Poetry / Joshua Zeitler 

:: My Desires Have Invented New Desires ::

	from a line by Hélène Cixous

I believe in a God who does not exist
           as a discrete entity, but as a collective
yearning.
                 The only way to be Godless
	    is to be satisfied.
			                   Once I added sugar
grain by grain to tea, sipping in-between
	      to test.
		           By the time I tasted sweetness
there was no tea left.
		                       What have I become?
	        I asked my empty cup.
				                          Once I dropped
a teacup because it lied to me.
				                       The break
	        was singular,
		                         clean;
			                             I studied it
	        like a holy text, cutting my tongue
on the sharp edge.
		                  The only way to tell
	     a story is to begin with desire
or blood,
	         drop by drop.

Once I wanted to plant a pill in my body
	     like a seed.
		                  Once I wanted to tell a story
about how I became the thing that grows
	     rather than the dirt.
			                          The only way to dig
is with your hands,
		                   on your knees.

	In this way, digging is like a prayer.

In this way, the prayer becomes God.

	The only way to name a thing
is to interrogate its desires.
			                          To cover
	their mouths and let the years pass.

The only way to pass the years is to want
	       time to stand still.
			                        The only way
to make time stand still is to name its desires.

	In this way, every name is a lie
born of yearning.
		                In this way, every lie
	       is its own holy proof.
			                              Once I learned
my name was the only true part of me left,
	      I cupped it in my false hands.

What shall I become? 
		                        I asked,
				                       wondering
        	if I should let it drop.

From the writer

:: Account ::

In one month from writ­ing this, I will have an appoint­ment with my gen­er­al prac­ti­tion­er at which I will request to begin gen­der-affirm­ing hor­mone ther­a­py. I’ve been think­ing of this appoint­ment as a poem: a com­pact moment, discrete—I enter the office, I leave the office—and yet spi­ral­ing back­ward and for­ward through my life. Over a decade of doubt, of inde­ci­sion, of weigh­ing what I might lose against what I might gain, has led to this one appoint­ment. And after? I can only guess. Being non­bi­na­ry in a rur­al envi­ron­ment isn’t easy. I have long strug­gled to extri­cate the way I see myself from the lim­it­ed ways that the peo­ple around me see me. Do I have the courage to pur­sue my own hap­pi­ness at the expense of oth­ers’ expec­ta­tions? Many days, I don’t know that I do. But this desire has exist­ed in me so long, it has become its own being, a liv­ing thing I can’t ignore.

I don’t pre­tend that my iden­ti­ty has any bear­ing on the mer­it of my work. When I first began sub­mit­ting poet­ry, I grap­pled with the first sev­en words of my bio­graph­i­cal state­ment for a long time. Joshua Zeitler is a queer, non­bi­na­ry writer…Who cares? The inevitable answer: I do. Words from Joy Ladin in Trou­bling the Line echo through my mind: acute, defin­i­tive, life-chang­ing. I some­times won­der whether I would iden­ti­fy as non­bi­na­ry if I weren’t a writer. This is not to say that I doubt the valid­i­ty of my iden­ti­ty, but that writ­ing has allowed me the free­dom to explore those spaces of self that might oth­er­wise remain long, threat­en­ing shad­ows in the monot­o­ny of my day-to-day life. Poet­ry expands to accom­mo­date the com­plex, unsta­ble, con­tra­dic­to­ry rela­tions between body and soul, social self and psy­che (Joy Ladin’s words again), which cap­i­tal­ism can­not. My writ­ing and my iden­ti­ty are mar­ried, inextricable.

And then, of course, there is the ques­tion of the name. When I sent out that first sub­mis­sion (anoth­er moment that acts like a poem), I knew I was mak­ing a choice. It didn’t have to be per­ma­nent, but I would be bet­ter off if it were. How­ev­er my name might not fit who I have become, I decid­ed, it was a gift from my moth­er. Our rela­tion­ship has become frac­tured, per­haps beyond repair, and so I think of my name as the one thing from her I will keep, a way of hon­or­ing her. Which ways of being are closed off by this choice? Which are bro­ken open? If there is an answer to be found, I will find it on the page.

Joshua Zeitler is a queer, non­bi­na­ry writer based in rur­al Michi­gan. They received their MFA from Alma Col­lege, and their work has appeared in Pit­head Chapel, Paci­fi­ca Lit­er­ary Review, The Q&A Queerzine, HAD, and elsewhere.