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Issue 1 (Archive)

Transitive
Rag

trans writing and art

Issue 1 — October 2025

Issue #1 — ARCHIVE
17 October 2025transitive rag is a quarterly magazine of trans writing and art.This rag is created on the unceded lands of the Jagera and Turrbul people. This always was, and always will be, Aboriginal land.This rag is made by humans.Works © contributors.
Contributors' opinions are their own.
Site and layout © Celestial Fool Press.This is a mature rag, not intended for minors.The cover image for this issue is Home underneath the sky by Pip Ford.This site is best viewed on desktop.Click/tap on any image to enlarge it.

On Content Warnings

You won't find content warnings attached to each piece in the rag. This is partly a logistical decision, and partly a creative one.It would be impossible to give warnings for every possible trigger that any reader may have, but there are warnings below for content that explicitly deals with death, serious injury/assault, or mental health.If you have a more specific trigger, I encourage you to use CTRL+F/CMD+F to see if your key trigger words appear in the issue.General Content Warnings (Present throughout the issue)
Reclaimed slurs.
Transphobic language and misgendering.
Objectifying trans bodies.
Transition and trans-medicalisation.
Sexual imagery and/or explicit language.Specific Content Warnings
What I'm reading ✨ — suicide; armed conflict (Gaza) and deaths.
character development — psychiatric hospital.
TS — self harm imagery; reference to CNC porn.
Martyrmother — trans death.
What Better Memorial — trans deaths; violent imagery; cannibal metaphor.

Editor's Foreword

This magazine has been percolating inside my head for a long time. I kept questioning the validity, the respectability, the right to take up space. Those are questions most trans folk will likely identify with — they’re the same questions that cycle around my brain about myself. Am I valid? Am I respectable? Can I take up space?Trying to get to a position of ‘yes’ (yes I am valid, yes I am respectable, yes I can take up space) is what paralysed my gender for years. Only when I came to a resounding position of ‘fuck that’ was I able to transition. And finally I came to the position of ‘fuck that’ for this magazine.
Fuck validity. Fuck respectability. Fuck minimising ourselves.So I put the call-out for submissions and holy shit did y’all respond in force. I thought I was going to struggle to find contributors — especially for Issue #1 and especially when I can only pay a pittance from my own shallow pockets — but the quality and quantity of responses has melted my little brain.Issue #1 has some phenomenal trans writing and art that I am so excited to put in front of your eyeballs. Pip Ford’s gorgeous mixed-media piece Home underneath the sky has made such a powerful issue cover, and it fills my heart with golden joy every time I see it. Each piece of work, like each trans contributor, has a new perspective and a bold vector… and absolutely nobody has held back.I named the magazine transitive because trans art is transitive — it does something to you. And it’s a rag because we’re trashy — our art and writing is too often rejected in favour of sensibilities. Please, leave your sensibilities at the door.It was important to me that this site be freely accessible. That said, if you’d like to support the rag and these gorgeous talented trans artists you can optionally pay for your copy of this issue. Pay what you can, if you can; it goes toward contributors’ honoraria and website administration costs.

I’ll leave you with a short poem of my own, one which sparked my thought process into the name of the magazine. I hope you enjoy this issue as much as I’ve enjoyed editing it!


Grammar Magicglamour magic
forms new faceetymology
without a tracegrammar magics
equalise wordsin Her hands trans
is a transitive verb

Ori Diskett

Ori Diskett (he/she) is a writer, editor, sex worker, and law student. He writes and works in Meanjin/Brisbane on the unceded sovereign lands of the Jagera and Turrbul people. Ori writes about things that are important to her like love between monsters and being trans; her poetry appears in print and online, and she was recently shortlisted for the Gwen Harwood Poetry Prize 2025. You won't find him on social media, but head to oridiskett.com for more info.

