CASSANDRA WHITAKER
2022 Poetry Contest Second Runner-Up
American Bodies
I go about my day as a person transitioning into themself
out of himself, in a city built on bodies
and endorsed by a faith that celebrates ownership
of bodies. And what do I find? Bodies.
Local, moveable, but controlled
by external forces so invisible
many people would say they are ghosts, the forces
controlling the body. Paper, stolen
from the body of a tree, controls so many
bodies. All day, bodies complain about the state
controlling their body. My parents talk
about other people’s bodies as if they owned them. Other people
talk about other people’s bodies
as if they owned them. People reveal themselves. The wolf
comes in on words. When you repeat the wolf’s lies
then the wolf has already eaten you. Some parents
of children I have taught would kill me
if they discovered my queerness, mostly because they were told to
by a body of fear. They invite fear
into their home. They repeat what fear has told them. American
states are trying to control children’s bodies, children
who understand their body more than the state
understands anything. Take guns, for example. That’s a body, too.
In America, guns have rights. In America, a corporation
has rights, has a body. I am not sure what rights people have
in the face of all that corporate armed robbery
unless that individual body has a gun,
and because I am in America, the individual body likely has a gun
for both hands, and one for the kids’ bodies
to wield. Being there are more guns in America
than living bodies, any given situation is a possible deathly hallow.
By winter, there will be more dead
bodies. Someone with a gun will kill
some of my people. It will be over bodies
and what one does with a body. It will have everything to do
with being American. If I don’t like you, I will take
from your body. Is the law on my side
if I say aye? This is America, you already know.
Meditating on “bodies,” this poem questions Americanness in ways that are familiar yet exciting. As the poem moves from “body” to “body,” we learn new ways in thinking of our own body within the context of statehood, rights, and physical appearance. The speaker pushes and then eventually concedes; they know they cannot win.
— Luther Hughes, 2022 Poetry Contest Judge
Cassandra Whitaker is a trans writer from the rural south. Their work has been published in Little Patuxent Review, Kitchen Table Quarterly, The Daily Drunk, & Anti-Heroin Chic, among other places.