The Body And Its Origins
by Joshua Jennifer Espinoza
I must have had a good reason to leave.
Think back to the body and its origins.
Dream of night sky. Neutral colors.
Imagine the moment this all came to be.
I was conscious beneath the ocean
waiting to become this thing.
There were no words.
No death. God
was touching herself everywhere.
I crawled up walls and kissed ceilings.
I mixed with dirt and felt the world
come to life and then come up with
a word for life.
And then a word for death.
And then a word for body.
And then a word for man.
And then a word for woman.
And then a word for me.
They took my skin and stretched it out
over the kitchen sink.
I can feel the warm water, the soap,
the fork scraping over me.
Light coming in through the window.
My first sounds. It was all love
when I didn’t have anything.
All wet grass and cold snow up to my neck.
I remember seeing my name on a piece of paper
and asking mom what it meant.
It was like a broken mirror to my eyes.
Further and further from the stars.
Emptying of the soul.
Time felt as cloth.
Strange memory of dad as a skeleton
praying for god to save him.
And do you know what prayer does?
It makes you feel like nothing again
but most people who pray don’t understand this.
When I pray I am pure. I don’t ask for anything.
I am a vision of the future. I am spread out
on the couch sobbing because I’m feeling some shit.
I listen. I give myself to the world at my leisure.
I run as far away from men as I possibly can.
This is all to avoid what I really mean—
That purpose is transformation.
That body is life.
That life is a word. And death and woman and man.
That I didn’t have to fight to exist.
That I drifted into this light and it just happened.
That I am a woman because there are stars
and water and air and trees and dirt and flesh and
words and dreams and love and feeling.
That I have less than forever to hold myself.
Joshua Jennifer Espinoza is a trans woman poet living in California. Her work has been featured in Denver Quarterly, PEN America, Lambda Literary, Washington Square Review, and elsewhere. She is the author of two collections—i’m alive / it hurts / i love it (boost house 2014) and There Should Be Flowers (CCM 2016). A third collection, Outside Of The Body There Is Something Like Hope is forthcoming in 2018 from Big Lucks.
"Where My Dreaming and My Loving Live: Poetry & the Body" is the second annual offering of the Poetry Coalition -- more than twenty organizations nationwide dedicated to working together to promote the value poets bring to our culture and communities, as well as the important contributions poetry makes in the lives of people of all ages and backgrounds. A founder member of the Coalition, Letras Latinas at Notre Dame's Institute's for Latino Studies has partnered with the Best American Poetry blog to present 10 poems by women in March that engage with this year's theme, which borrows a line from U.S. Poet Laureate Tracy K. Smith's "Flores Woman." The poems in this project were curated by Emma Trelles.