"How it should be"

At age eighteen, I was born, fully-formed
emerging from sea foam.
My flesh was gold
& hardened.There were no eyes to assess
my design, just the sun
to dry my shoulders,
it had no concerns
for my origins,
only fears I would be
tarnished.Far and wide, waves welcomed me.
Their song swept past the horizon,
whispering my name into sea spray,
till I had no need for
introductions.As I stepped onto rigid ground,
so different from transient sea,
I stood tall in the face of Being
       & hoped it would be kind to me.

Jack Anthony

Jack Anthony (@janthony.writes) is a poet, writer and editor from Magandjin/Brisbane, Australia. His work has been published in anthologies and literary journals such as Querencia Quarterly, Ink & Inclusion, and #Enbylife Journal, among others. When not writing they can be found with their nose in a book, haunting op shops and bothering their cat, Jesper.

Robin M Eames

Robin M Eames (they/them) is a queercrip poet and historian living on Dharug land. Their work has been published in Overland, Meanjin, APJ, and Health & History, among others.

What I'm reading ✨

I read zines about lockpicking
& the street transvestite action
revolutionaries read a screed
against apartheid read placards
and protest signs crying STOP
GENOCIDE / SANCTION ISRAEL
read an op ed from a palliative
doctor decrying physician assisted
suicide read an assistive tech
manual recommending that my OT
place their hands beneath my
buttocks read covid obits read
the corporation’s call to solve
climate crisis with consumption
read the backlash read the fine print
on the contract read the scam
text read a post-breakup message
from my ex composed by ChatGPT
read the names of the dead read the
Supreme Court ruling read letters
to the editor from the ruling classes
signed Jeff, Vaucluse who doesn’t
believe children starve without food
but words won’t feed them so I
stop reading / stop writing &
join the fight for love & solidarity
for life & freedom for the children
who will never learn to read

Hover By The Door

Two fish of unknown kind
bump into each other
underneath the Brett's Warf Citycat terminal.
It's soft, like a kiss,
a private moment shared behind
murky mud curtains.
Never mind the strange, semi hairless ape-like creature above,
Assigning unfish like intimacies to them.                This place is theirs.That's us, in another life,
I think.
Off to the sides,
hiding away together.We hold hands in dark tunnels,
pull each other from danger
Dare to kiss in front of preachers
hold our souls up to sunlight
Cast prismatic colours
to dance along the pavement.It’s here, in the backseat, I find god
at the foot of the couch,
in smoke covered patios,
on driveways long after the lights have gone out,
communion from shared glass
smuggled in a jacket seam.      If the angels cry our image,
            we waltz in the moons glow
                And the rain does not reach our bones.There is paint in your hair,
pizza that’s gone cold,
a night that never ends.
You are messy and beautiful
and complicated
and free.
You are wild,
yet peace is found in your eyes.
You make room at the table,
always a bowl for me.It is simple.
I love you.
Every bit of you,
Again and again.My friend,
I will wait by the door
        well after the world ends

Key Stone

Key Stone (any/all) is a folk punk musician and poet based in Meanjin, on the unceded lands of the Jagera and Turrbul people. Key writes to a variety of themes but often finds himself strung on motifs of grief and desire. He self-publishes poetry on Instagram at @starsofstclements, and you can find his musical work on @keyofthearch.Key co-hosts a monthly poetry night in Meanjin called Echoes from the Cave Inn that has been running since October 2022. It runs on the first Tuesday of every month in Wooloongabba, and you can find more info at @echoes_fromthecave or by emailing.

