I didn’t learn to fight back until I started wearing dresses.

Couldn’t scream at strangers. Couldn’t correct servers,

or doctors, or old acquaintances.

The meek will inherit jack-shit, and toil over

dumb, bubbling, multi-colored liquids

that serve no purpose.

Women

inherit the blood. The hard work. The solutions

but not the story. Tall man in dark cloak and hat

murdering in Whitechapel.

Back to the lab with the stolen body parts.

The belief you own something

if you slice out the bits you want.

The reality that I can kill

and get away with it.

The reality that my estrogenated

body can live

and get away with it.

---

Elle J. Snyder (she/her) is a trans woman, poet, and weredolphin from Staten Island (traditionally Lenape land, stolen and colonized). She has represented her borough as part of the 2018 Advanced Slam Team at NPS, facilitated workshops in her community and for LGBTQIA youth, buried herself alive at Queer Van Kult: Revelation exhibition in 2022, and published a limited release chapbook, Where the Knife Landed, from NYSAI Press. Her work most recently appears in: Unendurable, The Words Faire, AC/DC, Pink Ochre, The Uncommon GRACkle, et. al. She is also aggressively seeking sponsorship from Moravian Cemetery.
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Picture Credits: Musa Ali Chaudhry