August Helpling
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Family Name
Glinting with sweat and glitter from the club dance floor,
a friend sits across from me at the diner and says,
I’m nonbinary, but I don’t think I can call myself trans,
it feels like I haven’t earned it. How I delight
then to tell the tale of the word “transgender.”
How it was stitched together from sad stories
and hope by our forebears. An heirloom
you can hear but not see, a garment
for you to wear, a gown, a gift. They will not force
it upon you like so many “gifts” we receive
when we enter this world, but they wanted you,
yes, you in particular, to have it.
O, how they would weep with joy
to watch you swish the skirt on your long walk home.
So, I wear the name “transsexual” like a daughter
wears her mothers perfume. I know it’s an acquired
taste, top notes of passionfruit and rainsoaked
concrete, basil and lingering blood at the base,
but I wear it so I can feel them always,
circling my head like shimmering comets.
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Water Works
“I don’t even know if there was anyone that’s ever felt as I do… how they coped, what they did…how do I find out what someone like me does?” — Lou Sullivan
i’ve never cried while having sex before.
yet here i am, twenty-one years old
her hands on my hips place my consciousness
behind my skin for the first time since i was twelve.
i flood my own body as i realize this flesh
is not mine, so i push her shoulders back
get some distance, she sits on her heels,
her soft smile tells me she already knows
a dam has just broken somewhere deep inside
as the last drop on denial has pushed through.
i wish i had been born a boy.
at twenty-one it almost felt too late
to start a second puberty, or to learn
the name of someone like me. i could not post
a letter to san francisco and receive
his thoughtful reply, his office empty.
i could not make the trek to his support group,
dissolved by now. decades after his death
i could not look him in the eye, shake his hand,
warm like tidewater, or listen to him speak,
his voice like a nursery rhyme, familiar,
lilting, light. i know his fight started and ended
long before i was born, but when i drove
down to planned parenthood olympia
i swear the rain on the sunroof, the pitter-patter
music to my pilgrimage, must have been him.
from here on i will pay my respects
the only way i know how, by anointing
my skin each night with alcohol,
testosterone, and salted sea water.
and someday even farther when i get the surgeries
he worked his whole life to get for himself
i will ask the doctor to say his name
with each cut and stitch.
(for now she politely turns her head
as i pull my clothes back on. when i reach
out to her again across the tide,
she pulls me in, kisses my tears,
doesn’t try to build the dam back up
but appreciates the aqueducts for what they are)
as soon as i am Healed enough I will ask my friends
to drive me to the beach. I will sit in the sand,
let the ocean kiss my toes, slip the shirt
off my back, shed what remains of the deep sea pressure
that once held me down, let the sun warm my chest,
whisper: thank you. thank you. thank you.
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“I’m Doing My First E Shot Tonight, Can You Help Me?“
She’s seated on the edge of the bathtub,
corduroy skirt, tights riddled with runs pulled down
around her knees, the tools of the ritual
lined up across the floor. Alcohol swabs,
sealed syringe, needles, Hello Kitty bandaid,
empty laundry detergent jug labeled “SHARPS,”
a new vial of estradiol valerate.
I don’t know why she called me, I take my doses
of testosterone suspended in alcohol gel,
shut my eyes when doctors take my blood,
and my hands have never once been steady.
Still, I sit on the closed lid of her toilet, her knees
knock into mine like a ship kisses the dock.
I’ve never done this before. I tell her.
Me neither, but I memorized the steps. she answers.
She hands me the swab, draws a target with her finger
on her upper thigh, a path I am to follow.
It smells the same as my T gel, that sharp burn
in the back of the throat. Why did you go for the injection,
instead of the pills? Her voice small, she says, I need to feel
like I’ve earned it. I want to ask, have you not suffered enough?
I remember how you begged your parents
to let you take this medicine, they made you wait
until your body broke and morphed
into something you could not recognize
let alone call yours. How the kids called you “faggot”
more often than your own name for four straight years.
You think you will not earn it until you make yourself bleed?
Instead, I hold my breath as she draws the medicine,
flicks the syringe to loose the bubbles from the bottom,
pushes the plunger until one drop weeps clear
from the needle’s tip. What should I do? I ask. I need you
to pinch my skin, just a little. she answers.
I cradle the target in my palms and squeeze,
brace myself in the warmth of her skin.
Her brown eyes, wide like a prey animal
caught in a snare, meet mine and beg for witness.
So I look, even as the needle pierces her skin,
swift yet gentle, buried in the fatty tissue below,
like a rabbit slips into their burrow.
I watch her push the plunger down, and I swear
the medicine smooths her skin in real time
as it spreads from the pinprick hole.
After she pulls the needle out I let go.
I press the pink bandaid to her skin,
soak up the drop of blood and massage her leg
in slow circles. She pulls up her skirt and tights,
I rise from my seat, but she grabs my arm
and says Hold me. So I smile wide
and drag us both to the floor. Her in my lap,
we weep and laugh into each other’s shoulders.
Here, together, we are safe.
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August Helpling is a poet, academic, and educator. His work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, and appears in Jeopardy Magazine, Troublemaker Firestarter, and Crab Orchard Review. He holds a BA in Creative Writing from Western Washington University, and an MFA in Poetry from Southern Illinois University, Carbondale.
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Posted in Pride: June '26 and tagged in #boudin, #poetry, Poetry