First Dates

I can’t seem to stop going on first dates. Jittery hands carrying drinks to the courtyard table, placed beside discarded sunglasses. Eyes dance in ocular embrace, the will-they-won’t-they tango. Cute, electric, addictive.“T4T Genderqueer folks to the front. Not up for cishet dudes. You’ll be ok, most things are for you.” I’m clear as I can be and they ping me anyway. On the rare occasions I let them through they inevitably do a misgendering. Just because I’m stacked with dangerous curves they, wilfully ignorant, assign she/her/woman/lady to me. I’m mercifully free of the worst kind of attention, the final clarifying moment a moat between me and them: “I may be a masochist, but I’ll never fuck a real estate agent.”Faggots, dykes, gender bending cuties, pansexual, handsomesexual, lumbersexual, heartachingly beautiful trans women, self-made men: I want to meet them all. I identify as sexual for everyone but straight cis dudes.Good first dates see knees make contact, a little zing of electricity ricocheting from there to here to a promised future thrill. It all blooms in my chest. When their pupils dilate, a hand inching closer to mine with radiant heat, it seems they’re feeling it too.No funny business first time round, just chats and a few checks. How’s the vibe? How does their neck smell to me? Do I want to go lower? Would it feel natural to meet their wanton gaze from down on my knees? Is it all a haze of smoke and mirrors, or heady reflections of matched desire?Sometimes we talk in circles so long the second date / hot fuck doesn’t eventuate. I’m so often entangled in first date thrillscapes.Most recently a Beautiful Lady with posture like a ballerina and a request for prosecco at the bar got my heart racing. Her gleaming red hair looked like it would be silken to the touch. I wondered what it would feel like on my back as she gripped my hip bones and shoulders, making me hers.Later that night we said goodbye and fell into each other’s arms: transitioning to liquid. I don’t know what her neck smelled like, only that my knees became marshmallows.My ears needed to hear “good boy” and “mmm, that’s it”. But that’s second date talk. We scratch another date into our calendars to make the words real. Something about her makes me pause in my tracks, probably the way our collective chests would pile up. Tangled like mountain ranges, knowing that still I’d be seen for the boy that I am. No projections, only reverence flowing like waves, lapping at each other’s shores.

Murray Bridges

Murray (he/him) lives on unceded Gadigal lands and enjoys writing about his hookups while romancing his friends, going fishing and getting lost in the wilderness.

Hello World

Lyra Gaunt

Lyra Gaunt (she/her) is an MtF transgender artist and writer who goes by Str8aura (No not that one) online. She lives in Texas on the colonized lands of the Jumanos, Kiikaapoi, Tawakoni, and Wichita indigenous people.

This poem is best viewed in landscape or on desktop.

character development

i keep trying to write about masturbating without writing
about my ex, and it’s not working. the poems aren’t
coming out. i can’t remember when i started needing
mental images of nic on top of me, inside of me
for an orgasm. it’s gotten more intense lately. the first
few months, i was able to be upset, even angry with them,
then i moved to connecticut and, alone, wanted them more
than ever. it took me nearly 5 months to feel like my writing
and i were moving on, but i can’t remember if
the fantasizing-while-masturbating even slowed down.
when i visited jess back in philly, for our psych ward
anniversary, i intentionally found nic on tinder. ten days
later—the day that’s in my phone as “nic anniversary”—
checking myself into another psych ward felt unrelated.
felt all about the growing wave of anti-trans sentiment and
policies. still, the time i went inpatient in philly and met jess,
nic had been so there for me, in a way
maybe no one had before, or at least hadn’t for a while. when
i got assigned my own room on the unit, lay down and shoved
my hand under my waistband, i realized no one would
be there with me this time. the memories of nic all came
tearing back into me. in the weeks since then those memories
have been burrowing inside my heart. now about half the time
to successfully rub one out, i need to picture nic with a beautiful,
pulsing cock squirting inside of a pussy that’s real and mine.
the truth is: i can rarely get off to sex i’ve actually had.
the truth is: if i cum while fucking it’s almost always because
we’re talking out a fantasy we’re not actually fulfilling.
the truth is: sure, there’s things that can help, but the only
way i’ve ever orgasmed is my own hand.
the truth is: i need to get over nic. to do this i think
i need a really, really thick squirting dildo
that’s also a vibrator, and a fleshlight. maybe
some ropes. a full service domme/closeted transmasc.

sterling-elizabeth arcadia

Sterling-Elizabeth Arcadia (she/they) is a Best of the Net winning disabled trans poet and lover of birds, cats, movies, and her friends. Her chapbook Heaven, Ekphrasis is available from Kith Books. Most recently she has written and published from Podunk and Wangunk land.

