #readingstats from 2019: a large chunk of my reading (green in the pie chart) was written by women, trans or genderqueer authors.

I was seven years old when I came to Canada.
I didn‘t know I was an immigrant. I found myself
in a land illuminated by a harsh, artificial brightness.
Its creatures laughed loudly and with open mouths.
Some gave me their hatred in little dense balls.
And I swallowed and swallowed, losing every
little bit of myself. I am my own cage.

In this graceful, heartfelt collection, Yawnghwe, a Shan Canadian, writes about recovering from the breakup of a relationship, during the period of time that her husband transitioned to a woman. Striking imagery connects the timeless mysteries of the cosmos to the depths of our inner lives. The book (Caitlin Press) has beautiful cover with a rubberized treatment that accentuates its rich blue colour. #Canadian #poetry #LGBTQ

Today I Google “how to recover from heartbreak.”
The first thing is distance, but distance from you
I cannot bear. Being away from you
is like taking a piece of myself
and tearing it into small bits.

Impatient for the decades to catch up, for the world to stop staring at the genderqueer and trans and intersex and two-spirit and gender fluid. She imagines this. She raises her fist, she yells. She marches, arms locked with another, boots stomping in the middle of Burrard Street. She crosses her arms and gives fuck-you fingers to the police. She laughs at cis white men in tight dark suits, hurriedly crossing the street to avoid her.
#LGBT #poetry

Dead Name

For a period of a few months I don't know what to call you. You have chosen a name, Hazel, from a shortlist we brainstorm together. Vivian, Irene, Ava. Hazel is botanical and somehow suits you. I rehearse the name on my tongue; it comes out hesitantly, with a fade in the beginning and a question mark at the end. The feeling of a borrowed coat. It tastes of sweetened coffee but is lukewarm and strange in my mouth.

(Internet photo)

You had a psychologist and your trans
support group, and the handful of
work friends and family you'd told.
I was tethered to a particular silence
of the lonely, of the inexplicable.
Dimensions shifted: instead of time
and space, uncertainty and doubt.
Secrets were imposed on me,
it was not my place to tell.
Tears stay close to the skin.
Drop by drop, the sea accumulates.