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(Reassignment)

By Rose Zinnia

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a trick
of light
a sleight
of hand
a contused
grammar

police
unfurls
into
policy

microbial
code billyclub’d
into the epigenetic
memory of myour
mutant desires
for another earth

the cops
in the blood
ransack
the collective
hinterlands
of surthrival

post-encounter
you can find mwe
roaming
the fog
of an ethereal
ante-bodied
dusk w myour un-hands
open beckoning

come    come    come

the creatures iwe wish
to join in myour
ante-body
dys-possess
mwe & myour syllable
faltering
the sovereign lonely
I into
clods of dirt-gone
cryptozoo
logical spirit
humus

the hidden
animal in the
blood sloshes up
w the waves

a maroon
ocean an anarchic
womb announces
its pleasures

w myour hands’ shape
shifting like this
iwe call

come       

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Listen as Rose Zinnia reads “(Reassignment).”
Added: Wednesday, July 5, 2023  /  Used with permission.
Rose Zinnia
Photo by Anna Powell Denton.

Rose Zinnia is an autistic queer/trans writer living in Cleveland, Ohio. She is the recipient of the 2022 Ninth Letter Literary Award in Poetry, the 2022 Vera Meyer Strube Poetry Prize from the Academy of American Poets, and the 2021 Kraft-Kinsey Award/Residency from the Kinsey Institute. Her first book of poetry, Anarchic Womb, was a finalist for the 2022 Nightboat Poetry Prize. She has an MFA from Indiana University and her work has been supported by the Kenyon Review Writers Workshop and the Tin House Summer Workshop.

Image Description: Rose Zinnia wears a magenta ball cap and white tank top. They are dappled with shadows and light, looking off to the side of the frame while in front of a blue background.

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