false medium
I am the clock’s fourth hand some infinitesimal unit moving always backwards I like to go around sighing mercury’s retrograde again the moon’s a thin 19 percent when I’m in the library it’s you who pivots disgusted by my noisy ectoplasm pardon my attempt at cheesecloth and wonder sometime my ghosts rattle around inside me but more often my knee is playing earthquake beneath the table once I decided being witchy would turn me to a better woman I became a better woman if I spell myself invisible will I weigh heavier in the finger nervous pockets of you
Rachel Franklin Wood is a trans poet from Laramie, Wyoming, but she hasn’t lived there for a while. She has a chapbook, “Every Spring Underneath” (dancing girl press), and co-edits pulpmouth.
While writing this poem, I was very conscious of my relationship to the piecemeal “witchy” aesthetic so often embodied by cis, white women in a way that can feel quite hollow and appropriative. Yet, through a shared interest in ritual and self-care, I have found myself forming deep, meaningful relationships with cis women in which my transness is not an excluding factor and through which my identity has been bolstered. How do I hold both my criticism and my community? How do I care for my physical self while magicking that presence away?