Skip to Content

Princess Powerpuff / Chemical X

By Jasmine Reid

i spread at my touch & clit
contemplating my beauty this Monday i live

the pleasure of my fingers
how i am in-the-making by hand

by pill by needle i am the perfect girl
professor, in fact, Chemical X is my love

in gradients of acidity i am
milkless except by oats, by meal made of itself

by instructions i revise & a slow-burning fire,
i heat my life & study the results

more dates next time, or, maybe i need another surgery
it is often unclear why townspeople harass me

big, ugly mayors of monstrosity, against whom i, & my sisters,
fly—remember my love

the we to why i orgasm in centuries
my pussy is one way to my heart

if you can get me wet, & so forth
X my V with planetary heat

volcanic, tongue tamped like a prayer, a pavilion
in which yes is on every glossal membrane

the sugar & spice that reorientates the body
every pleasure is a history of pleasure

every vaginal fold is an inner-stellar-ness
of proto-dreams entrusted to me, Ms. Schreber’s Case

& the rest
of my life is testament to little girls & women of trans experience

however knobbed the language, you are looking at a Princess
in a sky-pleated dress. ribboning

labia make me feel perfect.
the littlest & most powerful girl peers at me through the mirror,

the sculpted softness of my jaw & forehead
healed incisions mark that i am here

X, my love, V here.
 

 

 

Listen as Jasmine Reid reads Princess Powerpuff / Chemical X.
Added: Thursday, December 19, 2024  /  Used with permission.
Jasmine Reid
Photo by Nico Reano.

Jasmine Reid is a trans: Atlantic flower against apartheid. She is the author of Deus Ex Nigrum (Honeysuckle Press, 2020) and Interlocutor Goddess (Autumn House Press, forthcoming). An MFA graduate of Cornell University and recipient of fellowships from Cave Canem and Poets House, her work has been published or is forthcoming in the Academy of American Poets’ Poem-a-Day, Kenyon Review, and Virginia Quarterly Review, among others. Jasmine was born and raised in Baltimore, Maryland, and is currently based in Brooklyn, New York, where she is an assistant professor at NYU. Find her at her website.

Image Description: Jasmine Reid, a tall Black femme, stands upright on dirt at the shoreline of a body of water glinting with sunlight. Jasmine has shoulder-length curly hair and bangs and is wearing a yellow cape/duster over a black cropped top, volleyball shorts, and knee-high socks.

Other poems by this author

Back to top