flow chart for the doomed

first published in Another World Magazine

what it must be like to transition like
ripening fruit—to grow more in tune
with one's gendered rhythm, each passing day
a new identity—to pulse with delight at
a world that sees you living—
i long to come out like his
sticky-sweet becomings yet instead
i am purely a quandary—i don't
want to call myself nonbinary because
that implies that the binary is real,the rest of us lingering outside it
like small children screaming to be let in
to a building they would most likely wreck—
don't want to call myself transmasc, always,
because i'm not a dude, because most cis dudes
have conspired in AI-driven group chats to
make my life hell—and don't want to call myself
a lesbian, except around trans people, or someonesomewhere, without critical thinking skills
will think i'm a TERF. i want to transition like
a carnivorous plant, shining with verdant colors yet
at least a threat to hierarchy—transition like belongng
is real—like there's a label out there without
some kind of baggage, some kind of implication—
i want to be transmasculine in the way a butch dyke is—except without ascribing to the existence of gender—
i want a wikipedia page for every label complete
with a moodboard rather than an explanation—want to
cite Monique Wittig every time i share my pronouns—
want to abandon gender in the forest to be devoured
left to decompose, to grow.

mk zariel

mk zariel {it/its + masc terms} is a transmasculine neuroqueer poet, theater artist, movement journalist, and BashBack aligned anarchist. it is fueled by folk-punk, Emma Goldman, and existential dread. the author of VOIDGAZING (2026, Whittle Micropress), it can be found online at mkzariel.carrd.co, creating conflictually queer-anarchic spaces, writing columns for Asymptote and the Anarchist Review of Books, and being mildly feral in the great lakes region.
it is kinda gay ngl.

rodeo clown puts body on the line

5. i’m at the boot scoot baby, and i’m feeling like a rodeo romeo, except i don’t own boots so i’m just in my converse. i am trying to connect with my trans body, to recapture how i felt as a kid, when i lived in my body, not just with it. to embody my body. standing in line with all the other bodies, i start to feel more like a rodeo clown. i take off my shirt to reveal a tight vest hugging my tight chest. howdy partner. the next time someone asks me where my scars are from, i’ll say i got gored by a bull.6. a step back. exiting the train station on the way to the boot scoot. a person stops half-in and half-out of their car to stare at me so seductively i feel they must have mistaken me for someone they previously fucked because yes, i am hot, but i am also wearing so many layers that surely the few exposed pieces of me (face, hands) are not that hot. in fact, they are freezing because it is winter in melbourne. i hold their gaze for the sole reason that in bullfighting, eye contact between the matador and the bull is a crucial and intense moment, some sort of metaphor for the dance of life and death. i am not interested in having an intense or crucial moment at thornbury station with some random, but i am interested in the dance.7. dancing was one of my resolutions for the year. i wanted to think less and move more. i didn’t factor in how embarrassing it would feel to enter a room out of step, after a life of confidently approaching any sports field, any court, any body of water (rope me in coach). so, apart from two online videos where i could stomp around in the privacy of my living room unobserved, this is the first class i have taken. i go because g. invites me. i am nervous until the music starts and i hook my thumbs through my belt loops. now i’m burnin’ yearnin’ windin’ grindin’: yee-haw etc. mine is a body moving through air and that’s friction. that’s me taking up rightful space on this dancefloor. that’s hot.8. an hour passes. i finish class feeling accomplished. feeling masc. i am sweaty. i have kicked the floor clean. i keep punching the air like some sort of overenthusiastic sports dad (i am, admittedly, some sort of overenthusiastic sports dad). i admire a boy’s cowboy hat and am wondering if i could pull that look off, when someone turns to me and says DON’T STAND BESIDE ME NEXT WEEK BECAUSE I’M WEARING MY SOFT SHOES NOW BUT NEXT WEEK I’LL BE IN BOOTS AND I WILL BREAK YOUR TOES IF YOU BUMP INTO ME AGAIN. i say sorry, it’s my first time. she doesn’t give a fuck. i decide i can’t pull off the hat, but next time i’ll wear boots.

