3 poems, with authors notes
I- The good news as told by predominantly/pious white institutions
Note- This poem is based on my wrongful dismissal from a catholic school I worked at, which happened in February 2024. I hope that’s an accurate estimation. I think I’ve written about it briefly in another Substack post, not at length but touched on. It was such an unpleasant experience that I resigned myself to not thinking about it at all, but it still pops up in my mind quite a lot. When I was listening to billy woods’ album GOLLIWOG, I realized that’s what the charicature dolls i saw in the headteachers office were called. Favourite tracks off the album; corinthians and golgotha.
II-you will feel the loss of clipped nails
Note- I haven’t spent as long with a poem as I have with this one. I was forced, almost, to reckon with the themes its heavy with, a particular kind of loneliness and bleakness that comes with interacting with people who simply cannot comprehend transness or queerness. The bulk of that feeling and where the urge to write this came from I associated with one particular instance, but through multiple rounds of editing, it became clear that the ‘you’ I was referring to is as much a specific person as it is a culmination of harmful attitudes toward trans people — attitudes rooted in misunderstanding, fear, and ignorance.
Some days, the ‘you’ has been me. The thing about transphobia is that trans people often carry a heavy load of it internalised.
Editing this was challenging. I was trying to find a structure that felt right, particularly in how I portrayed the relationship between the ‘i’ and the ‘other’, and how they interact within the text. Initially, it was much longer, and the lines were very short and clipped. That choice reflected the way certain actions make me feel disconnected from my body how isolating they are. The short, clipped lines this started off as also felt like bullet points, which is often how I process difficult things: I strip everything down to something my brain can digest.
However, the lines weren’t interacting with one another they felt too detached. I’m trying to break out of the spell in my mind that insists a poem’s line must fit a specific word count. Realistically, the line could be the whole poem (especially without punctuation). I do like it when my poems look visually uniform, and I enjoy that aesthetic — but in this case, it became a limitation. Letting go of that, and arriving at this shorter version of the poem, was genuinely cathartic.
III- I loathed you, Dar(jee)ling
Note- For every ethnic child who wakes up to make tea for everyone but themselves.
Thank you so much for being here. Has someone told you that you’re doing your best today?
I’ll be the one to say it. [insert name here] you are doing your best. See you soon.