International Transgender Day of Remembrance

for more info on TDoR: http://www.transgenderdor.org

Author: Jan Steckel
Title: Intersection

reprinted here w/o formal permission from my friend the author 
dedicated to my children, my friends and other strangers as:

• a commitment and call to action from the CPUSA
• a clarion call, a wake-up call, a promise and a warning 
• a gift for my grown children whose paths through the verb "gender" to selfhood made me proud of them and myself as a parent. I love who you are. I love that you will let no one (even me) "un-are" the who of you.
• a milemarker and a tombstone those lovers, friends and strangers harmed, murdered or imprisoned by Transphobia

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Intersection

When I help a woman on with her jacket,
my sexuality grabs my gender identity
and waltzes it around the room.

I’m a woman, but there’s a man in me.
He’s a bit of a fop, sort of a pansy.
He might be a fag.

Why shouldn’t everything about me be fluid?
I’m a squishy skin-bag of water and salt,
ocean inside and out.

As a child, I was sure I was a boy.
The heroes of all the best books were boys.
I pretty much lived in my head, what I read.

Now I feel more like a woman –
except around straight women.
Then I feel like a butch lunk.

My husband thinks I’m a femme
because I wear lavender, (color and scent),
and ask him to open jars.

All roads meet in me:
butch when I wake up,
femme at lunch.

Androgynous at dinner,
totally trans all night .
Can I get that door for you?

--Jan Steckel

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