from Doikayt
By Agatha Eydenberg
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mentions of guns and hunting
As a boy I was a body in diaspora,
not from its blood-home but its bone-deep joy.
Boyhood is diaspora from the body,
dollhood is diaspora from the boy.
I’ve become a practitioner of her-ness. Dollkayt.
“The hope” is a man’s hope, Esau’s, the daydream
of a less thoughtful child, un-filling and tasteless for hopeful deviants.
Here, however, is many places. Here, a new place, a new person.
We make her here, make here her. The motto of the laser bund:
Here, where we are, is a girl.
This is a point of contention. Do you not like it?
Do you see me as a hunter’s usurper, come to wrestle away
the life of some sadder brother with a beard and a gun?
So be it. May my life pull a weaver’s uglier threads.
I will never go back.
I will be neon Jacqueline, reverse Devorah.
My Jerusalem lies here, in my chest, heard in a woman
embracing her neighbor, learning as teaching as learning.
I will make a girl, soft and warm for Minnesota winter, from river clay.
I will fight God for her.
Agatha Eydenberg is a writer, musician, and set of no-longer-wasted eyelashes living and working in the Twin Cities area of Minnesota. She writes often about queerness, transness, womanhood, and the spaces between them. Her work appears in Stone of Madness, Discretionary Love, and Strip Mall Magazine. You can find her music at asmallbird.com. She lives with her wife.
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