Tuesday's Trans Writer: Poet Trace Peterson

"Everyone is an abandoned carousel with empty horses going around and around and around"

Trace Peterson has been around for a long time, long before being trans was a thing everyone talked and fought about. She has been at the forefront of trans poetics and scholarship, and she’s an excellent literary citizen. (This means that she does not just write poems: she’s edited anthologies, curated magazines and reading series, all those things that are less than glamorous and pretty grueling, but which keep the literary world alive and changing.)

This is a poem I love, first published in 2016, which I’m stealing from the PEN America website and pasting in its entirety because it’s so wonderfully funny and true to the times we’re living in. I hope it makes your Tuesday brighter!

Everyone is a Little Trans

Everyone is a little Trans
Everyone is a little Bisexual
Everyone is a little Genderqueer
Everyone is a little Not There

Everyone is a little GNC
Everyone is a little Gender Fluid
Everyone is a little twelve inch pianist
Everyone is a little Cis

Everyone is a little circular rubbing motion
Everyone thinks they’re Billy Ocean

Everyone is a forgotten hit record
Everyone is a little good at sex
Everyone is a little bad at gender

Everyone is a little changeable
Everyone is a little rigidly stuck in their thing
Everyone is a Post Office Worker
Everyone is an abandoned carousel with empty horses going around and around and around

Everyone is a little lurker
Everyone is a little mako shark
Everyone is a little romper wearing narc
Everyone is a little tailor with a broadcloth under zir arm

Everyone is a little stitch in time
Everyone is a little grammatical error that changed the meaning of our relationship completely by accidentally
         introducing a surprise microaggression
Everyone is a little discriminated against
Everyone is a little interested in sitting on the dryer while it vibrates

Everyone tells us everyone is a little gay means everyone who is cis
Everyone is a little white crisply ironed shirt
Everyone is a poet
Everyone says no more than what they meant

Everyone has disappeared from sight
Everyone is a little missing
Everyone is a little ventriloquized by this puppet
Everyone farts with zir armpit

Everyone is a little scientist building rockets
Everyone says it’s not rocket science even when it is
Everyone is an ineffective gangster
Everyone is camped out waiting on the grass for Shakespeare in the Park tickets

Everyone is a little unspecific thing
Everyone is a spork
Everyone is a precise floating ethereal ectoplasm except when it’s time to pick up a paycheck or eat or have
         sex or clean the bathroom or get attacked on the street for just existing

Everyone is a little angry
Everyone is getting on my last nerve
Everyone has poor food truck boundaries
Everyone shows a complete lack of respect for lack

Everyone is a little ignorant of how much better they have it than everyone
Everyone is a method actor
Everyone is a monster

Everyone drives a tractor
Everyone provides a blank member
Everyone listens to thrash metal
Everyone guesses the lottery number correctly

Everyone wins
Everyone is a little newt
Everyone collapses into parallel dimensions when they hear a Broadway musical begin

Everyone is now a little stand offish
Everyone is better than everyone else
Everyone is enjoying being penetrated
Everyone by stunning realizations and ideas from the history of western thought

Everyone is a little tired of liberal arts and its oppressive regime
Everyone is a little academically non conforming
Everyone is a little ADD
Everyone is me

Everyone is a little hog tied
Everyone is a little burbling brook
Everyone ditched their nook
Everyone is a little more into buying things online now to save trees from certain destruction even though
         global warming doesn’t officially exist

Everyone is a little smarter
Everyone is a little taller because of all the preservatives
Everyone is a little prepackaged
Everyone is wreckage