JADE SCHAPIRO 

They Recover Through Words Alone

Mornings begin with a tired phrase about ‘your kind’

heading for extinction, but not today

Not when you’ve leased the MGM jet

and filled the cabin with clouds of smoked crack

Becoming an icon was a series of omissions

in which more and more was rejected

so that more and more could be bequeathed

Note: "clouds of smoked crack" and other words and ideas are from It's So Easy, a memoir by Guns 'n Roses bassist Duff McKagan.

Selections from A Trans Guide to Humanity

Chasers

A stopped watch is right twice a day. 

You are an undifferentiated mass of low-value digital attention. 

Vacuum your car, for real. 

It’s better to want what you can’t have, than to have what you don’t want.

Trans Girls

This thing of ours is predicated on refusal. 

Bake under ultraviolet light from a young star.

The Chairman is said to pity the abstinent.

When they wake up, it’s the best they’re gonna feel all day. 

Untitled

I want you to love your eyebrows

And get into Heaven

Before the devil knows

You’re dead

The Promised Land

There was something about Emily

It was partially the warnings

of her Vogue sisters

You are avoidant, you are actually

vegetable avoidant

A complete lack of feminine affectation

Dance in the unwashed rotunda

until you don’t have to

And really quite a lot of butter

screaming in pain

Jade Schapiro is the author of Princess Lessons (EMP Books, 2023). She lives in Western Massachusetts, and is a former librarian and current counselor and social work student. She is a queer mom with a variety of dangerous and/or expensive interests.