here are four samples of my poetry work and one film essay for your consideration.

charlie jasper is a trans artist and poet living and working in new york city.

1. subway

 

there’s something cinematic about the subway

about passing through darkness and

flickering light 

exposed in 

little increments

you think that 

the darkness will swallow you up

but then the light teases an exit

but as quick as it comes, it goes even quicker

the portraits 

of overworked and underpaid

transient, searching, tired, poor,

of those dozing after double shifts

of mothers and fathers and lovers and elders

and all of their children

of those forcibly uprooted from the earth they called home, whose hands built this nation/those uprooted by disaster who may have lost their tongue but who 

hold onto hope. 

of those who tended to this very earth for thousands of years, whose 

descendants ride the subway, too, 

they are a miracle of ancestral wishes

of workers and fighters, custodians, cooks, nannies, nuns, street vendors, teachers, preachers, musicians, poets, lovers. us.

we can learn a lot from those who the city hasn’t chewed up and spit out

or if it did they stayed intact, whole, surviving.

all shoved together on a hundred year old

box built in the name of 

progress hurtling down the tracks

2. sanctum

between his butt and the comma of his back

is a little patch of hair, accented

by two horn-like apostrophes

on either side of his vertebrae

when my lover and i lie awake i like

to play with the downy little lawn

he stretches and the carved out rivers

lead upstream, soft muscles

cuddle up against his tired bones

i like to press a kiss on the top of his back

or the bottom of his neck

and work my lips down against the current

opening up to the riverbank and

open up to Eden

he can’t see that part of his back in the mirror

so i tend to the garden myself.

3. mama’s (boy)

i. testosterone cypionate/modern alchemy

 

i am both frankenstein and his monster,

animating something that’s never died

but just lied 

dormant, growth stunted, in remission

i inject my soft soft sides with ambrosia,

the life giving elixir

there’s a saying about pain and pleasure

and when the needle pricks my skin and lo

plunges deep into plush

i see the pain as granting myself life

and cheating death and god out of being

something he wanted me to be.

sixty milligrams every week

each gets me a whisker closer to

ascension beyond biological codes

into something science can’t quite explain;

neither man nor monster,

but something entirely my own.

 

ii. come home to me

 

Even though it’s been five years

I am still waiting for the phone call:

“Mom, I’m sorry

I made a huge mistake.

This is disgusting and I can’t 

recognize myself in the mirror anymore.

How could you let me do this to my body?

Let me be your daughter again, please, Mom.

Let me be your daughter.”

And she’ll come home and I’ll hold her 

and stroke her short hair and stubble

and say that it’s okay and that she’s still

Beautiful and I will help her come back

to Womanhood,

to who she was meant to be.

4. maybe it’s my leo moon talking but it’s all play baby

 

when i have eyeliner and chest hair and i feel eyes on me, sometimes i want to hide but from the right eyes

from knowing glances, from t4t fagdykes

from people who see me playing 

and want to join in too

 

each day i shapeshift

and get to rebuild from the ground up

i sculpt myself to figure out what fits best

now, today, what i know fills my heart

and helps this body feel like home

 

and we share clothes and share bread

and medicines, stories, beds, and songs

and dance naked at riis beach

and feel the sun on our skin 

i see you, 

          you see me, 

          with teary smiles 

we carry one another

5. alien and gender transgression
alien: it’s got all of the boundary transgression wrapped up in a horny gothic space robot body horror package! the film’s use of body horror is deeply gendered, and the monster occupies a space that is both organic yet bionic, and as violently masculine yet possessively feminine. 

sigourney weaver plays ellen Just One Of The Boys ripley, who asserts herself as our protagonists much to the annoyance of the other (mostly male) crewmates. her authority is continually undermined even tho she’s obviously the only one with her head on straight

in true gothic tradition, the crew ventures into the misty, cavernous unknown to find out what’s out there. they leave their ship nicknamed “mother”, this womb of what they’re familiar with, to go into literally alien territory, into this sinewy drippy cavern where the alien hatches (or birthed?) from an egg

ash goes against ripley’s feminine authority and everybody pays for it with their lives! and when ripley disobeys mother there are pretty dire consequences too

the creature’s exterior resembles a vulva, but the crew learns the alien has phallically forced itself down kane’s throat. non-consensual penetration, possession, and impregnation of a male body presents rly puzzling gender dynamics, which are only amplified once the creature bursts through kane’s chest, killing him.

if the crew is a family then ash is like mother’s loyal son. he tries to carry out her wishes by introducing the alien to the crew in the first place, and once he identifies ripley as a threat to mother’s plan.

(tw rape parallel) he violently throws her around among hung-up pornography, and pushes past nursery room mobile-like trinkets hanging from the ceiling. ash attempts to choke her by shoving a rolled-up magazine down her throat, paralleling kane’s oral rape by the alien itself. a prime example of body horror is when he becomes decapitated, spewing a distinctly milk-like substance from what appear to be wires. this scene contains a host of maternal imagery, but its violent misogyny puts the feminine at the intersection between slut and mother.

ridley scott’s alien marries seemingly contradictory images for a western audience. the categories of male and female, organic and technological, and maternal and wantonly are blurred, and call into question constructed societal norms.