All the Devils

This poem appears in the collection Punk Rock and Science Fiction, published this June by Q Publishing House.

Dear Laura,

I got my strength from reading your story.
You have the spine of a statue
And I don’t have the heart to match.
Where do we find the courage of our mothers?
The power that Kathleen Hanna gifted us with,
The fury of the riots that Strummer ordered us to.

Dear Ms. Grace,

When all the devils begin to scream,
Do you hear their voices when you put on your bra in the morning?
Do they tell you that we aren’t women?

Dear Laura Jane,

When I was a child I used to fantasize
That I was secretly a robot designed to look like a boy
And that there was a girl somewhere inside operating the robot.
It was why I had to be so freakishly large
I had to make room for my true self inside.
I used to imagine that, one day, the boy robot would open up
And the girl inside would step out.
I believe that that day has come.

Dear Laura,

Are trans lesbians a thing?
Are they a thing that I’m allowed to be?
Because everyone keeps acting like they’re not.

Dear Laura,

Did she leave me because I said I wanted to be her girlfriend instead of her boyfriend?

Dear Laura,

Is that what happened with your wife, too?

Dearest Trans Queen of Punk,

Will the ghost of David Bowie fight alongside us?
Iggy Pop with a pencil skirt and high heels
Ian Stuart’s only talking to himself.
GG Allin explodes all over the place.

Dear Laura,

I don’t love it when people say that I’ve always been a woman trapped in a man’s body.
I’ve never felt like a woman trapped in a man’s body.
Except that time about a minute ago where I told you that I used to imagine that I was literally a girl trapped in a robot boy’s body.
Okay, I’m complicated.
But I don’t like this whole idea that somehow
Until the day I first put on a dress
I was living a lie and that somehow all that life was invalid,
A prank the world was playing on me that I wasn’t in on.
We love to talk about being born this way
Because it implies that there was never a choice.
I don’t know why we focus so much on choice in the LGBT community.
I get it, none of this is a choice, but what difference does that make?
If you could definitively prove to me,
Beyond a shadow of a doubt
That being gay, bi, lesbian, transgender, genderqueer, asexual, or whatever else was a choice
I’d still fight to the death for everyone’s right to live their life
The way they fucking choose to.
And if you could definitely prove to the haters,
The toxic Christians,
The army of darkness
That none of this is a choice
That we are absolutely born this way
Do we somehow think they would just relent?
Do we think that America is a land where nobody is discriminated against for something they never chose?
Something they were born with?
Show me in the history book where that happens
Because I must have missed that part.

Dear Laura Jane Grace,

I spend so many hours worried that I’ll change my mind someday
That maybe I’m not as trans as other people,
That someday I’ll realize I’m not really born this way.
And I’ve come to the conclusion that who the fuck cares?
This is who I am today,
And I make no promises about who I will be tomorrow
And I refuse to hold any obligation
To be the person I was yesterday.

Dear True Trans Soul Rebel,

Today my name is Julie.
And I still love you, too.

Laura Jane Grace’s newest album Adventure Club is out next week and you can pre-order it from Polyvinyl Records.

Featured photo: L: Laura Jane Grace, photo by Dimitry Mak; R: Julie River, photo by Stone