Loading...
Loading...
Click here if you don’t see subscription options
R/B MertzAugust 15, 2024

“You should be Women,
and yet your beards forbid me to interpret
that you are so.”

Shakespeare, Macbeth

Naked in the garden, I cut celebrities out of People,
collected poems, histories, hid razors, prayed rosaries
to hide what God had made of me: witch hazel, ace
bandage, flannel shirt, haircut, television set, DVD.
Western Civilization 1, 2 & the whole university
system could not, Hollywood would not photograph us
for two or three more decades, they cut away:
the history of bodies like mine was torn out
& swallowed down unnamable, untraceable throats.

People keep asking me if I’m on hormones & I say as
much as anyone
—I got my voice like this the old-
fashioned way, with cigarettes, with fire/real traditional.
You have to talk to men in a high register like dogs so
I’ve stopped talking to men. They can still tell.
It’s not that hard to see the reasons why we’re all so
unlovable: my television friends can’t see me back, they
look up just as someone cuts to commercial, see a flicker
of me in the background shadowy corner of a circus tent.

Implicitly asked if I will shave for the wedding, I will not:
my body is not a closet, it’s a testament, a scroll
of psalms, a hand-written holy text, hand-and-god-made icon:
all our bodies are the evidence that we’ve always been here
And  I’m telling you, I’m not going: I’m telling you you
don’t have to listen to him just because he says he
knows doesn’t mean he does but the truth is we are not
leaving, we are not giving up this garden.

The latest from america

Residents walk by charred vehicles in Goma, Democratic Republic of the Congo, on Jan. 31. (AP Photo/Moses Sawasawa)
Approximately six million people have died in the conflict in the eastern D.R.C. since 1996. For decades, numerous armed groups have competed for power and control of this vast nation’s potential fortune.
Russell Pollitt, S.J.February 06, 2025
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers attach a chain to a detained person on Jan. 27 in Silver Spring, Md. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
In the face of dangerous nativism and the possibility of state violence through deportation, the church will be challenged to offer a compelling and credible response.
Dylan CorbettFebruary 06, 2025
Speaking at a pair of events in Washington surrounding the the National Prayer Breakfast, President Donald Trump announced that he is forming a task force led by Attorney General Pam Bondi to investigate the “targeting” of Christians.
With interest in a papal elections high thanks to the Oscar-nominated film “Conclave, ” Pope Francis decided to extend the term of the 91-year-old dean of the College of Cardinals rather than make way for someone new.