Seth Malacari

Seth Malacari (he/they) is a nonbinary trans masculine author and editor living on unceded Whadjuk Noongar land. His first book, An Unexpected Party (2023) was published by Fremantle Press. Their work has been published in various anthologies, including Head Under Water, Ourselves: 100 Micro Memoirs and Emergence: SBS Emerging Writers’ Competition.

TS

BIG DICK SHEMALE TRANNY WAKES IN A HOT SWEAT SCREAMING A STRANGERS
NAME               ////      SHE
               PUNCHES HERSELF IN THE BRAIN
UNTIL THE BLOOD SINGS SILENCE AGAIN

AND THE RELENTLESS 4CHAN REFRAIN:
A MOUTH IS A MOUTH IS A MOUTH IS A MOUTH
A MOUTH IS A MOUTH IS A MOUTH IS A MOUTH

BIG DICK SHEMALE TRANNY DRINKS ROTTEN GOON ASMR
BIG DICK SHEMALE TRANNY DOGGY STYLED
BY STRANGERS EYES IN POST OFFICE LINE
BIG DICK SHEMALE TRANNY FUCKED JOBLESS
BIG DICK SHEMALE TRANNY TEASED
EDGED
DENIED INCLUSION IN FEMINIST REVOLUTION
BIG DICK SHEMALE TRANNY MILKED FOR SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMISATION

SISSY DICKGIRL GANG BANGED BY PARLIAMENT.
CENTRELINK. MEDICARE. EVERYWHERE.

AND THE GOVERNMENT BROADCAST ELECTION DISDAIN:
A MOUTH IS A MOUTH IS A MOUTH IS A MOUTH
A MOUTH IS A MOUTH IS A MOUTH IS A MOUTH

BIG DICK SHEMALE TRANNY DOMINATES CIS GENDER OAT MILK ICED LATTE WITH
HOT AUTOGYNAPHILE
BIG DICK SHAMALE TRANNY FORCE FEMMED
BY MILF DOCTOR
PRESCRIBING HORMONE REPLACEMENT THERAPY
THROUGH THE INFORMED CONSENT MODEL
BIG DICK SHEMALE TRANNY CUCKS & HUMILIATES PROTESTANT CAPITALIST
SETTLER COLONIAL GENDER BINARY

SHES A SISSY
A TRAP
HER BRAND NEW TITS OUT IN THE PIT
CRAFT NIGHT QUEEN WITH A POETRY DREAM
BIG COCK SHEMALE TRANNY IS HOLY.
IS EXPLORING HER SEXUAL POWER.
IS A RED FLAG. A SPECTRE HAUNTING EUROPE. AN ENEMY OF THE BBC.
& SHES TRAPPED IN AN ENDLESSLY RECURRING PHALLO-SAPHIC PARADOX

SISSY DICKGIRL FEMBOY FINDS JOY. LOVE. SERENITY. GRACE. COMMUNITY.
A MOMENT’S FREEDOM FROM PAIN

AND THE TERFS ALL CHANT THAT I CANT COMPLAIN COZ
A MOUTH IS A MOUTH IS A MOUTH IS A MOUTH
A MOUTH IS A MOUTH IS A MOUTH IS A MOUTH

////
& THIS MOUTH IS SCREAMINGYOU CAN NEVER ERADICATE US

Joni Boyd

Joni Boyd AKA Checkout Chick is a poet, broadcaster, journalist, promoter and emcee on Wadjuk Noongar Boodja. Raised in Perth’s arts community and active since 2012, Joni has shared her poetry in pubs, libraries, theatres and festivals across the continent. Her written work appears in Solid Air, Cordite, Recoil, OUTinPerth and her own zine labels Department of Poetry and Hectic Measures Press. In 2025, Joni hosts various programmes on RTRFM92.1 including the activist news programme Indymedia. She’s currently an event promoter with ALT LIVE and co-hosts the monthly Perth Slam.
You can find Joni on Instagram @checkout_chick463.

