WEDNESDAYS WITH DENISE: DECEMBER 14, 2022

Stephanie Burt's We Are Mermaids was published earlier this year. It's a delightful look at the emotional difficulties and triumphs of girlhood, the places of watery air and airy water, the brackishness of in-between spaces. The gorgeous poems are about trans identity, yes, but also about all the ways everyone—trans or not—has inner superpowers wanting to be unleashed. Below is Stephanie's poem "My 1994" (first published on Scoundrel Time) as a sampler. Congratulations, Stephanie!

 

MY 1994

I didn’t know. But I knew. I took off the dress
Kay offered and apologized for my striped boxers.

I called myself a kid in a candy store
When I was a teen in a lingerie store. I wanted

To move to a place I knew secondhand, from TV,
To Top Shop, Boots, postcodes in England-land. I had mixed up

The opposite of nostalgia—a longing to be
Some place I could never call home—with my wish

To become someone new. There’s a wasp between
My windowpane and its wire-mesh screen. She wants

To get out. She hovers and dives towards some
Way, not knowing there can be no

Way unless someone unlocks the glass and lifts
The window itself and lets the wasp into the room.

For you read me. I wanted to write a book and I told
Everybody I knew that I wanted to write a book

About the softest pop groups I could find:
The boys wore striped sailor shirts and they sang

Like girls and the girls wore striped sailor dresses and sang
Like every first kiss was simultaneously

The Holy Grail and no big deal, which was true
And is true. The Field Mice. Heavenly. Blueboy. I loved

Them all. I love them all. The demand that we shed
Our previous selves is garbage. We are not wasps

And need not leave our shells behind. I had
To move to England to see them where they lived.

They said that love could break a boy’s heart,
Keith Girdler sang. I think there’s no such thing.

I wore the sailor shirts but not the floppy collars.
My then-best friend gave me bad advice about passing,

Telling me women dress for one another.
Never for ourselves. My then-girlfriend needed

To date a boy. I was glad to help her find one.
I didn’t know. But I knew. Maybe everyone did.

The wasp rams the glass, black and gold. I thought I wanted
To free myself from my body, which was

Not possible. Land
On this windowsill with me.

Comments

[Karen Beckworth]

Great cover!

[Emily Fragos]

I have been an admirer of Stephanie Burt's brilliant work ever since I began to write poetry. Thank you for "My 1994."

[Terence Winch]

Wow. Strikingly good poem.