Hello Friends,
torrin a. greathouse is a transgender cripple-punk poet and essayist who teaches at the Rainier Writing Workshop in Tacoma, Washington. She was also previously featured for my poem-a-day on April 17, 2023 for “Abecedarian Requiring Further Examination Before a Diagnosis Can Be Determined.”
Enjoy.
Ællen
torrin a. greathouse is a transgender cripple-punk poet and essayist who teaches at the Rainier Writing Workshop in Tacoma, Washington. She was also previously featured for my poem-a-day on April 17, 2023 for “Abecedarian Requiring Further Examination Before a Diagnosis Can Be Determined.”
Enjoy.
Ællen
That’s So Lame
He says when the bus is late, when the TV
show is canceled, when a fascist is elected,
when the WiFi’s bad. That’s so lame! I say
rubbernecking my own body in the bath
-room mirror. See, every time lame comes
out a mouth it doesn’t belong in, my cane
hand itches, my bum knee cracks, my tongue’s
limp gets worse. Some days it’s so bedridden
in the bottom of my jaw, it can’t stand up
for itself. Fumbles a fuck you, trips over its
own etymology, when all I want to ask is, Why
do you keep dragging my body into this? When
I want to ask, Did you know how this slur
feathered its way into language? By way of lame
duck, whose own wings sever it from the flock
& make it perfect prey. I want to ask, How long
have you been naming us by our dead? Baby
-booked your broken from the textbooks of our
anatomy? A car limped along the freeway,
a child crippled by their mother’s baleful stare.
Before I could accept this body’s fractures,
I had to unlearn lame as the first breath of
lament. I’m still learning not to let a stranger speak
me into a funeral, an elegy in orthodox slang.
My dad used to tell me this old riddle: What
value is there in a lame horse that cannot gallop?
A bullet & whatever a butcher can make of it.
■
He says when the bus is late, when the TV
show is canceled, when a fascist is elected,
when the WiFi’s bad. That’s so lame! I say
rubbernecking my own body in the bath
-room mirror. See, every time lame comes
out a mouth it doesn’t belong in, my cane
hand itches, my bum knee cracks, my tongue’s
limp gets worse. Some days it’s so bedridden
in the bottom of my jaw, it can’t stand up
for itself. Fumbles a fuck you, trips over its
own etymology, when all I want to ask is, Why
do you keep dragging my body into this? When
I want to ask, Did you know how this slur
feathered its way into language? By way of lame
duck, whose own wings sever it from the flock
& make it perfect prey. I want to ask, How long
have you been naming us by our dead? Baby
-booked your broken from the textbooks of our
anatomy? A car limped along the freeway,
a child crippled by their mother’s baleful stare.
Before I could accept this body’s fractures,
I had to unlearn lame as the first breath of
lament. I’m still learning not to let a stranger speak
me into a funeral, an elegy in orthodox slang.
My dad used to tell me this old riddle: What
value is there in a lame horse that cannot gallop?
A bullet & whatever a butcher can make of it.
■