Julian L. Palacios

Julian (he/they) is a poet and artist living on unceded Jagera and Turrbal land. He writes about the body to try and come home to it, and often times also about being a gay transsexual. You can follow their work on Instagram at @julp_writes.

I should read more gay poets

Accessible text version

Shower Season

okay, it's like scrubbing your skin
clean except all the dirt is
beneath the surface,
you've drilled it in too deep
and now all that's left is the scar -
okay, so trace the wound and
count back from twenty,
remember a time when you felt
invincible,
then trip back to the moment it
all fell apart -
inhale smoke from a burnt out bulb
and tell me it was beautiful for
a day or two,
sweat like dew and the sun making
everything taste like yellow -
okay but now it's winter, everything
a crunch under your feet, and you
cover the shame of it all,
and you are not the shadow that follows
you,
all you are is all you are and
all you are is less than you should be -
and in that realisation,
is a silent scream,
is the tattoo against your chest,
birds that didn't live long enough to sing,
okay, so tell me -
how did we end up here?

Poe

Poe (they/them) is a nonbinary autistic author from England. Their published works include How To Be Autistic and Tao, Undead.

Shibboleth

A good shibboleth is known only by the people that are supposed to know it. You know at least one shibboleth. Maybe you know this one.
Shibboleth (it/its) lives on unceded occupied Yuggera and Turrbal lands as a white transgender and intersex woman. It reads to recognise the self through the other. It writes as a form of exorcism.

Martyrmother

Niacinamide retinol biotin SPF 50 tinted moisturiser. You figured it out early, and it was hard. Your self-actualisation cost you everything. It’s still worth it. It feels good most of the time and you have found a community. You have carved out spaces in your image. You have made safe havens for freaks like us.Vitamin C collagen hyaluronic acid self love body scrub. A balding man in a bodycon dress tries to talk to you and there is a desperation in her eyes that feels like sexual violence. You never see her again. None of your lovers have back hair. You and your friends share one size 8 wardrobe split across five homes.Glycolic acid AHA peptide ceramide face and neck masque. At long last, she will transition into a statistic tonight. She looked like more of a crossdresser than a woman. She was making people uncomfortable. You don’t think about her because you’re in bed with your girlfriends. You declare to the universe at large that you are T4T forever.Squalane glucoside ascorbyl tetraisopalmitate I miss my friend. You don’t deserve to know her name. She wanted to turn her home into a community space. I could never beat her in any board game. She left her skincare collection to me. I feel like her faggy son when I use it. Her boots fit me perfectly. I’m scared of the ways we’re alike. I’ll follow her home tonight. She loved poetry too.

What Better Memorial

I’m all tongue, all teeth
as I shovel these deaths
into my mouth, I’m eating them,
putting them inside of me,
I carry them like stars,
each name a glistening hope
unrealized, lights, all of them
lights, everyone says so, and I read
about the bodies, dismembered
maybe, bloody, riddled with explosions,
embedded with metal capsules,
you know what they are,
and all of those pictures, I hate them,
with the filters so heavy and blurred,
I want to see the pores on their faces,
the lines by their eyes, the acne,
show me the acne, show me
the aliveness they had when it was there
and I’ll eat that too, I will, trans man
on a diet of his dead.

Nicolò Potestà

Nicolò Potestà (he/him) is from Seattle, Washington, on the traditional land of the Coast Salish peoples, including the Duwamish tribe. He's a trans writer attempting to bring light to the transgender experience in a time of erasure, and is currently studying Political Science and Creative Writing at American University in Washington, DC.

