Ace
Ace (they/them) is a nonbinary theatre goblin, story-teller and maker of poetry.
"My experience of being transgender has been a slow granting of permission to unfurl into my own wild, weird shape, with all of the golden joy and howling anxiety that that entails. I could never have dreamed that the miserable and confused little kid I used to be would end up with language to describe themselves, and community that shares their experience, and so I try and be a loud and shiny lighthouse to other boats navigating the mists on their own journey."
"I write poetry to find words for the unsayable things inside me - the rage, the confusion, the ecstacy, the grief. Poetry alchemizes the lump of lead in my stomach or heart or throat and turns it into quicksilver. I love to take that stuckness in my body and pound it through my feet and beat it against my teeth until it's verse-shaped. And more than anything, I love sharing something that I thought was too niche, too personal for anyone else to relate, and have someone go "OMG same!" If laughter is the shortest distance between two people, poetry is the ivy-covered alleyway that links my back yard to yours."
IG: @theydyamelia YT: Bard & Troubadour
This is About a Greek Hero Called Caeneus
Trigger Warning: Discussions of sexual assault, one use of the word r*pe.
Problematic
is what the academics call Caeneus. He
Problematizes gender with his trans-
formation, with his trans-
cendence, because he
doesn't turn into a weeping tree,
voiceless, petrified in place. He
doesn't become a roaring bear or lion
to banish, to call dangerous,
and draw the line between
the men and the beasts, the other.
The problem,
my partner tells me,
the problem that you have to understand
is that in the ancient Greek,
the words for 'rape' and 'seduction' are harder to parse.
It's difficult to know where the lines are drawn,
because over time the languages changes
(Language will not keep its shape, it shifts)
And what does it mean for a people, for a time,
when the tongue can't taste the difference
between con-sent and con-quest?
What pleasures do we deny
on warm summer beaches in golden god glow?
What sins do we allow?
The turning point of our story is written on a tide shore,
and the storyteller decides where the waves roll.
But the problem
with Caeneus
is that the line is not blurred. He marks it,
driving that point into the wet sand,
into the salt water surrounding him
as Poseidon drips brine and seaweed and asks,
"Was it good for you too, babe?"
Never. Again. This. Never.
Not from you, not from anyone.
Not like this, not in this body.
On Tumblr
Poseidon and Caeneus are a meet-cute.
The tide rolls and language changes
(it will not keep its shape, it shifts)
Here, on younger tongues,
Poseidon says trans rights
and princess becomes prince,
becomes more, becomes hero,
invincible. Impenetrable.
Never. Again. This. Never.
In this fan fiction perhaps I can imagine between them something more like my own awkward conversations
at the edge of beds, on the edge of my tongue, something
slowly revealed like the salt flats as the sea
gently takes back his hands
from the edge of the land.
Not from you, not from anyone.
Not like this, not in this body.
It's problematic
to have your queer icons bare their chest
and wear their scars so loudly,
to claim and defend their body so completely.
It is problematic
to hurt and heal together.
It is problematic
to cross the lines we draw in the sand, and stand
with your feet in both worlds.
What pleasures do we deny
on warm summer beaches in golden god glow?
What sins do we allow?
Cartography
When I was twelve a seamstress pulled tight
the tape around my body
(A land enclosure)
Named the terrain
"Child-bearing hips"
Promises of fertile valleys
and milky abundance
from this as yet unexplored continent.
The maps were never changed.
Travellers still walk this land
seeking dark earthy gardens,
sure of healing fountains.
They make their homes at the edge of the wilderness,
calling it farmland in potentia.
(Leave this place, settlers.
Between these hills I am carving a channel to the sea.
This land is for the salt and the cut-glass cliffs
For the sacred song of midges and wild wading birds
For fat eels and sucking marsh mud.
It is not a place
For fence posts and ploughshares.
It is not a place
To raise churches
Or quiet, obedient children.)