We disinter the hatchet

after Manor Lords

The first days of winter, we got on like a house
on fire. They would lug the wood, I killed
a steer for meat. We ate in delicate silence- if
the manor called for shield, we could
amble together, if we had to build a stall
we would disappear the trees. Enclosure was
not— say archaeologists, examining our
bodies/ gashes— the advent of a market
economy. If the lord walked by on his tip-toes
we would ignore them. The silence is
blessed life; the snow falls deep, covering
foot-steps/breath/the air between
us/the words- galaxies accelerating away from one
another, despite the light— almost silly
angelic, almost a hand— outstretching as far as
it would. The wood is silent, almost. Eventually
we disinter the hatchet, beside a stable
newly constructed. After you, I say, thank you
they respond. We take it in turns. Look we
lick every new hole to press lips upon. A bowl
is only useful empty with negative space. Blood
into ice-cold water. The mediation is pure
and formal: the pleasure comes from breaking
what we agreed, what is left to root. Eventually
there’s too little flesh to carve. remorseful
before the hoarfrost thaws, we bury it once
again. Now comes the season of healing. The lord
watches us, sauntering past the potential seeds.

Jocasta Suzanne

Jocasta Suzanne is a writer/freelance editor living on unceded Wurundjeri land in Naarm. She has been published in Overland, Meanjin and Rabbit Journal among others. In 2023 she was shortlisted for the Kat Muscat fellowship, in 2022 the Val Valis award. She was the winner of the 2021 Harri Jones award, and was one of the recipients of the Next Chapter fellowship. She is a genderqueer trans femme.

Home underneath the sky

Pip Ford

Pip Ford (they/them) is based in Ōtautahi | Christchurch (Kāi Tahu land) and has a keen interest in mixed media and hybrid forms of art.

Julian L. Palacios

Julian (he/they) is a poet and artist living on unceded Jagera and Turrbal land. He writes about the body to try and come home to it, and often times also about being a gay transsexual. You can follow their work on Instagram at @julp_writes.

I should read more gay poets

Graphic zine version

I should read more GAY poetsGentlemen must wear man bites, collars and ties.do i write of you the way
a man who writes of men
writs a man?
or does my
girlhood show.
was i socialized
a velvet case with a
hole where the knife
should be(otherwise known as
FAGGOT!
) or am i too
minimal and terse.
a woman
is a scandinavian hat stand
a man is a box of
pralines.
somehow i can
write this and still worry i'm
not really
gayif fucking is like a shower
a man is the power
going out, because
i forget everything
they taught me
when the cold hits,
decency and
breathing.is anybody there?
grab my throat for yes -
darling
i feel like there's something
wrong with me,like a pervert
i am leaving the windows open
bleeding from springs for you even and
especially if they're ones I shouldn't have.striking up against
my hard-won shaven
body like a
shark, like a match box.which makes me feel like I have myself right.for a man i've got a light,
caught alight, clot, alike -
i know i am
a (gay) man because every disgusting thing
i do i find gorgeous.a woman is a wooden chair
and a man is a chaise longue,
lie down and tell me about your day, love,
and i will listen, i will scratch you up
like a spoiled brat cat.i will sand
you down
and swallow
your lacquer,
i am not afraid of your dirt - a man is loamy,
so i keep my nails short
so as to paint him everywhere with
the lightest brush.how much of this is true blue and how much is to convince myself
i have wanted in ways that prove me?who is keeping score?
a man doesn't watch himself, they said, from
outside - that is a woman's work.I think a woman can be anything - even this lonely, despersate,
boy-crazy, hamster-wheeling between these –bruised knuckles,
blood pact kisses.
switchblades,
silent drives to fisticuffs in ditches,
in motel beds, in pools,
what's a little waterboarding
between friends?
no more tears, just magnetic hips
and designer concave chests
that read crush
and now mean it.feeling mugged by my own desires
but each day now
I AM ALIVE so i
lean into the thrill
and as for her, god help the girl,
I guess.

Submissions

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transitive rag
is published by Celestial Fool Press
www.celestialfool.com.auManaging editor: Ori Diskett
trans rag Social media: Rae WhiteContact us at [email protected]We operate on the unceded sovereign lands of the Jagera and Turrbul people.
This always was and always will be Aboriginal land.

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